"Kent woman says her brother `will re-offend, and it will be violent'
2004-04-15
by Mary Swift
Journal Reporter
The release of child molester Edward Stokes has stunned his sister, an elementary school teacher who has worked for years to keep her brother behind bars.
Susan Stokes of Kent is sounding the alarm along with law enforcement officials that her brother will re-offend.
``He will re-offend -- and it will be violent,'' she said. ``He preys on street kids, kids who don't have anyone looking out for them or kids who are in trouble and afraid of going to the police.''
``It is appalling to me that a person with his criminal history has been released,'' Stokes wrote in an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times after the paper reported his release. ``He is dangerous.''
His adult life -- much of it spent behind bars -- has been a tapestry of sexual offenses, arrests and convictions.
``There is absolutely no doubt, given his history, that he'll re-offend,'' said Casey Johnson, a detective with the King County Sheriff Office's Special Assault Unit familiar with Stokes' record. ``He's at very high risk to re-offend.''
Given Stokes' extensive record of sexual offenses, it ``would have been nice'' to have him locked up for life, Johnson said. ``It's just not the way it works. There is no easy answer here.''
Adopted by Renton couple
At 48, Edward Stokes is a large, husky man who stands over 6 feet tall and weighs some 250 pounds.
Like Susan, two years his senior and unrelated by blood, he was adopted as an infant by Ned and Jeanne Stokes from a home for unwed mothers.
Early pictures show a blond, almost angelic looking toddler. By adolescence, though, the boy the family called ``Eddie'' would be anything but angelic.
The family, who owned Stokes Mortuary in downtown Renton, lived in a comfortable home in the Lakeridge area on Renton's West Hill. They moved to a new home in the Fairwood area, between Renton and Kent, when Eddie was 11.
Susan said she and Edward sang in a choir at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Renton. For a time, she said, he was also in Scouts.
Susan graduated from Kentridge High in 1972, Eddie in 1974.
As a teen, he developed an interest in the Civil Air Patrol.
Somewhere along the line, he also developed an interest in something far darker --sexual abuse.
``He was in jail most of the time after he left high school,'' Susan said. ``Holidays were awful. We would sit around waiting for his phone call (from prison or jail). The phone would ring. Dad would say, `It's Eddie' and pick it up. Then we would play `pass-the-phone.' And when it was over we would just sit there feeling depressed.''
Scared of his actions
Susan has a copy of a document her brother wrote in an application for a sexual offender treatment program while in prison.
``It has been 28 years since I first started sexually offending against neighbors, classmates and friends,'' Eddie wrote.
``I am scared of what my next action might be and how far I might go if my pattern continues.''
He claimed -- at that point -- that he had ``messed up'' more than 212 young victims. The number, he warned, would grow if he didn't get help.
``I have become more deviant, more dangerous, more abusive and more aware of the direction that this road is leading me,'' he wrote.
``He has been in treatment programs,'' Susan said this week. ``They didn't change him. They didn't make any difference.''
Eddie was released from prison in Oregon in 1995, the same year both of his parents died. In 1996, Eddie left Oregon and came to Washington.
Arrested a few days later on a parole violation, he posted a $25,000 cash bond, money Susan said came from his inheritance.
A spokesman for the King County Prosecutor's Office, quoted later in a TV interview, said the bail request would have been higher if the office had known about Stokes' past history.
Not surprisingly given his record, Eddie never showed up for his court date.
``He knew he was going back to prison,'' Susan said.
On the road to a new victim
On the run, he was also on the road to a new victim.
It was while he was in Seattle, only days after posting bail, that Eddie reportedly met Blue Karak, a homeless 16-year-old runaway.
Eddie promised Blue a trip to Disneyland. It was a promise that would become a nightmare.
In California, Blue said Eddie molested him, tying him with a chain. Blue eventually escaped and reported the incident to police.
Eddie fled -- and became the subject of a manhunt that included the FBI. Eventually arrested at a Nevada motel, he was returned to California to stand trial.
At the trial, witnesses would later testify that a chain in Eddie's possession matched the description of the chain Blue had described, that Blue's belongings were in Eddie's possession, and that a firearm was found in Eddie's car.
There also was testimony that Eddie had told others he would get Blue for reporting the molestation.
In November of 2001, Eddie was sentenced to ``19 years to life'' in prison, Susan said. Blue didn't live to see Eddie convicted. He committed suicide months before that trial began.
A sister's sigh of relief
But Susan Stokes, who flew to California several times to help with the case, finally breathed a sigh of relief.
``I finally believed he wasn't going to be able to hurt anyone else,'' she said.
``I finally thought he was going to be locked up for good.''
She found out last week she was wrong.
While calling to inquire about an aunt in a Florida hospital she heard that her brother was being released.
Shocked, she contacted Orange County officials who told her Eddie's conviction had been reversed on appeal.
It was shattering news to Susan -- and to others who believe Edward Stokes belongs behind bars. Eddie was free the night of April 7. Susan is devastated -- and scared.
Brother has `twisted' mind
``He has hurt so many people,'' she said. ``He's been committing predatory sex offenses since he was a teenager. The first time he got in trouble, my friend and I would go to see him.
``We thought it was a mistake, that he'd learned his lesson. But he didn't. The more I learned, the more convinced I became he is never going to change.
``The bottom line is, imbedded in all of this is someone so twisted few of us could imagine how his mind works.''
She is speaking out again, she said, because the public needs to know how dangerous her brother is and how difficult it is for law enforcement to protect the public from people like him.
``The general public doesn't realize that having to register as a predator doesn't stop predators. It just gives law enforcement people an address,'' she said. ``Yes, it helps track sexual predators but it doesn't keep them from re-offending.''
Susan said after she learned her brother had been released last week she was so upset she had trouble sleeping.
She sat down and wrote him a letter -- one she'll probably never send.
``I told him that Dad always believed him. Some of Dad's dying words, before he slipped into a coma, were `I think this time he's going to make it.' I don't think Eddie ever realized how much Dad and Mom loved him.''
A need to be locked up
She told Eddie something else, too. ``The bottom line is I think people like him can't change who they are and what they are. They need to be locked up. ``I told him if he's sincere about not wanting to hurt anybody any more, he'll ask to be locked up forever. ``
At least at one time in his life -- when he wrote the ``commitment to treatment'' paper -- Eddie himself appeared to agree.
``It's time to change or time to seek a life sentence inside the walls where I can't hurt children any more,'' he wrote in the application for the treatment program.
``But even then, there will continue to be victims.''