Jeffrey Allen Weathers moved from Alaska to an oceanfront apartment in the Caribbean, but his new neighbors soon suspected the heavyset American hadn’t come for the sun. The FBI now says they were right.
Weathers, with convictions for sexual assault and possession of child pornography, moved to a Puerto Rican town in the belief he could avoid registering as a sex offender and live without that stigma, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit.
Weathers was arrested — thanks in part to his landlord — but law enforcement officials say other sex offenders share the perception that Puerto Rico, where there are less restrictions than in many US jurisdictions, is an ideal place to hide.
Federal agents have arrested at least five other sex offenders over the last year for failure to register in Puerto Rico and sent them back to the US to face prosecution on other charges, Deputy US Marshal Rafael Escobar said.
He said the marshals are investigating 10 cases of unregistered offenders suspected to be on the island.
“I’m sure there’s a bunch more,” he said. “The Internet is there, and these guys are checking to see where the law is weakest.”
Each month, about half a dozen sex offenders come to the island from the US mainland and do register with local authorities, said Puerto Rico police Captain Margarita George, who oversees the island’s sex offender registry. Nobody knows how many others fail to report in.
She said some are drawn by the lack of laws barring them from living near parks or schools — the sort of rules that have forced sex offenders to camp under bridges or in woods in parts of the US. And failing to register is a misdemeanor in Puerto Rico — not a felony as it is in most parts of the US. Some, like Weathers, find themselves colliding with federal rather than local authorities.
Offenders have told police they can do things in Puerto Rico that are nearly impossible elsewhere, such as buy property, George said.
“It is a fact that the guys who come down here know they’re not that strict,” Escobar said, though he said he did not know of any offenders from the mainland who committed new sexual offenses in Puerto Rico.
About 100,000 of the 714,000 registered sex offenders in the US are unaccounted for, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The US Congress tried to close local loopholes on tracking them in 2006 when it required all states and territories to impose the same tough monitoring of sex offenders, calling for convicts to update their registration information in person as frequently as every three months. So far, however, only Florida, Ohio, Delaware and some Native American jurisdictions meet the new federal standards.
Puerto Rican officials are working with the US Department of Justice on legislation to meet the federal requirements.
US sex offenders have sometimes been drawn to other nations in the Caribbean and Central America, but US citizens don’t need a passport to come to US territories such as Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands.
Weathers, a balding, 53-year-old Oregon native came to Puerto Rico in March, moving into US$300-a-month room in Quebradillas on the island’s northwest coast, where he collected Social Security benefits, the FBI said
William Young, his landlord, said Weathers struck him as strange, often getting into disputes with other neighbors. Young began checking into the background of his new tenant and learned that Weathers had been convicted in Alaska of sexual abuse of a minor in 1999 and possession of child pornography in 2006.
Young said Weathers didn’t deny his history and told him repeatedly that he picked Puerto Rico because its laws are more relaxed toward sex offenders.
Young said his tenant even seemed to taunt him after he began trying to evict him.
“He would say to me, ‘There’s a little kid across the street that I talk to every day,’” Young said. “He knew that would upset me.”
The landlord got in touch with the US Marshals Service, which launched the investigation that led to his arrest last month.
Prosecutors say there is no evidence that Weathers abused anybody in Puerto Rico. He was arrested after he moved out of the apartment and made a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital. The FBI affidavit said he is a paranoid schizophrenic.
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