Manhunt moves to Colorado with cash reward

A nationwide manhunt for fugitive sex offender now is centered in Colorado, U.S. Marshals said today.

Robbi Potter, who is believed traveling with a 3-year-old girl and her mother, was spotted at an Ampride gas station in Stratton, on Interstate 70 about 147 miles east of Denver.

"He is a convicted sex offender — the most dangerous kind — committing sex offenses against minors," said Andrew Deserto, a chief deputy U.S. Marshal in Ohio. "We want to get the little girl and want the guy caught and put him where he belongs."

Potter, 27, is wanted on both state and federal warrants for parole violations as well as escape for walking away from a halfway house for sex offenders in Mansfield, Ohio on May 28, three days after he was released from prison.

Potter is a Tier III sex offender, Ohio's most serious designation.

The U.S. Marshals Northern Ohio Fugitive Task Force is offering a $10,000 reward for

Haylee Donathan (U.S. Marshals Service)information leading to Robbi Potter's arrest. Anyone with information should call the toll free hotline, (866) 4WANTED. Callers may remain anonymous.

Investigators believe Potter is driving a 1988 Chevrolet pickup truck that is black and green. It may have Ohio license plates ENS9729, although news accounts report that Candace Watson has been known to switch plates on vehicles.

Haylee Donathan Missing

Another precious child missing. Another so called mother who hangs with convicted sex offenders.

What the hell is going on in this country? Why are we allowing these monsters to prey on more victims? Why haven't they been hung by their balls?

Haylee is 2-foot-5 and weighs 37 pounds. She has brown hair and blue eyes. If you see her please call 9-1-1. People with information on the case are asked to call the U.S. Marshals Service Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force tipline at 866-4-WANTED, the local task force at 419-774-3930 or the Crestline Police Department at 419-683-2222.

http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/article/20090610/NEWS01/906100317

DENIED PAROLE!

Thank you to everybody who wrote letters to the Ohio Parole Board!

Jeffrey Talani was denied parole today.

Ohio man gets 44 years for underwear ploy

A suburban Cincinnati man convicted of sexually touching children while claiming to be a market researcher who wanted to measure their underwear has been sentenced to 44 years in prison.

Prosecutors said the 44-year-old Hawkins targeted boys and girls between the ages of 9 and 16, and sometimes convinced parents to let him be alone with their kids.

They say he arranged to meet parents and children at schools, hospitals or their homes and told parents he needed to measure underwear for research.

Hawkins pleaded guilty in December to nine charges of importuning and three counts of gross sexual imposition.

Hamilton Man Gets Life Sentence On Sex Crime Convictions

A judge sentenced a Hamilton man to life in prison after he was convicted on child sex charges.

John Mucher pleaded guilty Dec. 22 to six counts of rape, one count of gross sexual imposition, two counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, and 30 counts of pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor.

Prosecutors said the 33-year-old Mucher began molesting an 8-year-old girl in 2004, and continued until last year, when the child told a friend in August.

Child rapist gets 100+ years

The punishment for raping five young girls: a prison term of 129-189 years.

That sentence is what Kenneth Ashcraft deserves, one of his victims said.

"Mr. Ashcraft has stolen all of our innocence from us. ... We all were scared to tell what happened," a 16-year-old Middletown girl told Judge Noah Powers in Butler County Common Pleas Court on Tuesday.

The Middletown girl said Ashcraft, 41, of New Miami, needed a life sentence to give him "enough time to think about what he did to all of us." Her statement brought some courtroom spectators to tears.

But Ashcraft showed no emotion. He also said nothing on his own behalf, even after the judge gave him two chances.

"The court cannot help but be persuaded by the fact that the defendant preyed on child victims," the judge said.

When Ashcraft took the stand during his October trial, Ashcraft claimed the young women who testified against him were liars, Powers noted.

"What he did was wrong and he won't do it to another innocent little girl," the 16-year-old Middletown girl said after court.

Fostoria man given life sentence for 2006 child rape

A Fostoria man has been sentenced to life in prison for raping a 5-year-old girl in 2006.
29-year-old Paul Stacey was convicted of the rape Thursday by a Seneca County Common Pleas Court jury. The jury deliberated for two hours before returning a verdict.
Stacey had been baby-sitting the girl when the rape occurred at his residence on September 22, 2006.
DNA taken from the girl's clothes and from a swab taken during a pediatric sexual assault examination the day of the assault matched Stacey's profile.
Stacey received a mandatory life sentence for raping a child under 10 years of age. Under Ohio law, he will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years in prison.

Grant Helps Put Sexual Predators Behind Bars

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is getting some help combating child sexual predators.

