Board releases man in order to secure county’s right to monitor him

When former Benton County District Attorney Pete Sandrock left office in 1999, he passed down to his successors a foot-thick file on a man he calls “one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever convicted.”

“I said, ‘Don’t ever get rid of this file. This guy’s coming back,’” Sandrock said Tuesday.

On Aug. 29, the man Sandrock was referring to, Roger Matthew Walters, 64, came home to Benton County.

Walters was first convicted in 1980 of first-degree sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl in Lincoln County. That charge was reduced from first-degree rape. He served five years in prison.

In 1995, Walters was sentenced in Benton County Circuit Court to 30 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of the attempted kidnapping of a 13-year-old Corvallis girl in 1987. Two additional charges of attempted rape and attempted sodomy were later overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, negating half of a 60-year sentence.

Walters’ conviction for the crime in Benton County came before the era of mandatory minimum sentencing. He had been in prison since his arrest in 1987 and was eligible for parole beginning in 2002.

Every two years, the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-prison Supervision denied parole to Walters. But under a quirk of the law before minimum sentences were imposed, if the board had held Walters past 2009, he would have received no post-prison supervision. A spokeswoman for the board said it chose to release Walters during his last most recent hearing to ensure that he would stay under supervision until Dec. 20, 2020.

Benton County Sheriff Diana Simpson, who oversees the parole and probation office, decided to house Walters at the department’s Transition Center, a two-apartment building that houses parolees.

The building, located at 557 N.W. Monroe Ave., directly across from the transit station, is staffed daily by parole and probation officers and has a camera at the top of the stairwell, the only exit. The camera monitor is viewed after hours by Benton County jail staff, who report curfew violations to parole officers.

“We’ll provide the maximum supervision possible for Mr. Walters for the foreseeable future,” said parole and probation officer Gail Newman. “We’re fortunate to have the Transition Center. Had he come out 10 years ago, I don’t know that he’d have that supervision.”

Walters is currently subject to a 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew, Newman said.

According to police reports, Walters violated his curfew on his first day back in town by leaving the apartment just after 8 p.m. Walters, who declined to comment for this story, told officers said he was taking out the trash.

Newman said the rules are strictly followed, regardless of the reason, and Walters spent four days in jail for the violation.

The crimes

Both the 1980 case and the 1987 incident were similar — and Sandrock said the victims, both petite blondes, were similar-looking. In fact, the victim in the 1980 case testified in the Benton County trial even though she was seven years older than the Corvallis victim.

On Aug. 1, 1987, Walters approached a 13-year-old girl at a Corvallis garage sale. He asked her if she’d seen a white and black German shepherd. He claimed the dog was worth a lot of money and asked the girl to help him find it. She refused. He offered her $10, then $20, then $30 as she started for her bicycle. He offered to drive her home, and again she refused.

She rode her bike home, where her family was having a yard sale of its own. Her mother called the police.

Walters had followed the girl home and stopped, ostensibly to look at items for sale in her family’s yard. He even talked to the girl’s mother before the police showed up.

When an officer arrived it was found that Walters had been released from an Oregon state penitentiary a few months earlier. He was, in fact, still under post-prison supervision as a predatory sex offender.

Here’s how the Oregon Supreme Court summarized the 1980 case:

The incident began when “the defendant approached a 13-year-old girl and asked if she had seen his lost dog, which he described as a white German shepherd. He offered her $20 to help him search for the dog, which she refused. Defendant then forced her into his car and took her to his trailer, where he raped and sodomized her. Defendant did not own a dog ...”

Nor did he own a dog in 1987, Sandrock said.

The supervision

Sandrock, now the assistant director of the Portland Independent Police Review Board, said he rarely sounds the alarm about people being released from prison without good reason. He believes Walters is one of those extreme cases.

“One of the reasons that he continues to have a high risk of reoffending is that he never accepts responsibility for his actions,” Sandrock said.

Although Walters declined to comment for this story, in 2004, as he was attempting to appeal his conviction, he told the Gazette-Times that he “got 30 years with a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence for a conversation I had at a garage sale.”

Walters said he was not a danger to society and would not receive so much as a parking ticket if released.

Newman said Walters must adhere to a number of restrictions while on parole. He must not consume alcohol or drugs, must adhere to the curfew, undergo psychological treatment and attend a class on obtaining gainful employment.

Employment, however, is not yet an option for Walters. His parole officer is managing Walters’ daily schedule and has not authorized him to search for work before undergoing reintegration training.

Benton County officials had no choice in whether to let Walters return. Oregon law states that an offender must return to the prosecuting county, unless the offender has alternative arrangements that officials approve.

Sandrock said he is confident that Benton County is the best place for Walters because he knows parole officers here will supervise him as much as possible.

“We know that no amount of supervision is ever a guarantee, but these are the risks we take as a civil society,” Sandrock said.