THE SEX OFFENSE REGISTRY IS USELESS AS A LAW ENFORCEMENT TOOL
Derek W. Logue of OnceFallen.com
Posted: 9 August 2024
In 1931, Los Angeles District Attorney Buron Fitts proposed a “gangster law” (aka “convict registration”). This law would require persons convicted of certain drug or organized crime offenses to register with the Sheriff if visiting LA for longer than five days. In 1933, the ordinance passed in the city and County of Los Angeles. But during the 1930s, the “sexual psychopath” panic began supplanting the fear of organized crime and drugs. The Los Angeles Police Department established a “Bureau of Sex Offenses” in 1938; LAPD chief James E. Davis justified the creation of the bureau on a belief that “each minor sex offender is a potential major sex criminal.”[1]
Law enforcement has weaponized the sex offense registry since its inception. The LA Times reported in 1940 the Bureau’s records had been used in “the search for Dorothy Gordon, a 9-year-old Negro child, believed to have been kidnapped by a middle-aged white man.” Law enforcement officials told reporters they had “obtained a detailed description of the suspect enabling them to partially identify him through the police index of sex offenders.” [2] As noted in the publication LA Magazine, “The usual suspects, including known ‘morals offenders,’ were rounded up, but the case remained unsolved… More than 11 years and the man who raped and killed her hasn’t been apprehended. Some two dozen suspects have been questioned, re-questioned, and released in connection with the Gordon slaying.”[3] Gordon’s killer was never identified. Even in 1940, a registry of persons convicted of sexual offenses was proven ineffective as a law enforcement investigation tool.
Despite the ineffectiveness of the use of a sex offense registry in solving the murder of Dorothy Gordon, the state of California established Penal Code 290, which included a statewide sex offense registry, in 1947. The new law was subsequently used as a tool to prosecute hom*osexual activity (“lewd vagrancy” was added to the list of registerable crimes in 1949); a total of 2225 people were registered for “sexual perversion” (hom*osexuality), 161 for rape, and 44 for “other sex crimes.” Similar registries were adopted in Florida and Arizona in the 1950s; Nevada, Ohio, and Alabama followed suit in the 1960s.[4]
The registry primarily weaponized against hom*osexuals engaging in consensual adult relations. Among those placed on California’s sex offense registry in 1953 for engaging for consensual hom*osexual activity was Bayard Rustin, who became one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.[5]
By the late 1950s, the sexual psychopath era was replaced by the “Rehabilitative Era” as heavy-handed tactics fell out of favor and rehabilitation became the primary focus of the justice system.
Yet even as the “predator panics” of the 1930s-1950s waned, law enforcement remained adamant about promoting this registry idea despite a lack of evidence that it was useful. However, with the passage of time,, a new era of “predator panic” would help revive the push for registries as a law enforcement tool.
A few days after his son went missing in July 1982, John Walsh sat down with Dr. Ronald Wright, the Broward County Medical Examiner. Wright handed Walsh a binder full of photographs of persons on parole for sex offenses and stated be believed one of these persons kidnapped Adam. When Walsh asked Wright if he truly believed one of the persons in the binder had his son, Wright replied, “Yes, that’s probably who’s got Adam.”[6]
But Wright was WRONG in more ways than one. After botching numerous cause-of-death cases and having mismanaged his office, Ronald Wright was replaced by Florida Governor Lawton Chiles in 1994. Walter “Skip” Campbell was an attorney who helped depose Wright. Campbell stated that the effort to remove Wright from his position was due to “significant problems in his office, what we perceived to be an attempt to sway cases based on unscientific facts.”[7] Wright was also wrong about his belief that the binders he shared with Walsh contained a suspect.
