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Many of us have gone online to our county sheriff's web sites to check if there are any sex offenders registered in our neighborhood. But the founders of a new service say most of that information is wrong, that molestors move from the addresses they register without telling police.
Now they're launching their own website, a service unlike any the I-Team's been able to find anywhere in the United States.
The man who invented the concept is a former police detective named Bruce Keaton. He says he came up with the service because of "Your Jessica Lunsfords. Your Adam Walshes. If we could stop one of those from happening this would all be worth it."
Keaton and his small staff have spent two years tracking sex offenders in seven Southwest Ohio counties: Butler, Warren, Hamilton, Brown, Clermont, Highland, and Clinton. He says he started with the information all of us can find, addresses offenders register with the state. They're readily available on a state and county websites. But Keaton says he quickly found that "60% of the offenders" really lived somewhere else.
"If we bring attention to where these people are, then the neighborhoods now, they're not victims," he says.
Keaton enlisted Ascendum, a Blue Ash consulting company with Fortune 500 clients, to develop a sophisticated website for
Predator Trac. Visitors input their starting address and a radius of miles they want to check around that location. A map pops up with black icons showing where felons have registered within the number of miles you specify surrounding your address. Additional red icons depict sex offenders Predator Trac says its investigators found living at addresses different than the ones they gave the state.
You can overlay a satellite map to get a street level look. A map of Loveland shows an offender Predator Trac says lives on Shadow Glen Drive but who has registered somewhere else. Next we tried West Chester and found an icon representing an unregistered offender near Chicamauga Street. A third check found yet another near New Finley Ray Park in Milford. You could see the satellite photo of baseball diamonds within 200 feet of where Predator Trac says that offender now lives without the state's knowledge.
Predator Trac investigators use police-style techniques including public records and talks with family, employers and neighbors to find newer addresses that the official state registrations. Investigators then visit those addresses to verify if an offender is staying there part or full time. Keaton says by "verified", he means someone has seen and spoken with the offender, among other techniques he won't spell out because he says he doesn't want to tip off offenders.
The I-Team asked Predator Trac to provide us examples of sex offenders the company says its investigators found at unregistered addresses.
We started at a house in New Richmond, looking for Roman Fassler, convicted of having sex with an underaged girl. The man who came to the porch wouldn't tell us his name but police later told us it was probably Roman's brother, who they say looks much like him. The Sheriff's Office says it believes Roman Fassler doesn't live in this area any more. But Keaton says he's sure his investigator found the right man the day he visited. "We know we are right unless someone is pretending to be someone else for whatever reason," Keaton says, adding that the man they found identified himself as Roman Fassler, not his brother.
Next we went looking on the west side of Cincinnati for Riley Austin. He served time for drugging and raping a child, a young girl. But the man we found said he was the wrong Riley Austin, and that others had confused him with the molester by the same name. The Riley Austin we found told us "You've got the wrong person." Keaton says the person his investigator located at that address "is the person that we believe is on law enforcement's web site."
Finally, on our third try, we found offender Ralph Wissing at the address Predator Trac provided on Circle E Drive in Mason. Wissing is registered at his parents' home on Roppelt Road and told us he didn't feel he need to register this address too because it's his girlfriend's house, where he sometimes spends the night and where he bases his business, something he has every legal right to do.
Wissing served time for sexual battery with a young teen girl in 1996, when he was 39 years old. He says he did his time and doesn't feel neighbors of his girlfriend's need to be notified of his sex offfender status. "I don't associate with anybody" here, he says. "I don't know anybody up around here."
Keaton says Predator Trac isn't saying offeders like Wissing don't stay at multiple locations. "What we are saying is this is where we found him, so the people in that neighborhood would want to know that even if he staying there part time."
We took our findings - and word of this new service -- to the second in command at the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office. We told Chief Deputy Sean Donovan that Predator Trac hopes to help police and other law enforcement agencies, which the upstart company says are so busy fighting crime they don't have time to track sex offenders. Donovan says he "wouldn't refuse help from any source but my concern would be in the accuracy of information and misidentifications."
Indeed, Keaton agrees that even one mistake could question the system. But he says "That's why we have the methods that we have to make sure that we verify." Again, he wouldn't spell out what those methods entail. "Wee keep that close guarded for a reason."
But Donovan says the sheriff's office has a staff that verifies too, and he strongly disagrees his website is wrong most of the time. "A 60% number I believe would be high," he says, "A lot high." Keaton says his personal experience upholds that 60% figure. The Ohio Attorney General’s office told us it considers 6.9% of offenders to be non-compliant. And the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children cited a figure of 15.9%.
Donovan worries if wrong information ever gets posted, "On the internet once it's out, how do you get it back? You can't put the genie back in the bottle." But Keaton stands by the information on his website "100%" despite what happened when we approached the individuals he provided for us to check his service.
"If I can do anything that's going to protect my family, I will do it," Keaton says. "We buy alarm systems and we have insurance. This is another preventative measure, just an additional piece of information that we're trying to pass on" to neighbors who want the information.
He'll soon find out if there's a market for the information, as he launches
Predator Trac today.
