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For police, tracking sex offenders can get tricky

State law requires offenders to register their addresses. But when police go looking for them, sometimes they can't be found.

By ROBERT FARLEY, ABBIE VANSICKLE and MATTHEW WAITE
Published April 3, 2005

Registered sexual predator Norris Edward Ellinwood strolled out of jail in March 2004, promising officials he was headed to the People That Love Church and Mission in St. Petersburg.

But Ellinwood, 52, convicted of sexually assaulting two girls, ages 12 and 15, never showed.

Wednesday, one of his victims called the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office to find out if Ellinwood still was behind bars. She had heard rumors he might be in the area.

Cpl. John Jewett broke the bad news. Ellinwood was out, he said, and law enforcement officials have no idea where he is.

"What should I do? How can I protect myself?" she pleaded.

Ellinwood is one of six sexual predators in the five-county Tampa Bay area who are missing, or in police lingo, have "absconded."

An additional 293 sex offenders are similarly "lost" to authorities. Those, at least, are the ones authorities know are not living at the address they registered on the state's sex offender database.

The state's database of 34,281 sex offenders and predators (3,369 in the Tampa Bay area) is regarded as one of the most accessible and accurate in the country. With the click of a mouse, anyone can find out if a registered sex offender is living in their neighborhood. In most cases, a user can even view a mug shot. But the list is far from fail-safe.

Since 1999, 223 sex offenders in the Tampa Bay area have been convicted at least once of not living at the address they had registered.

Also out there somewhere are sex offenders the state allows to register as "transient." Pinellas has 10; numbers in other counties aren't available.

And the accuracy of the registry relies in part on how well local police agencies track offenders. The reality is some are much more aggressive than others.

John Evander Couey was one who beat the system.

An unskilled laborer who went from job to job, Couey registered an address in Homosassa on the state's Web site. In 1991, he was convicted of exposing and fondling himself in front of a girl in Kissimmee. But a few months ago, he left his registered address and moved in with his half-sister, just 100 yards from the home of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford.

Couey's probation officer sent him letters that went unanswered, but the officer never went out to his registered address. Last month, Couey was arrested for kidnapping Jessica, then sexually assaulting and killing her.

Some agencies place a heavier emphasis on tracking.

Consider the methods of the Tampa Bay area's two largest agencies, the Pinellas and Hillsborough sheriff's offices.

The Pinellas sheriff has a six-person tracking unit whose priority is to make sure offenders live at their registered addresses. Deputies visit, in person, every offender at least every few months. If offenders are not where they are supposed to be, deputies seek an arrest warrant.

Hillsborough deputies, on the other hand, usually check on offenders only if they don't sign and return a yearly address verification card sent by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to all sex offenders in the state. Sexual predators are mailed a card quarterly.

"The general consensus is they (sex offenders) are not tracked very well, but we're not sure we can afford the man power to do that," said Dana Keenan, senior crime analyst for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. "We are not proactive at this moment."

Just last week, Hillsborough sheriff's officials met to consider a more aggressive program: spot-checking offenders.

In the city of Tampa, police have no special tracking unit, but patrol officers routinely knock on doors of sex offenders while working their beat.

Hernando modeled its program after Tampa's and does the same.

St. Petersburg police visit the city's 19 sex predators every month, but the 470 sex offenders in the city don't usually get a visit unless they fail to return their yearly verification card.

That's risky, says Pinellas' Jewett, who heads up the sheriff's tracking unit.

He points to one of his unit's first arrests. Sex offender Elzie F. Mahoney's address verification card came back signed for several years. But when deputies went to his registered address, they found his relatives living there, not him.

"That was a good eye-opener right there," Jewett said.

In 2004, the Pinellas unit arrested 45 offenders for not following registration requirements. An additional 19 cases were sent to the State Attorney's Office seeking warrants.

"Obviously we find enough not living where they are supposed to be that we have this special unit," Deputy Kelly Griffin said. "Some counties have no idea how many offenders live there."

The Pinellas Sheriff's Office recently took over tracking sex offenders in Clearwater, Largo and Tarpon Springs, and would like countywide responsibility.

"We do 100 percent more than other agencies," Griffin said. "There are more (offenders) living where they are supposed to be because of this unit."

That would be an improvement in St. Petersburg, said Sgt. Joanne Lindsay of the city's crimes against children division. That it hasn't happened so far, she said, "just comes down to money."

In Citrus, the sheriff's small staff has struggled to keep tabs on the county's 198 sex offenders. Checking on offenders largely falls to two detectives who follow up on tips from residents and red flags from FDLE and other agencies. The detectives do not, however, make regular face-to-face checks.

Detective Bruce Haslett admires the more aggressive program of neighboring Hernando. "I'd take everything they could give me to have a unit that was so dynamic," he said.

In January 2003, Citrus authorities gave sex offenders from out of state a three-day grace period to register after a string of crimes involving sex offenders who moved into the county and never registered.

Sex offender Douglas A. Burris, 48, of New York, was accused of molesting a 10-year-old girl in June 2002 in Crystal River. Burris had been convicted of molesting a 6-year-old girl in New York. He had lived in Crystal River since December 2001, but never told authorities and wasn't on Florida's list.

Tacked onto Burris' conviction was the felony of failing to register. He was sent back to prison.

Statewide, 935 sex offenders and predators have been convicted of failing to register since 1999. The Times analyzed more than three dozen of those convicted in the Tampa Bay area and found many were discovered at a wrong address only after they were arrested for another crime.

Gilbert Gonzales, 38, was designated a sex offender in 1995 after he was convicted of fondling a child in Clearwater. He later moved to Pasco County, where he registered as a sex offender in 2001. But Gonzales, who worked as a mechanic, moved to another Pasco address without notifying officials. He was convicted of failing to register as a sex offender.

While on probation for failing to register, Gonzales was accused of inappropriately touching a 9-year-old Port Richey girl several times at his home. The girl lived across the street from him. He was charged with capital sexual battery and violating probation, and was convicted in 2004 of a lesser charge of lewd and lascivious molestation. He is now in prison.

Of the state's more than 34,000 sex offenders and predators, 792 are known to have absconded while on probation. An additional 1,036 absconded after completing probation but while still listed on the sex offender registry. That's 1,828 sex offenders whose whereabouts are unknown.

The percentage of missing sex offenders typically hovers around 5 percent, said Kristen Perezluha, a spokeswoman for FDLE. That's better than most states, she noted.

Complicating the tracking challenge, say law enforcement officers, is a state law that went into effect last July allowing offenders and predators who have no place to live to register as transients.

One is Steven Brady McAlister, 59, who registered in Pinellas County last month as a transient. He was convicted of attempting to molest a 9-year-old girl in Arizona in 1985. Presumably, he is living in Pinellas. But honestly, Griffin said, deputies have no idea where.

"How do you look for someone who's homeless?" she said. "What are we supposed to do, look under the Gandy Bridge to see if there are sex offenders living there? We hated that law." The reality is "just because you don't have a sex offender living near you doesn't mean you're free and clear," Jewett said.

Studies show only one in 10 sex offenders is ever caught and charged, he said.

The ones on the state's registry "are the ones we know about," said Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin. "Law enforcement does the best it can to check on them. But it's the ones you don't know about that you need to be equally concerned about."

Times staff writer Colleen Jenkins contributed to this report.

[Last modified April 3, 2005, 01:10:32]