List of anti-sex offender attacks in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of anti-sex offender attacks in the United States.
In the United States, attacks against sex offenders have been facilitated by federal and state laws regarding sex offender registration and notification, which require sex offenders to disclose their identities and addresses to the public.[1][2][3][4] Such attacks have been shown to extend to family members of sex offenders, as well as people falsely accused of being sex offenders.[5][6]
A study reported that 15% of sex offenders in the country have been attacked since their crimes were made public, with one-third having received violent threats.[7][5] Another study reported that 16% have been physically assaulted due to their registration.[8] A database of anti-sex offender attacks included 279 fatal and non-fatal incidents from 1983 to 2015, with 5% of victims being people falsely accused of being sex offenders.[7][5] An investigation by The New York Times reported 170 video-recorded attacks against people accused of sexual crimes from 2023 to 2025, many of which perpetrated by organized vigilante organizations.[9][10]
Fatal attacks
| Victim(s) | Date | Location | Description | Reference(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeffrey Doucet | March 1984 | Baton Rouge, Louisiana | Doucet was shot and killed by Gary Plauche, the father of the 12-year-old boy whom he had kidnapped and raped. Plauche pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years of probation. | [11] |
| Daniel Driver | April 1993 | Jamestown, California | Driver was shot dead by Ellie Nesler during his trial for allegedly molesting Nesler's son. Nesler pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was released from prison in 1997. | [12] |
| John Geoghan | August 2003 | Shirley, Massachusetts | Beaten to death by Joseph Druce while imprisoned for assaulting a ten-year-old boy. Druce, who was already serving a life sentence for murder, was convicted of first degree murder and received another life sentence. | [13] |
| Richard Ausley | January 2004 | Waverly, Virginia | Beaten and strangled by his cellmate, Dewey Keith Venable, while imprisoned for abusing a teenage boy in 1972. Ausley was previously notorious as the kidnapper and rapist of Paul Martin Andrews. Venable, who had been molested as a child, pleaded guilty to second degree murder and had 12.5 years added to his sentence. | [14] |
| Angela Smith | January 2005 | Tucson, Arizona | Former member of The Family International who was killed by Ricky Rodriguez, another former member who she had raped as a child. | [15] |
| Victor Vazquez, Hank Eisses | August 2005 | Bellingham, Washington | Michael Mullen used a sex offender registry to attack three sex offenders. He murdered two of them, but spared the third on the grounds that he had shown remorse. Michael Mullen pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 44 years in prison. He died in prison in 2008. | [16][17] |
| William Elliott, Joseph Gray | April 2006 | Corinth, Maine and Milo, Maine | Stephen Alexander Marshall used Maine's sex offender registry to locate and murder Elliott and Gray, two registered sex offenders. Marshall later committed suicide after being apprehended by authorities for the attacks. | [2][18][19] |
| Melissa Chandler | September 2007 | Helenwood, Tennessee | A man charged with child pornography had his house set on fire, which killed his wife. The fire was set by two men, Robert Bell and Gary Sellers. Bell pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Sellers was convicted of facilitating aggravated arson and sentenced to 12 years in prison. | [20][21] |
| Michael Dodele | November 2007 | Lakeport, California | Ivan Garcia Oliver stabbed his neighbour, registered sex offender Michael Dodele, to death 35 days after he was released from prison. Oliver, the father of a child molestation victim, believed he was protecting his son. However, Dodele was not a child molester at all, as records show that his previous targets had been adult women. | [22][23] |
| Jamar Pinkney | November 2009 | Detroit, Michigan | Murdered by his father, Jamar Pinkney Sr., after confessing to molesting his 3-year-old sister. Pinkney Sr. was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 37 to 80 years in prison. | [24] |
| Bobby Rainwater Jr. | December 2011 | San Juan Capistrano, California | Stabbed to death outside his home. Rainwater had previously served a sentence of 9 years for felony assault with intent to rape. A neighbor, Robert Eugene Vasquez, suspected Rainwater was a child molester. This led to Vasquez ambushing and killing Rainwater. Vasquez was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the murder. | [25][26] |
