Sex offenders appear on most-wanted list – again

Sex offenders appear on most-wanted list – again

By Laura Crimaldi and Richard Weir  |   Friday, February 4, 2011  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage

Two of the state’s most heinous sex offenders are making repeat appearances on the new list of 10 “most-wanted” predators — even though both fiends fell into the hands of authorities within the past five years, the Herald has learned.

“It’s an embarrassment,” said Wendy Murphy, a former sex crimes prosecutor and New England School of Law professor. “The whole purpose to give a guy a Level 3 (sex offender dangerousness rating) is that he will re-offend. It’s not like he might. It’s a virtual certainty that he will. If you have that guy a second time and he doesn’t get tossed in the can — if you can’t hold that guy — there is something wrong with the system.”

Caesar J. Delgado, 44, who was convicted of indecent assault and battery on a child and first appeared on the state police list of most-wanted sex offenders in 2009, was hunted down in Rhode Island and ordered to wear a GPS bracelet, said state police spokesman David Procopio.

On Oct. 26, Delgado was arraigned for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender, said Cara O’Brien, a spokeswoman Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone. Prosecutors did not make a bail argument against Delgado because he was already being held without bail for a probation violation, she said.

Prosecutors yesterday were unable to say what the outcome of the probation case was. Delgado — who is also facing new charges of rape of a child with force and of indecent assault and battery on a child — cut off his bracelet Nov. 30 and has been on the lam ever since.

Samuel Harper Jr., 46, was convicted of multiple counts of rape of a child with force and assault to rape that date back to 1990, according to state police and court records. His first appearance on the most-wanted list was in 2005, and he was successfully nabbed by troopers, Procopio said.

Yesterday, prosecutors were unable to say what the outcome of that case was or how Harper ended up back on the street.

State Sen. James Timilty (D-Walpole), co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Public Safety, said lawmakers need to take a hard look at how sex offenders can be released after failing to register — a crime that carries a five-year sentence — and allowed to vanish a second time.

“That law is in place for a reason,” Timilty said, adding that such releases frustrate investigators who track down fugitives and threaten society’s most “vulnerable population” — children. “If the person tries to slip from the radar screen, their intent is to go dark and escape the watchdog, and I would suggest their intent might also be to reoffend.”

All 10 offenders on the new list are wanted for failure to register as a sex offender — and some are facing new charges as well.

Procopio said 26 troopers are hunting the fugitives. “These people are trying to evade that law and we are trying to catch them,” he said.

The new list also includes men wanted in more than one state for sex crimes, and several who have been arrested repeatedly:

• Elwood J. Johnson, 54, who was convicted of child rape in Washington in 1993, has arrests in Massachusetts going back to the 1970s, according to Timothy Connolly, a spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr.

• Child predator Robert H. Griggs Jr., 51, who is also wanted in Texas for failure to register as a sex offender, has a Massachusetts criminal history that goes back to the ’70s and includes assault-and-battery and breaking-and-entering arrests, Connolly said.

One of the 10 on the list, child rapist Franklin Miller, 33 was arrested yesterday at a Boston homeless shelter and ordered held on $5,000 bail, Procopio said.

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