BY MICHAEL BOOTH
GAZETTE-TIMES REPORTER | Posted: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 12:00 am
Convicted sex offender Roger Walters might be wearing a locator anklet when he completes his 30-day jail stint for violating the terms of his probation.
"He has a condition of his supervision that says he could be subject (to wearing a locator anklet)," Simpson said. "We're looking into that possibility now."
Simpson said the parole and probation office does not have any of its own anklets and it is checking with the county juvenile department to see if it could buy one of the anklets from that department.
The anklet would be a passive system that would allow parole officers to check where Walters has been if he left the Transition Center during curfew hours or deviated from his preapproved daytime schedule.
On Sept. 5, Walters told his parole officer he was leaving the Transition Center, at 557 N.W. Monroe Ave. in Corvallis, to go to Ninth Street to pick up some clothing from a resale store. He was found in the opposite direction on Western Boulevard, more than a mile away from his destination.
Walters later told parole officers that he was heading to the Community Services Consortium at 545 S.W. Second Street.
"He was given very specific instructions to go to his destination and then return," Simpson said. Walters did not receive approval to go anywhere else that day.
The parole violation was Walters' second since his Aug. 29 release. The first violation occurred on his first day back, when Walters told officers he left the Transition Center after his 5 p.m. curfew to take out the trash, parole and probation officer Gail Newman said. He received four days in jail for the Aug. 29 violation.
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. He was eligible for parole in 2002.
Walters was returned to Benton County due to a state statute that says that convicts on parole or probation must be returned to the area in which they were sentenced.
Walters is currently subject to a 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew and has not been cleared to seek employment, Newman said.
For updates on this topic, see Michael Booth's blog at www.gazettetimes.com/blogs