John Walsh had convinced himself that a drifter and alleged serial killer named Ottis Toole had committed the murder, although even Walsh admitted in his own book that Toole lacked credibility. Toole had a low IQ and the inability to remember the current President. Details in the confession were debunked by law enforcement, and Toole had been helped by another prisoner to write extortion letters claiming he would show where the bodies were in exchange for money. Toole also claimed his associate, Henry Lee Lucas, was with him when he murdered Adam, but Lucas was in jail. (Incidentally, Lucas had a history of false confessions.) And Toole was in Virginia for most of the week when Adam had went missing, so the police found the notion of Toole driving six hours to Broward County after a 14 hour bus ride from Virginia to Jacksonville not credible. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Walsh remained convinced that Toole was the killer, stating, “To my mind, the evidence is overwhelming. I know that certain people, some even at the FBI, are convinced that Toole was not the killer. They can think what they like. I am Adam’s father, and I know what I believe.”[8]
The cops relented and officially “closed” the case and officially declaring Ottis Toole the killer of Adam Walsh in 2008, despite not presenting any evidence to back up the claims.[9] And while there are doubts that Toole killed as many people as he claimed, if he killed anyone at all, no reports ever linked Toole to any sexual offenses. Until his arrest in January 1982, Toole had been, at worst, a murder suspect. There was never any evidence that Adam had been sexually assaulted.
But even if Ottis Toole murdered Adam Walsh, his picture was not among the photographs within the binders that Dr. Wright had presented John Walsh. Toole did not have a prior sex offense record. There was never any evidence that Adam Walsh was the victim of a sex crime.
Patty Wetterling was also led to believe that a sex offense registry would be a useful tool. When her son went missing in 1989, the local sheriff’s office shared with her a list of recently released prisoners who had been incarcerated for sexual offenses, and used that information to track them down for questioning. Despite the list not providing a valid suspect, Wetterling was sold on the idea that the registry had great potential for use in police investigations. So Wetterling helped pass a sex offense registry in Minnesota before working to pass the registry laws on a national level.[10]
The man who ultimately confessed to murdering Jacob Wetterling, however, would not have been on the sex offense registry even if it has existed in 1989 in Minnesota. Danny Heinrich had a record that included multiple DWIs and breaking into businesses, but no sexual offenses.[11] Heinrich was questioned in 1990 about the Wetterling case but was never charged, and DNA evidence would not connect Heinrich to another abduction that took place in 1989 until decades later.[12]
Yet, in recent high-profile cases, the use of the sex offense registry as an “investigation tool” has proven to be entirely useless. Here are just a few examples:
JonBenet Ramsey – 1996
In the early days of the investigation into JonBenet Ramsey’s murder, investigators interviewed people convicted of sexual offenses but it did not lead to a viable suspect.[13] John and Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet’s parents, have been considered the prime suspects since the case first made headlines. However, some people have falsely confessed to murdering Ramsey, including John Mark Carr in 2006 [14] and Gary Oliva in 2023. John Andrew Ramsey, JonBenet’s half-brother, dismisses Oliva’s “confession” while promoting the use of the sex offense registry as part of his own investigation. “I am a numbers guy,” he told a Westword reporter. “Always looking for a way to improve the odds of catching JonBenét’s killer. An easy way to improve the odds is to identify and investigate any child sex offenders living in Boulder in 1996. To further narrow the field, we are looking for a very rare breed of pedophile. A sad*stic pedophile. A creature so craven they gain pleasure by torturing and quite often killing young children. These guys sit at the very top of [a] large pile of sh*t birds. Based on Gary’s past actions, it does not seem he rises to that level.”[15] Oliva was also cleared by DNA evidence.[16] JonBenet Ramsey’s murder remains unsolved.
There is one parallel between the murders of Adam Walsh and JonBenet Ramsey—suspicious “confessions” from those with criminal records. Ottis Toole confessed to killing Adam Walsh but later recanted. John Mark Carr confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey but recanted; he was also cleared by DNA evidence. Further investigation found no evidence that these individuals were involved in the murders they confessed to, yet Toole was later considered responsible for Walsh’s murder, while Carr was cleared of any wrongdoing through the use of multiple investigative techniques. Like Toole, Carr was not on the registry. Oliva, despite being a Registered Person with a particularly bad reputation, has not been seriously considered a suspect except in a couple of media reports.
