Posted on 12/04/2009 6:22:22 PM PST by markomalley
The nine-month search for a Gastonia pastor charged with raping and molesting young girls ended Friday when police found him holed up in a Lincoln County home.
Lawmen from Gaston and Lincoln counties arrested 46-year-old Robert Lee Adams shortly after 3 p.m. Authorities received an anonymous tips that Adams was staying at the house, said Gaston County Police Sgt. Myron Shelor.
“It was just a tip that came into our office — somebody called it in,” Shelor said. “We’re very appreciative to the public.”
Police arrived with Lincoln County sheriff’s deputies to find a vehicle pulling up to the house on Bynum Estates Road off N.C. 27 near the Gaston/Lincoln county line, Shelor said. Adams was a passenger in the vehicle, and he was taken into custody without incident.
Shelor said police are working to determine how long he had been staying at the home and whether the residents should face criminal charges for helping him hide.
“We’re still investigating his relationship to those people and how long he may have been staying there,” he said.
Police say Robert Adams was the pastor of Mount Calvary Tabernacle in west Gastonia before he fled the area. His last known address is 1319 Rosewood Drive, Dallas.
Adams’ capture follows the Thursday arrest of his wife, 43-year-old Teresa Gilreath Adams, on allegations that she convinced a 5-year-old girl to engage in sex acts with her husband. Teresa Adams was charged with felony aiding and abetting and jailed under a $35,000 bond.
Capt. Joe Ramey of the Gaston County Police Department said Teresa Adams was uncooperative and refused to tell police if she knew anything about her husband’s whereabouts.
Robert Adams is also giving police the silent treatment, Shelor said.
“He hasn’t been (cooperative) up to this point,” he said Friday afternoon. “He has not talked about the incidents.”
The pastor is accused of molesting a 5-year-old girl between Jan. 1 and March 30 of 1998. Ramey said the accuser came forward after learning that Robert Adams was wanted on other child rape and molestation charges.
Authorities learned last year that Robert Adams sexually abused a pre-teen girl for a span of three years that eventually led to her pregnancy, Ramey said. The girl gave birth in the summer of 2008.
He is charged with three counts of first-degree statutory sex offense against a child for the 1998 incident. He also faces charges of statutory rape, first-degree sex offense with a child, taking indecent liberties with a child and other sex offenses.
Teresa Adams, the woman charged with encouraging a 5-year-old girl to have sex with her husband, appeared for a bond reduction hearing Friday.
The judge in the case lowered and unsecured her bond. She has no criminal background, her family members said she has cooperated with police who are looking for her husband and she had an attorney aggressively arguing on her behalf.
Adams cried through most of the hearing, speaking only to answer a few questions from the judge.
Her attorney told the judge police manufactured the charges because they think she helped her husband, former pastor Robert Adams, elude arrest.
Until late this afternoon, Robert Adams was on the run, facing charges of having sex with a pre-teen girl.
Gaston County Police Dept. Capt. Joe Ramey said the charge against Teresa Adams has nothing to do with her husband’s nine months in hiding.
“The wife’s involvement revolves around encouraging the second victim to participate in the sex event,” he said.
The abuse allegedly occurred 10 years ago at the couple’s home near Dallas, N.C. The girl was 5 years old at the time.
Police said she recently came forward after she learned there was another victim.
Before the hearing, Teresa Adams’ cousin said she trusted Adams with her own child, and that there is no way Adams is guilty of the offenses of which she is accused.
She said Teresa lost her position in the church at which her husband was once pastor and lost the home the couple lived in.
Former neighbor Jimmy Rolland said the Adams seemed like decent people.
“I hope it’s not true, but if it is I hope they get what they deserve,” he said.
Source: WSOC TV
Leave this mess to the authorities to figure out. If he is guilty he has damned himself a much as a man is capable.
If he’s guilty then he needs to be put to death. It’s what the Bible commands.
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