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HOUSTON (AP) — Two violent sex offenders who served time in Texas and later moved elsewhere while under state oversight are back behind bars for committing similar crimes.
Both men were in a civil commitment program meant to keep high-risk sex offenders in Texas custody after they finish serving their prison terms, the Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/1uv2aZB ) reported Friday.
But Texas officials never alerted other states about Lloyd Wilson, who moved to Virginia, and Melvin Cody Whipple, who moved to Utah, both in 2004 the newspaper reported. The two men were later convicted of sex-related crimes in their new states and sent to prison, where they remained Saturday.
Marsha McLane, director of the Texas Office of Violent Sex Offender Management, said the agency was not aware of the two out-of-state convicts until last week.
"It's true we didn't know about those two offenders, until we found a discrepancy in the number we showed were on civil commitment and number (the prison system) showed," McLane told the newspaper. "We should have known about them."
Details on Wilson and Whipple came to light as the newspaper attempted to determine the exact number of offenders currently in the state's civil commitment program, which began in 1999.
Officials with the Special Prosecutions Unit, the agency that was listed in court documents as responsible for monitoring the two men's whereabouts, did not immediately comment.
Separate judges, after Wilson and Whipple completed their sentences and left Texas prisons in 2004, signed court orders allowing the men to move out of state.
Wilson, 44, had just finished serving 12 years for indecency with a child in Fort Worth and aggravated sexual assault of a child in Dallas. Whipple, 58, was completing nine years in prison for aggravated kidnapping involving sexual intent and indecency with a child in the Amarillo area.
Judge Lee Alworth ordered Whipple to move to Bluff, Utah. Judge Putnam Reiter ordered Wilson to live in Virginia. Alworth and Reiter said Friday that they could not recall the cases.
Wilson was arrested in 2005 in Fairfax County, Virginia, on charges of rape, abduction and producing child pornography after he allegedly agreed to drive a 16-year-old girl home from work, and instead raped her. He received a 30-year sentence.
Whipple was arrested in 2008 in Utah, accused of fondling an 11-year-old boy after showing him pornography. He was given a one-to-15-year sentence for attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child.
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Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com
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