Aliahna Lemmon – 2012
When Aliahna Lemmon was killed by Michael Plumadore, her babysitter in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the media’s focus was on the 14 registrants living in the same trailer park, not the actual killer, who had no prior sex offense record. An HLN headline even referred to the park as a “sex offender ghetto.” The report added, “One of the startling details revealed early in the investigation into Aliahna Lemmon’s disappearance was how many registered sex offenders lived in the nine-year old girl’s small Fort Wayne trailer park … almost half the homes included a person on the Indiana database. Although the neighbor and family friend who was arrested for Aliahna’s murder, Michael Plumadore, was not one of those registered offenders, 14 current residents of the mobile home park are, according to Indiana’s sex offender registry. And there are six more within a two mile radius of the park. Put in context, that means that nearly 3% of all registered sex offenders listed in the city of Fort Wayne are residents of that one trailer park. And it only has around 30 occupied units…There had actually been one more sex offender in that park until earlier this month, when Aliahna’s grandfather died. Court records indicate that James E. Lemmon was convicted of child molestation in 2006. According to court documents, Lemmon pleaded guilty to repeatedly molesting a girl who he babysat between 1996 and 2003. Neighbors say Plumadore cared for Lemmon in the final months of his life and had moved in to his home…”[17] The HLN report chose to emphasize Aliahna’s father criminal past; Aliahna’s father was never accused of molesting Aliahna, and was not even alive when Aliahna was murdered.
Sierra LaMar – 2022
After Sierra LaMar went missing in Morgan Hill, California, the news media made it a point to let everyone know the father of a missing California teenager is on the registry, despite not being a suspect or person of interest. The news also reported that “investigators from the Santa Clara County sheriff’s Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Task Force made contact with local registered sex offenders…to determine their whereabouts at the time of Sierra’s disappearance. There are 57 registered sex offenders in the Morgan Hill zip code, according to an online national sex offender registry, the station reports.”[18] The DNA of the person ultimately convicted of the murder, Antolin Garcia-Torres’, a grocery store employee, after his DNA had been entered into a database after he was accused of felony battery resulting in serious bodily harm.[19]
Kiely Rodni – 2022
Kiely Rodni went missing after leaving a party at the Prosser Family Campground near Truckee, California, on August 6, 2022. After the teen was reported missing, the local police and volunteers launched a vast search campaign for her. They had spent nearly 20,000 hours searching the area, and more than 1,800 citizen tips regarding Kiely’s disappearance poured in.[20]
Two weeks after the disappearance, Fox News gleefully reported that the police in nearby counties conducted sweeps of Persons Forced to Register, adding in the headline that a registrant was “arrested on an unrelated charge.”[21] This headline is grossly misleading, as the average reader still implies a Registered Person was somehow involved in Kiely’s disappearance.
Nobody was responsible for Kiely’s disappearance; on August 21, 2022, Adventures With Purpose, an organization of divers who specialize in finding missing people in bodies of water, found Keily’s vehicle and remains in the reservoir only a few hundred yards from the location of the party.[22]
Charlotte Cena – 2023
On Saturday, September 30, 2023, Charlotte Sena went missing from a New York State park. At some point in the search for the missing person, WNYT 13 reported that, “Investigators are now interviewing sex offenders in three counties.”[23] Internet “sleuths” jumped into the fray, including a Florida private investigator named Bill Warner, who took to Reddit to push the theory that a person listed on the sex offense registry was responsible without providing any corroborating evidence.
On the Reddit post entitled, “18 Violent Sex Offenders Live Just 6 Miles from Moreau Lake State Park where Charlotte Sena went missing”, Warner posted, “Some of these sex offender goons living near Moreau State Park where Charlotte Sena was abducted are ‘Risk level: 3 – High Risk of Re-offense’ this NY State classification is equal to a Predator classification for sex offenders in Florida, bad news guys who did hard time in prison, worst of the worst!” After posting the names and the registry information of Registrants living within a few miles of the park, Warner added, “THIS A BAD BUNCH OF DUDES LIVING RIGHT NEXT TO THE STATE PARK, YOU JUST KNOW THEY ARE OVER THERE TO THE PARK EVERY DAY THAT THEY CAN.”[24] On Warner’s personal blog, he posts the names, personal information, and photos of registrants in the area and includes statements like “Sex offenders never cured (sic).”[25]
Charlotte Sena was found alive after police raided the home of a suspect. Despite early reports from the news media that the suspected kidnapper had a “sexual abuse criminal history,”[26] the suspect was NOT on the sex offense registry and the media had to update their reporting.[27] The Times-Union later reported that while the suspect had been questioned about a familial offense,[28] he was never charged with a sex offense. The suspect had what was described as a “minor criminal history,” including a DWI, assault-related offense and harassment.[29]
Some people seemed disappointed that a person on the registry was not at fault in this case. On Bill Warner’s aforementioned blog post, Warner noted, “Nine year old Charlotte Sena has been found safe but violent sex offenders are out there and your children are at risk.”[30]
Not all of these cases involved a so-called “stereotypical kidnapping,” which is an extremely rare event (less than 100 per year, according to a series of government studies referred to as the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children, or NISMART).[31] Kiely Rodni drowned in a reservoir. But even when the cases involved a so-called “stereotypical kidnapping,” the registry played no part in closing the case.
