Those guys must have needed glasses! No way this guy looks like a 12 y/o!
Posted on 01/21/2007 10:39:45 AM PST by WestTexasWend
A 29-year-old sex offender from Oklahoma duped two Arizona men into thinking he was a 12-year-old boy and lived with them for two years in a sexual relationship before the truth finally emerged Wednesday, officials said.
Neil Havens Rodreick II, who had been living under the alias of Casey Price, was arrested this week along with the men he’d fooled and a possible former cellmate, who is also an Oklahoma sex offender, officials said.
“This is extremely strange,” said Susan Quayle, spokeswoman for the Yavapai County sheriff’s office in Prescott, Ariz. “I can’t get over how bizarre this whole situation is.”
Wednesday, a man identifying himself as “Price’s” grandfather enrolled him in the Mingus Springs Charter School in Chino Valley, Ariz., about 90 miles northwest of Phoenix, Quayle said. Guardianship papers and a birth certificate appeared fake to school officials, so they contacted authorities.
Sheriff’s detectives determined the man posing as the grandfather was Lonnie Eugene Stiffler, 61, who had moved into a rented manufactured home in Chino Valley with “Price” and two other men in December, Quayle said. Investigators served a search warrant about 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Stiffler and Robert James Snow, 43, a known sex offender, admitted to investigators that they had picked “Price” up at an Oklahoma hotel about two years earlier after they’d begun an Internet relationship with him, said Det. Ross Diskin. They thought he was a pre-teen and had exchanged sexually explicit photographs with him.
The third man in the house, though, eventually told investigators a truth that shocked them almost as much as it did Stiffler and Snow.
Brian J. Nellis, 34, also an Oklahoma sex offender, said “Price” was actually Rodreick, his former cellmate, Diskin said.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections online records show that Rodreick was convicted of lewd and indecent proposal to a minor in Grady County in 1996. He was released from prison in January 2002. Nellis was convicted of lewd molestation in Kay County in 1997 and was imprisoned until July 2000.
The records also show Nellis pleaded guilty in July 2005 to one count of failure to comply with the Oklahoma sex offenders registry act. He was sentenced to two years in prison, with all but the first two months suspended.
“We couldn’t believe it,” Diskin said of Nellis’ revelation. “Both Snow and Stiffler ... were more shocked than we were. They were angry. They were more upset that he was a 29-year-old and not what they believed he was. Until that point they thought they were in a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old.”
By Thursday, all four men had been arrested. All made an initial appearance in Yavapai County Justice Court on Thursday, with all but Stiffler being held on $50,000 bond on a charge of failing to register as sex offenders. Stiffler was booked on two counts of forgery and one count of hindering prosecution; he was being held on $100,000 cash bond.
All four were assigned public defenders.
No child molestation charges were filed because, Diskin said, the men were actually having sex with an adult, no matter how old they thought he was.
“He doesn’t look very old,” Quayle said. “He’s a very small man. He wore makeup and shaved his entire body, from what I understand, and he had the clothing and the speech of a very, very young person.”
Detectives fear the men may have been using “Price” to help them find other victims, Quayle and Diskin said. Rodreick had successfully enrolled in other Arizona schools in the past.
“More than two,” Diskin said. “We’re still at the initial stages of this. There’s three schools that we have confirmed he attended, and we’re looking into the possibility that there were more than three. These were brief stays. Two of the schools, we know he was enrolled for a day. One of the schools was longer than that.”
Quayle said the men are known to have lived in or around the Arizona communities of Payson and El Mirage in the past.
Snow apparently has an account on MySpace, an Internet site popular with young people. The Oklahoman provided investigators with a link to the site, which contains biographical information on Snow over a background of flaming skulls. A video of “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance plays constantly on the Web page.
On the site, Snow says he lives in Chino Valley, is gay and is looking for friends. He says he graduated from a California high school in 1982 and majored in cooking. Under the category of “children,” he wrote: “Love kids, but not for me.”
He last logged on Wednesday, the same day he was arrested.
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I'd be really mad. You know, there you are -- for two whole years -- convinced that you're a child molester, and then to find out that you're just shacking up with some 29-year-old guy! Boy! Where's the excitement in that??
Here is a link to an article that doesn't require you to log in. http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=82637
Bizzare. Maybe they can lock all four of them in the same cell to save expenses.
He doesn't look like a 12-year old to me. More like 20 or 22.
Were they blind wannabe molesters? He looks 25-26 at the youngest!
And then inject the Zyclon-B.
Those guys must have needed glasses! No way this guy looks like a 12 y/o!
Too bad these clowns weren't in Maricopa county, otherwise they could indulge in their fantasies wearing Sheriff Joe's pink boxer shorts.
"No child molestation charges were filed because, Diskin said, the men were actually having sex with an adult, no matter how old they thought he was.
But police routinely arrest men who communicate with someone who they believe to be a minor, even though it is actually a police officer. So why wouldn't the same law apply?
They should still charge them for the crime. If they had propositioned a 29 year old LEO pretending to be a 12 year old boy online, they'd be in pedo trouble. The intent was pedo, they are pedos...Kill them!
Ah, but homosexual degeneracy is merely an alternate lifestyle, no longer aberrant behavior, so mainstream now. Sexual degeneracy is to be accepted as personal choice to be protected and ignored, morally ... didn't you learn anything with the media defense and worship of the sexual degenerate clinton?
Ah, yes. The clear, steely-eyed gaze of the kid-caboodlers (even if he wasn't a kid). Nice guys. They probably started off their sexual careers doing knotholes in board fences, because it takes someone who is either blind or in a total fantasy world to believe that little weasel is twelve years old...
"Bizzare."
Bizarre, and just plain queer;)
Could have charged 'em all with sodomy, except the Supreme Court says you can't, because it's now a Constitutionally protected right/s
It is more likely that the entire ring (including the liar posing as a twlve year old) was hoping to get the deviant into school so he could 'bring home friends' for the householders' gratification. Degenerates are all about feeding thier degeneracy. I cannot believe the police don't see that!
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