| Jerry Wayne Ray, Gary Lee Blanton | June 2012 | Sequim, Washington | Patrick Drum murdered two sex offenders known to him, including his roommate. He pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated first degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole | [27] |
| Charles Parker, Gretchen Parker | July 2013 | Union County, South Carolina | Two Neo-Nazis, Jeremy Moody and Christian Moody, used a sex offender registry to kill a sex offender and his wife. The two pleaded guilty to murder and were sentenced to life in prison without parole. | [28] |
| John Capparelli | March 2019 | Las Vegas, Nevada | Derrick Decoste murdered Capparelli, a former Catholic priest accused of child molestation. Decoste was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2023.[29] | [30] |
| Mattieo Condoluci | May 2020 | Omaha, Nebraska | Shot 7 times in his home by James Fairbanks. Fairbanks claimed that he had witnessed Condoluci, a registered sex offender, watching children play from his driveway. | [31] |
| Charles Luitze | November 2020 | Kenosha, Wisconsin | Bryan Luizte II beat his grandfather to death with a hammer after discovering he was a convicted sex offender. | [32] |
| Gabriel Quintanilla | January 2022 | Hidalgo County, Texas | Christian Trevino, Alejandro Trevino, and Juan Melendez beat Christian and Alejandro's stepfather, Gabriel Quintanilla, to death after accusations that he had sexually abused his 9-year old daughter. | [33] |
| Daxcimo Ceja | April 2022 | Colorado Springs, Colorado | Deka Simmons shot Ceja, a wanted unregistered sex offender, dismembered his corpse, and disposed of his body in a drainage ditch. | [34] |
| Lawrence Scully | March 2023 | Grand Marais, Minnesota | Scully was killed with a shovel and a moose antler. The killer, Levi Axtell, had previously accused Scully of stalking his daughter. Note a trial is pending as of 2026. | [35][36][37] |
| Sean Showers | May 2023 | Houston, Texas | James Lewis Spencer III pretended to be a minor in order to lure Showers, an unregistered sex offender, to his location, where he shot him several times. | [38][39] |
| Michael Fosler | October 2024 | Lonoke County, Arkansas | Fosler, an accused sex offender, was shot to death by Aaron Spencer, the father of one of Fosler's accusers. Fosler was accused of repeat rape the time of his death. As of 2026, the trial for Spencer is pending. | [40] |
| David Brimmer | September 2025 | Fremont, California | Varun Saresh attacked Brimmer with a knife, resulting in an altercation that ended with Saresh slitting Brimmer's throat. Saresh had disguised himself as an accountant and attempted to appear non-threatening prior to the attack. | [41] |
| Colie Lee Daniel | March 2026 | Palm Bay, Florida | Daniel was murdered and his chopped-up remains were distributed amongst two suitcases. The killer, Lucas Sander Jones, had used a list of sex offenders from a law enforcement database to find Daniel. Jones is currently in prison for first degree murder and tampering with a dead body. | [42][43] |
Non-fatal attacks
| Attacker(s) | Date | Location | Description | Reference(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kenneth J. Kerekes Sr., Kenneth J. Kerekes Jr. | 1995 | Phillipsburg, New Jersey | Two vigilantes, notified through Megan's Law of the presence of a sex offender in a community, broke into his house and attacked a man they mistook for him. | [44][45] |
| James Johnson | June 1998 | Linden, New Jersey | A vigilante fired bullets at the house of a sex offender. | [3][46] |
| Lawrence Trant | 2003 | Concord, New Hampshire | A Canadian vigilante attempted to kill two sex offenders he had found using a government registry. | [47][48] |
| William Lynch | 2010 | San Jose, California | A 40-year-old man attacked a Catholic Priest he accused of raping him. Note was acquitted in 2012 | [49] |
| Bonita Lynn Vela | December 2013 | Franklin, Indiana | Vela held her daughter's boyfriend prisoner in her trailer for several hours and cut his penis with a box cutter after accusing him of molesting her son. She pleaded guilty to battery and was sentenced to home confinement. | [50] |
| Steven Nigg | January 2016 | Federal Correctional Institution, Englewood | Steven Nigg violently beat Jared Fogle, who was serving a 15-year prison sentence for distributing child pornography. | [51] |
| Jason Vukovich | June 2016 | Anchorage, Alaska | A vigilante used sex offender registry to assault and rob three victims. | [52][53] |
| Cain Velasquez | February 28, 2022 | Santa Clara County, California | Former professional mixed martial artist, Cain Velasquez, pursued and attempted to shoot Harry Goularte Jr., who was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing Velasquez's son at a daycare owned by Goularte's family before being released on bond. Velasquez was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison and four years of supervised probation with eligibility for parole in March 2026. | [54][55][56] |