March (crime) madness

We continue reviewing last month's "Profiler's Perspective" for an update on the cases studied.

The month of March continued to keep crime and criminals in the headlines. Young Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered; while a school shooting rampage in Red Lake High School in Minnesota brought back painful memories of Columbine. 

How much more is at stake when children are at risk, and what as a nation are we willing to do?

Reuters file Jessica Lunsford

Goodbye Jessie
A tearful Florida community bid goodbye to 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford last week. This, after her body was found near the residence that she shared with her paternal grandparents and her father. As an FBI Agent for 25 years, I had to investigate the kidnapping and, many times, murders of a number of children. The photos of the smiling little boys and the happy little girls who are no longer with us tend never to leave my head.

We know that 46-year old convicted sex offender John Couey, a man who lived not much more than a football fields’ length away from Jessica’s home, had entered her residence through an unlocked front door. He kidnapped young Jessica, and within a day or two eventually sexually assaulted her and murdered her by asphyxiation. Couey, as a known sex offender, should have advised authorities that he was living with his sister, his niece and her boyfriend— all alleged drug users— a few doors away from the Lunsford residence. But of course, like many other similar offenders, he chose to ignore the law. 

We now know that the three other people in Couey’s residence were interviewed twice by law enforcement officers the same day that Jessica went missing, and none of them told officers that Couey, a person known to have committed illegal acts against children, was at that time hiding in their residence, possibly with Jessica still alive!  The authorities had no reason to know that Couey was there with Jessica, nor did they have any reason to search the home of Couey’s sister.

It is now suggested that Couey was in a “drug haze” at the time of the kidnapping and murder, his current defense. Haze, fog, or stew, his actions against Jessica are beyond measure and the fact that three other adults might have done something to save Jessica but chose to remain quiet defies both reason and humanity.  

There are approximately 530,000 known, and countless unknown sex offenders in the United States. Upwards of 20 percent of these monsters are flying under the radar of the authorities, meaning we don’t know where they are or what they’re up to. The state of Florida could not find 1,800 of its known sexual offenders at the time of Jessica’s kidnapping, 800 of who were on parole and were “required” to be in some kind of regular contact with their parole officers.

In a recent MSNBC.com column, I suggested that we need consider a “one or two-strike” rule for sexual predators. What this would mean is that after one or no more than two offenses, such an offender would never get the chance to molest or murder another child or person. I also noted that some child molesters are believed to have victimized dozens or even hundreds of children before they are identified.

My friend Mark Klaas, father of 12-year-old Polly Klaas who was kidnapped from her California home on October 1, 1993 by yet another unspeakable monster, Richard Allen Davis, has suggested that as a nation we cannot financially afford to incarcerate the over half a million sexual offenders, predators, and molesters that walk our streets today. Instead, he believes we should consider making them all wear GPS ankle bracelets, like that currently worn Martha Stewart. This would give us some way to track these offenders.

We’re also told that to monitor only 1,700 of the 29,000 known sex offenders in the state of Florida alone would cost about $13 to $15 million dollars per year. This, while Florida’s House and Senate have only offered to fund 20 percent to 33 percent of Governor Jeb Bush’s request for $125 million dollars to build new prisons to house additional felons. Another elected representative from another state has suggested that all such predators should somehow be taken away and housed together for the collective good of the nation.

What is the answer? How do we affect the current national statistic that suggests that a child is kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered almost every other day— and thousands more are molested on a yearly basis by sexual predators? One strike, two strikes, satellite ankle bracelets, or a new Devil’s Island? 

As we ponder this decision, our children are all potential victims of the likes of Richard Allen Davis and John Evander Couey, and the question to each of us appears to be, “How much do you want to spend?”

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