JUSTICE

Police Can’t Stop a Local Sex Offender from Drawing Children to His Home

The law should do more to protect our children

It was every child’s fantasy

Last weekend, my husband, Sam, and I cruised down Main Street of our little farming community. He pulled over in front of a house lavishly adorned with purple and orange lights. The yard, and the yards on either side, hosted hundreds — maybe over a thousand — of Halloween inflatables, glowing plastic pumpkins, and moving, animated mechanized ghosts, goblins and ghouls.

“I told you,” Sam said in response to my stunned expression. He’d been wanting to show me this seasonal display since we started dating in 2016, but every year we drove by and the grass was bare.

Sam had told me a man had been doing it for a long time and wondered why he’d stopped.

We’d speculated he’d moved away or died.

We were wrong.

This year, he was back, and his display was bigger and brighter than ever.

Giddy with excitement, we hopped out of the car and I started snapping photos of Sam next to a 14-foot lit-up Grim Reaper. At random, we chose a path to take (there were several) and weaved in and out of Hallow-palooza.

I stopped at a table laden with donuts and a jug of cider. There was a cardboard sign written in an endearing childlike scrawl that basically said to help ourselves and enjoy! I looked around for the donation box. There wasn’t one.

“I just don’t believe this!” I said. “Can you imagine what your grandkids would do if they saw this? They’d go crazy!”

“Ya think?” Sam said. “Maybe some are too old?”

I laughed. “Well, we think it’s pretty cool, so …”

“Ha! I guess you’re right!”

We held hands, Sam guiding us around a six-foot spider on a web that spanned from the top of the two-story home to the ground. There was so much to look at, he was afraid I’d trip over something and hurt myself.

Toward the back of the lawn, I saw an older gentleman blowing up more decorations.

I had to say something to him. It wouldn’t have felt right, tromping through his yard and delighting in all his hard labor without thanking him. We also wanted to slip him some cash to show our appreciation. I couldn’t imagine the time and cost it took for him to put up such an extravagant spectacle.

As we approached him, I called out, “Are you the one responsible for all this?”

He looked up to see our smiling faces and grinned. “I am!”

I went on to tell him how much we appreciated his effort and how I thought it was a lovely thing to do for the community and the children.

“This is my twenty-third year,” he boasted. “About a thousand kids come through every year and I give each one a little piece of candy. Did you get a donut? Help yourself to some cider.”

I’m not good at math, but numbers flew through my head. A thousand pieces of candy? Donuts and cider every night for a month? The electricity bill. All the decorations …

He didn’t look wealthy. He looked like an average man in his sixties that lived around here. Bald with glasses. A belly hanging over his work jeans.

His house was a modest, brick two-story that blended in with the other houses lining Main Street. The only thing that stood out was his four-foot-tall cement gargoyles that perched on either side of his driveway. They were permanent and emitted an eerie vibe. I had commented on them several times in the past when we drove by, but Sam always reminded me “the Halloween guy” lived there.

We agreed the gargoyles were odd, but hey, to each his own.

As we chatted, he was quick to point out he didn’t advertise his display, nor did he accept money for it. If people wanted to stop and walk through, they were more than welcome, but he wasn’t waving them in. He also mentioned he’d bought the house next door, so he was able to expand this year and his neighbor on the other side allowed him to use their yard as well.

It warmed my heart there were still people in this world coming together to do something good, just for the sake of spreading smiles and evoking joy. It didn’t get any better than this.

For a fleeting instant, I wanted to ask why he hadn’t decorated since at least 2016, but he’d already said it was his twenty-third year. If I questioned him, it might sound like I was challenging him and that would be rude. I did not want to be rude.

I asked him his name, thinking I’d write a feel-good story about him. Maybe give him a shout-out in the local paper. Maybe put it in a bigger publication. I took pictures of him surrounded by his cast of characters, creatures, and creepy creations.

Reality gave me a drop-kick

On the way home, I didn’t stop talking. I reenacted our conversation with the owner, our walk through the illuminated maze, and estimated how many strands of lights it took to cover a two-story house.

Once we were home, I was still wound up. I was on a Halloween high.

Sam knew I still had a lot to say, so he suggested we sit at the table and have some wine. Maybe I’d talk myself tired.

“Let me take Pippa out first,” he said, as she spun circles at his feet.

I was already writing the article about the Halloween Hero in my head. I pulled out a chair and scrolled through the pictures I’d taken and came across the perfect one to submit for publication. He wasn’t looking at the camera, his face was tilted to the right. He was laughing, and his eyes sparkled. If there was a Halloween Santa, he’d look just like this guy.

I Googled his name, our town, and Halloween to see if anybody had already written a piece on him. I assumed so and wanted mine to be different.

My heart stopped when I saw the first few suggested sites.

No way.

I clicked on the first one and there he was: a big, color picture of him in court. The headline from 2014 was “Sex Offender Upsets Judge”. I went on to read how he had attempted to accost a 13-year-old girl he had been grooming for a year-and-a-half. He’d bought her lingerie from Victoria Secret. He offered her $2,000 for nude photos. He’d sent texts saying with her body, she could be a stripper. He planned to take her to Chicago for an alleged modeling shoot.

Thankfully, the parents figured out what was happening and called the police.

He was sentenced to six months in jail and five years of probation — the maximum under Michigan Sentencing Guidelines.

When Sam came back in the house with Pippa, I was fuming.

I can’t tell you how angry I was, and still am.

The law can’t protect us

Our township has a small police department. It was almost 11:00 PM. I didn’t want to call 911.

First thing in the morning, I talked to the dispatcher and within ten minutes, an officer called me back.

Several phone calls later, he called me again with the bad news. The sex offender’s probation was over and there was nothing in his paperwork that prevented him from decorating his house. The officer tried to make me feel better by saying, “He still has to report to the police to verify his address for 25 years.”

“So what!” I cried. “This is so wrong.”

“I’m not very happy about it either,” the officer said.

In conclusion

How could this happen? How could the maximum sentence in Michigan allow this man to blatantly entice children to his home after his probation is over?

I don’t know, but I’m not letting this go.

The laws need to change. I’m going to be doing a lot of letter writing in the months to come.

I’m making it my mission to spread the word, make people aware, and demand change.

If there is a sex offender in your neighborhood, make sure you know the laws of your state/country before taking action. For further information on what to do, please visit the Defend Innocence website.

For more of Tracy’s essays, please keep reading:

This sounds like the lead-in to a joke, but it’s not:

When Tracy met Tommy, she didn’t know what would happen. But she was sure of two things — that it wouldn’t be boring and their meeting was no coincidence.