• Dorothy Gordon’s murder in 1940 was not solved by utilizing the sex offense registry.
• The alleged killer of Adam Walsh would not have been on a sex offense registry had it existed at the time. Toole may not have been the killer.
• Jacob Wetterling was killed by a person who had no arrests for sex offenses at the time he kidnapped Wetterling.
• JonBenet Ramsey’s murder remains unsolved despite having DNA evidence on file and despite interviewing over 1900 people, including Registered Persons living in the area.
• Aliahna Lemmon was murdered in her own home by a family acquaintance who had no prior sex offense record.
• Sierra LaMar was killed by someone with no prior sex offense record.
• Charlotte Sena was kidnapped by a person with no prior sex offense record.
RESEARCH ON REGISTRY EFFECTIVENESS AS AN INVESTIGATION TOOL
A study by David M. Bierie and Kristen M. Budd, published in the 2020 Sexual Abuse journal was the first study that attempted to determine the registry’s efficacy as an investigation tool. But even they admit that the registry is useless for the majority of sex crimes:
“The primary avenue by which registration is presumed to assist with investigations is by allowing police to quickly generate a comprehensive and relevant list of suspects. It is important to note that registration, then, is not likely to be useful in many sexual assault investigations. Most sexual assaults reported to police involve a known offender such as a relative, acquaintance, neighbor, or other named individual. The registry is not generally necessary for suspect identification in these cases. Rather, this particular benefit applies to the relatively small portion of sexual assault cases in which the offender’s identity is not known.”[32]
The authors see two “perceived benefits” of the registry as a tool for investigating crimes where the suspect is unknown:
1. “In the event the perpetrator is a registrant, the database may help police identify him or her.”
2. “A second benefit of the registry in these types of investigations is ruling out registrants as the sexual assault perpetrator. This is likely the more common way registration helps police, as research shows around 5% of sexual assaults are committed by registrants. If the actual offender did not have a prior sexual conviction, registries could allow detectives to more quickly rule out those with prior sexual assault convictions, then shift more speedily to other investigative techniques.”[33]
Bierie and Budd argue that, “There is good reason to presume sex offender registration databases help investigators complete an important and otherwise taxing task more quickly: generating a list of prior offenders meeting the suspect criteria. It may be that generating this kind of list faster and more reliably leads to a greater and/or faster closure rate. As noted above, the majority of sex crimes investigators assert this is the case. However, empirical evidence validating those perceptions is difficult to come by.”[34]
Bierie and Budd attempted to formulate the efficacy of using registry data by looking at time between when a criminal report was made and when the case was considered closed , such as a positive identification of the perpetrator responsible for the sexual assault, an arrest, the death of a suspect, a denial of extradition due to being the suspect, and if a juvenile was detained as a suspect (totaling 30% of the incidents reported in the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS). The cutoff point for the study was two years from the date of the initial police report. They concluded:
“The effect was not only statistically significant, but also substantively large (e.g., 23–28% improvement). Moreover, the magnitude of the registry effect increased once offender, victim, and incident characteristics were added to the models. However, it should be noted that this relatively large improvement in closure speed translates into a substantively small effect in any given case (i.e., a little over 1 day faster), because stranger-involved sexual assault cases in general either closed very quickly or not at all.”[35]
Bierie and Budd also note that closure rates are actually decreasing in recent years: “These data showed closures rates have declined over time, consistent with findings from others who study serious violent crime (e.g., Scott et al., 2019). Slower closure speeds are counterintuitive as police technology has increased substantially over this time, be it the emergence of DNA databases, the ability to detect and track electronic signals (e.g., cell phones), the increase of information available to police via social media, and the advent of sex offender registries. On the surface, it seems obvious that these improvements should lead to more and faster case closure. Our study did not contain information designed to understand this pattern or test between propositions that may explain it. However, the underlying logic of our findings may offer a useful direction for future research into this seeming paradox. That underlying logic is the observation that a core goal of good policing is to rule out innocent suspects.”
