John Albert Gardner - Southern California Predator
Sparks
Records obtained by the associated press show John Albert Gardner the
Third, the convicted sex offender charged with killing a 17-year-old
Chelsea King could have been sent back to prison for violating his
parole. The records show parole officials found Gardner was illegally
living within a half-mile of a school back in September 2007. But,
officials decided to keep him on parole. Back in 2000, Gardner pleaded
guilty to molesting a 13-year-old girl.
__________________________________________________________________________
Gardner not kept on short leash, documents show
Parole records indicate several infractions
By Mike Gardner,
Jeff McDonald, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 3:38 a.m.
This photo (not included here) released Wednesday, March 10, 2010, by
the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, shows
murder suspect John Albert Gardner III holding a prison identification
card taken Sept. 18, 2000, when he was serving time after pleading
guilty to committing lewd and lascivious acts on a 13-year-old girl.
Gardner has pleaded not guilty to murdering Chelsea King in San Diego
County and to the attempted rape of another woman. (AP Photo/
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
/ AP
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When John Albert Gardner III walked out of a Central Valley prison a
free man in September 2005, state prison officials classified the
convicted sex offender as a “high control” parolee.
That meant agents should conduct two face-to-face checks on Gardner
every month, including one unannounced visit to his home. It also
meant surprise drug testing, mandatory counseling and a vigilance on
the part of parole agents reserved for the worst offenders.
The 43 pages of parole records released by prison officials Thursday
do not show whether those practices were followed in Gardner’s 2000
case, in which he pleaded guilty to molesting a 13-year-old Rancho
Bernardo neighbor.
But they do show that agents and their supervisors passed up
opportunity after opportunity to return Gardner to prison — an action
that might have safeguarded the lives of two North County teenagers.
He is charged in the killing of one and is a focus of the
investigation of the other.
“This guy should never had been released from parole,” said Caroline
Aguirre, a retired parole agent of 24 years who has been following the
Gardner case. “This business of sex offenders not being properly
supervised has been going on for years.”
Gardner was charged last week with rape and murder in the death of
Chelsea King, a 17-year-old Poway girl who went to go running around
Lake Hodges on Feb. 25 and never returned. He is also under
investigation in the February 2009 disappearance of Amber Dubois, a 14-
year-old from Escondido whose remains were found near Pala on March 6.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday ordered a probe into the handling
of Gardner’s previous case, from prosecution through parole.
A prominent victims’ rights advocate defended parole agents, saying
they are pressured to look the other way because of budget constraints
and overcrowding in the prison system.
“That’s not where the heat should be going,” said Harriet Salarno,
president of Crime Victims United. “The heat should be going upstairs
to the administration. ... If this guy had seven violations, the
parole agents would want to return him.”
Todd Spitzer, a former Republican assemblyman who chaired a prison
oversight committee, said it has been well-documented that supervisors
were discharging offenders from parole over the objections of agents
in the field. The reason? Prisons are packed, Spitzer said.
“They cared more about overcrowding than public safety,” said Spitzer,
now an assistant district attorney in Orange County.
In the Gardner case, “there is a very strong probability” that field
agents were overruled, but “we don’t know for sure yet,” Spitzer said.
That information may be stored in Gardner’s “central file,” which
prison officials have refused to release.
State Auditor Elaine Howle, in an investigation, discovered that from
Jan. 1, 2007, to March 31, 2008, 20 percent of the 156 cases reviewed
indicated that “district administrators discharged parolees against
both the parole agents’ and unit supervisors’ recommendations to
retain them and often did not provide written justification for
discharging parolees, contrary to staff recommendations.”
Gordon Hinkle, a spokesman, said on Friday that the department is
reviewing the case and there there’s no information or evidence to
support the assertion that field agents were overruled.
In an interview Thursday, Assistant Corrections Secretary Oscar
Hidalgo said his agents followed well-established procedures in
monitoring Gardner.
“As a law enforcement agency, we have to apply a consistent level of
revocations or corrections as a whole,” he said.
Gardner was convicted in 2000 of two counts of committing lewd and
lascivious acts on a 13-year-old girl and a charge of false
imprisonment. He served just over five years of a six-year sentence
before he was placed on parole for three years on Sept. 26, 2005.
Records show that Gardner violated conditions of his parole at least
seven times, any one of which could have resulted in his return to
prison. The most serious violation occurred in September 2007, when he
lived in an apartment near Miramar College and its day-care center. It
also was close to Scripps Ranch High School and Hourglass Field
Community Park.
That was the only incident resulting in a referral to the Board of
Parole Hearings, which allowed Gardner to continue on parole after a
hearing in September 2007. The records for that hearing state, “There
have been no parole violations, positive anti-narcotic tests or law
enforcement contact/arrests.”
But documents obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune show that
Gardner was stopped for running a red light in Loma Linda on Dec. 12,
2006. He also was ticketed in San Diego on Jan. 11, 2007, though that
citation was dismissed three months later after he completed traffic
court.
If the convicted sex offender had been returned to prison, his parole
would have become subject to at least some provisions of Jessica’s
Law, passed by voters in 2006, including possible confinement at a
mental hospital or lifetime GPS monitoring.
A handwritten note in Gardner’s parole records from August 2007 says,
“Continued structure & supervision is warranted for community
protection.”
Retired parole agent Graham McGruer said the circumstances — as well
as the underlying crimes that landed Gardner in prison 10 years ago —
should have prompted parole officials to do more.
“Those are red flags,” said McGruer, who lives in Chula Vista. “A
parole agent needs to spend extra time looking at this individual
because he’s popping up in the system. This guy would not have fallen
through the cracks if parole (agents) had been checking up on what he
was doing.”
Hidalgo declined to respond to those criticisms, but said multiple
traffic infractions typically are not reason enough to send a parolee
back to prison.
San Diego criminal defense attorney Donald Levine said supervising
agents encounter parolees who behave much worse than did Gardner.
“They’re definitely going to prioritize,” Levine said. “But when you
have a person on parole for the heinous crime he committed, you’ve got
to be hypervigilant.”
Gardner continued to cross paths with police and other law enforcement
officers after completing parole.
He collected four citations in 15 months, according to records in
various courts.
Staff writer Matthew T. Hall contributed to this report.
Sparks
of Chelsea King and Amber Dubois.
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Flossie ღ
some kind of plea bargain?
Sparks
in exchange for a guilty plea, he got life without parole and he also
had to answer for the death of Amber Dubois. He confessed to her
murder as well.
One more psychopath off the streets!
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