They have just been given a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The grant will help fund the Internet Crimes Against Children task force for its efforts to protect children and put sexual predators behind bars.
Minnesota and Ohio were the only two states that received the full $500,000 grant award.

The money will be used to increase forensic evidence capacity, monitor offenders on parole and probation, and expand the task force's partnerships in Minnesota.

'Scariest predator' put away

Gingell was convicted in 1981 for three counts of rape of an 8-year-old girl. He spent 23 years in Ohio’s prisons before being paroled in 2004. He was arrested in 2006 after police found a knife in his car, but was quickly released.

Gingell was arrested again six months ago, charged with not reporting his address as many sexual offenders are required by law to do. As a result, he was required to undergo a mental evaluation.

After reading the evaluation, Judge Melba Marsh was so scared she decided to personally look into Gingell’s past.

He was diagnosed with pseudological fastastica, a disorder that results in Gingell telling lies even if the truth is better for him. That’s a horrifying diagnosis for someone convicted of sex crimes the authorities want to keep an eye on, the judge said.

Marsh suggested Gingell and others like him were so dangerous they should be forced to wear a cowbell around their neck “so everybody knows where you are.”

Helping Children Stay Safe

GASP

With 10 grandchildren of her own, 67-year-old Fran Doll is convinced that no one is more passionate about helping kids than a grandparent. That's why she calls upon local grandparents near her home in Akron, Ohio, to work as volunteers at her nonprofit organization, Grandparents Against Sex Predators, which she founded in 2006.

"It's really unfathomable to me that children are at risk for such terrible crimes, and I wanted to do something to help, even if I just made a small impact," says Ms. Doll, who got the idea to start GASP after hearing about the case of Jessica Lundsford, a 9-year-old Florida girl who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender in 2005. "When I looked at my own precious grandchildren, I just kept thinking of that poor girl and I was shocked, sad and enraged."

Ms. Doll started GASP after retiring from a busy career working in administrative positions and then running a successful temporary-staffing company, all while raising six kids -- two of her own and four stepchildren. GASP works with local law-enforcement agencies to train grandparents and other volunteers how to recognize signs of potential sexual abuse and help search for missing children. GASP volunteers also watch for and report any suspicious activity in the community, fingerprint children, and conduct community education programs to teach children, educators and parents about sexual-abuse awareness and prevention.

She spends 30 to 40 hours a week directing activities and fund raising at GASP, which today has a board of directors, several special committees and more than 150 specially trained citizen volunteers. The group has fingerprinted more than 2,000 children and will soon open its doors in Alabama and other states. As far as how long she'll run GASP, Ms. Doll doesn't have a specific date in mind, but she does want to turn the day-to-day leadership of the organization over to a younger person in a few years' time.

Child rapist gets life in prison

A Madison Twp. man charged in March with raping an 8-year-old girl was sentenced to life in prison today, according to the Butler County Prosecutor's office.

Chris J. Landry, 31, of Keister Road, was indicted May 7, on two counts of rape and two counts of gross sexual imposition involving the 8-year-old child and a 10-year-old girl.

"There isn't enough punishment for a man who puts his hands on innocent little children," said Prosecutor Robin Piper in a news release. "In coming forward with their truth, these heroic little girls prevented others from becoming victims. For the damage and hardship he has caused, Landry deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison."

Child Rapist Convicted, Will Spend Life in Prison

A Hamilton Township man will spent the rest of his life in prison after a jury convicted him on rape charges.

47-year-old James Cappadonia was convicted on two counts of rape and one count of gross sexual imposition.

Prosecutors say Cappadonia raped and inappropriately touched a nine-year-old girl.

Cappadonia has been on trial in Warren County for the past three days.

The jury returned a verdict in just three hours Wednesday.

The rape conviction carries a mandatory life sentence in prison.

Ohio Supreme Court denies pedophile & wife custody

PERMANENTLY denying custody of children to their parents is an extreme move that is never made lightly or without good reason. So it was recently when the Ohio Supreme Court decided to deny a convicted pedophile and his wife permanent custody of their children.

The overriding concern of any court dealing with difficult custody cases must be the best interest of the children involved, and the state's high court did not disappoint in its ruling on a Lucas County dispute. In a 6-1 decision, the court upheld the action of Lucas County Children Services to remove two children from their home because of worries about their father.

The father and mother, whose full names were not used in the case to protect the anonymity of their children, were considered safety risks to the youngsters. A report alleging that one of the children suffered from shaken baby syndrome initially led child service agency officials to investigate the family in 2005.

While their investigation did not reveal whether either parent was responsible and did not produce evidence that the father had abused either his son, born in 2004, or a daughter, born two years earlier, it did expose troubling aspects of the father's criminal history. He had been convicted of molesting two young boys in 1991.