But there is one statistic missing from this report, namely, how many of these closed stranger cases involved a person already previously convicted of a sexual offense. They previously stated that if anything, the registry only has potential for eliminating suspects. And they cannot envision a serious push to change the status quo because, “it is hard to imagine a scenario in which a case of sexual assault by a stranger remains open yet victims, the public, the press, elected officials, and police themselves do not believe it reasonable to check on those with a prior sexual assault history, associated with the area, matching the description of the offender.”[36]
I have to take the work of David M. Bierie with a grain of salt. In 2015, he wrote a defense on sex offense registries. He cited three reasons for defending the sex offense registry, including what he claimed were higher than average re-offense rates; “high-quality” evidence sex crime rates have dropped because of the registry; and “prima facie evidence that registration has assisted in police investigations and prevented sexual crimes.”[37]
Unsurprisingly, Bierie relies heavily on assumptions since there is little evidence to back up his claims.
“The registry was also intended to prevent stranger-attacks. As noted above, these are fewer than 10% of sexual assaults. But that does not mean they are irrelevant; that assisting with those cases is trivial. And there is some reason to believe that registries can assist. Most sexual offenders who target strangers reside relatively close to the crime location. The premise of the registry is that potential victims may be able to recognise a sexual offender in their community and take actions to ensure that they and their children limit contact with that offender. Likewise, the registry allows residents to be aware of an offender and alert police if they see suspicious behaviour (e.g. a person listed as a child sexual offender inviting neighbourhood children into his/her house). In short, the registry does appear to have a rational basis and it is at least plausible that it may assist in the prevention of some sex crimes, whether by acquaintances or strangers, some of the time.”[38]
Bierie’s assumption is similar to the faulty logic used by residency restrictions. There is an assumption that a person truly dedicated to committing an offense will be deterred from committing a crime simply because they have to travel slightly further away for an opportunity to commit a crime, which is absurd.
Bierie could only offer speculation as to the perceived usefulness of the registry in three categories – stranger abductions, “citizen action facilitated by a registry” (i.e., neighbors calling police to claim a registrant is engaged in illicit activity), or the detection of new crimes during registry verification checks. Bierie provides a few anecdotal examples of arrests based on registry info, though not for an unsolved stranger crime in the area; Bierie has to admit that, “It is not guaranteed that these offenders would have committed a sexual assault if they had not been recognized.”[39]
To summarize the research of David Brierie, he assumes the registry has value because in part that it clears cases faster primarily by eliminating “potential suspects” that are only “suspects” in the first place due to their appearance on a government blacklist.
CONCLUSION
When a person goes missing or is assaulted, time is of the essence. Memories and evidence tend to fade quickly and can be easily distorted. Many people simply “look alike.” As investigations drag on, any lead seems better than no lead at all. The news media proclaims the police are following up on hundreds or even thousands of leads. But most of these leads are wild goose chases. Asking for public assistance is a double-edged sword, as many would-be internet sleuths muck up the narrative by making baseless assumptions that reinforce bad stereotypes.
This behavior was most prevalent in the 2023 Charlotte Sena kidnapping. When a real suspect was apprehended, the media and internet sleuths were both seemingly disappointed that it wasn’t a person previously convicted of a sex offense.
Law enforcement has promoted the belief that the registry provides a convenient list of potential suspects, but law enforcement agents already have access to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The government has also compiled a DNA database. This gives access to list of persons with criminal records and a database to compare DNA. There is no need for a separate registry because law enforcement already provides information that law enforcement claims they need during active investigations.
Since most sex crimes are committed at home, by someone already known to the victim, and most arrests involve those that have no prior record, coupled with the fact that few persons convicted of sexual offenses commit new sex crimes, the registry has no impact on the investigation of most sex crimes. However, even when the crime involves strangers, the registry doesn’t really offer much help for investigators, except perhaps to eliminate “suspects” (those that are only suspect based on their inclusion on the registry in the first place). This “effort” may offer public reassurance and a (false) sense of security that law enforcement is “following every lead,” when in reality, there may be little valuable evidence to pursue. A placebo will not help solve cases.
The persistent claim that the sex offense registry is a useful and necessary investigative tool is patently FALSE.
