California Girl Found Buried in Park
Seventeen year old Chelsea King has been in the news ever since her disappearance in a California park roughly one week ago. Now, police have discovered a body buried in a shallow grave that they believe is hers. They have held a man named John Gardner as a suspect in the case since only a few days after she went missing. Prosecutors are now planning on filing official charges against him.
What makes this case so frustrating is that John Gardner is a convicted sex offender. In 2000, he was charged with beating and molesting a 13 year old girl. For that crime, he served 5 years of his 6 year sentence and was put on parole until 2008. A psychiatrist who analyzed Gardner warned prosecutors that he was and would continue to be a danger to underage girls. Gardner was also positively identified by a girl as the man who ambushed and almost raped her back in December in the same park where Chelsea King disappeared. She elbowed him in the face and was able to get away. Police are also investigating whether or not he is connected to the disappearance of another California teenager who went missing roughly a year ago.
Normally, this type of article is something I would choose to leave out of the magazine because it is being covered by nearly every news outlet in the country and is, unfortunately, a very sad tale for one California family who lost their child. However, I feel that it’s necessary to ask this question: Why was this allowed to happen? The man, convicted of a crime against an underage girl in 2000, was given the minimum sentence. Despite all of the testimony from a psychiatrist specializing in criminal profiling who claimed that he would still be a danger to society, he was allowed to be released on parole one year early. Afterwards, unbeknownst to his parole officer, he spent most of his time at his mother’s house, located within terribly close proximity to an elementary school. Since his release, he is now connected to at least two crimes against underage girls and possibly a third, two of which are murders. I ask again, why was this allowed to happen? Every possible warning sign was given by experts put in place to advise on these matters. Yet, he was allowed back into the public domain. Failing that, how is there not a system put in place to monitor people who have been deemed “high risk?” It feels like multiple agencies really dropped the ball on this one, and it’s a tragedy that a girl had to pay for it with her life.
I’m not expecting that the systems put in place regarding sex offenders will be perfect, but serious flaws like this need to be fixed. Right now, it seems like all there is protecting us from them is a screen that’s spread large enough for the bugs to still get through.