The man served prison time for three felonies related to the sexual abuse and completed the terms of his probation, but evidently not to the satisfaction of those who dealt with him in therapy sessions. Therapist testimony suggested the convicted pedophile just went through the motions to terminate his probation.

After the agency had removed the children from his home, it also expressed reservations about the lack of progress the father and mother had made in subsequent counseling. A majority of the justices agreed that the threat of a relapse of pedophilia with the father, and the mother's apparent inability to prevent it, was real enough to keep the children away - permanently.

Justice Paul Pfeifer, the sole dissenter, while acknowledging concern about the father offending again, objected to the couple losing custody of their children for something that only might happen.

But when serious risk to a child's safety goes beyond possible to probable, society is better to err on the side of protecting its most vulnerable members than to take a chance.

Ohio Supreme Court upholds sex offender rules

The Ohio Supreme Court today upheld as constitutional the retroactive application of a 2003 law that tightened reporting and community notification rules on registered sex offenders.

Applying the law to sex offenders whose crimes predate it doesn't violate federal and state constitutional prohibitions against "ex post facto," or retroactive, laws, wrote Justice Maureen O'Connor, who authored the court's 4-3 majority opinion.

That's because the law's provisions are remedial and designed to protect the community, and not punitive and designed to punish the offender, she wrote.

The 2003 law toughened a 1996 law, called "Megan's Law," which classified convicted sex offenders and required them to register with their local sheriff.

The Ohio Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge in 1998 to the 1996 law. The court ruled then that the law's requirements could apply retroactively because the law's intent was to protect the community from future sex crimes rather than impose additional punishment on the offender.

O'Connor used the same standard in upholding the retroactive application of the 2003 law.

The 2003 law toughened "Megan's Law" by, among other things: requiring lifetime registration for offenders classified as sexual predators; requiring offenders to register not only with their home county sheriff but with the sheriff of the county where they go to school or work; and expanded community notification by allowing photos and other information provided to sheriffs by offenders to be included in a database accessible online.

Andrew Ferguson, a Cleveland resident convicted of rape and kidnapping in 1990 and sentenced to 15-to-25-years in prison, challenged the law as unconstitutional.

O'Connor noted that the court already upheld retroactive application of the 1996 law and that that the changes in the 2003 law reflect the same intent to protect the community.

"We determine that the legislative history supports a finding that it is a remedial, regulatory scheme designed to protect the public rather than punish the offender a result reached by many other courts," she wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer and Justices Terrence O'Donnell and Robert R. Cupp.

Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger, joined by Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, wrote a dissenting opinion saying the tighter rules amount to punishment.

In a separate case earlier this year, the court ruled that the 2003 law's residence restriction prohibiting sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school could not apply retroactively because there was a lack of clear legislative intent. Nothing in the law stated that the residence restrictions could apply retroactively, the court ruled.

The court did not rule on the constitutionality of retroactive application of the residency restriction in that earlier case.

Man sentenced to life for raping a 4-year-old girl

A Springfield man will serve life in prison on charges stemming from an alleged sexual abuse of a 4-year-old girl and drug use by her 6-year-old sister.

Dale Driscoll, 28, of Clifton Avenue, was sentenced Sept. 17 to serve life without parole - the maximum possible sentence - for raping a 4-year-old girl in February, said Clark County Assistant Prosecutor Andy Wilson. A jury found him guilty of the crime Sept. 15.

In January 2007, state law changed to allow sentencing for a life without parole sentence for rape of a victim under 10, said Wilson.

Due to the victim's age and Driscoll's lengthy criminal history, he was given the maximum sentence.

"When I pulled his rap sheet, it was five feet long," said Wilson.

Kids Lived With Sex Offender In Filthy Home

Five children lived with a sex offender inside a filthy Price Hill home, police said.

Officers said they found human feces, trash and numerous bugs inside the Gilsey Avenue home.

James Miller, 34, a tier-two sex offender, lived with the children and their mother, police said.

Miller was previously convicted of sexually assaulting a girl. (2907.04- Unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.)

More Kids May Be Victims Of Accused Rapist

Parma police are looking for children who may have been victims of a man officers arrested on rape charges.

Parma investigators said they think Richard Geiger may have been involved with more than one child. Officers took the 63-year-old into custody earlier this week.

A 14-year-old boy told his mother that Geiger assaulted him at his Broadview Road apartment. Police said Geiger picked the boy up, showed him pornography and then attacked him sexually.

The suspect was charged with one count of rape.

This isn't the first time Geiger has been investigated. Police said he served time for gross sexual imposition after an arrest in 1981.

If you have any information that could help investigators, they're urging you to call the Parma Police Department.