Law&Crime Sidebar - Convicted Florida Sex Offender Stalks 10-Year-Old in Home Depot: 'You’re So Beautiful'

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Starting point is 00:00:35 will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. And here he's at the Home Depot talking to this 10-year-old girl telling her, I love your Mickey ears. I think you're so beautiful. A mother and daughter running errands at a Florida store allegedly became the targets of a sexual predator, and we've got the video that police say proves how close this family came to serious danger. We're discussing the surveillance with one of the top sex abuse attorneys in the country. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Convicted sex offender Kevin Hurley is back

Starting point is 00:01:21 behind bars in Miami after police there say. The 60-year-old followed a 10-year-old girl at a store and allegedly even waited outside for her to leave. This happened back on July 4th at a Home Depot. The state attorney's office just released surveillance video from both inside and outside of the store, which we're going to get into. Now, Kevin Hurley, a little background on him, is a registered sex offender in Florida. He was convicted in 2014 of lewd or lascivious molestation of a victim 12 to 15 years old and lewd and lascivious sexual battery on a victim 12 to 15 years old. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but he was released on probation in 2017. And the girl in this case, just 10 years old is what we're talking about. Hurley, with respect to her, has been

Starting point is 00:02:08 charged now with aggravated stalking of a minor. Now, Hurley has a long rap sheet. In fact, using Truthfinder, we got a look at his past charges dating all the way back to 1994. It includes everything from possession of marijuana to grand theft, to possession of narcotics. And Of course, he's listed as a sex offender. So we typed in Hurley's name and state of residence on TruthFinder, and in less than a minute, our paid subscription gave us access to court records and information. Yeah, law and crime, we partner with TruthFinder, and we use it to get details on people involved in our stories. But by the way, even if you don't work in true crime, this can just be an excellent resource to give you some peace of mind.

Starting point is 00:02:47 It's one of the largest public record search services in the United States. And with a paid subscription service, you get access to unlimited reports about almost anyone. By the way, right now you can get 50% off of your first month of confidential background reports. Just go to truthfinder.com slash LC Sidebar. Okay, so now going back to this, I want to take you through the surveillance video. And to do that, I'm joined right now by a special guest, sex abuse attorney John Clune. John, thanks so much for coming back here on Sidebar. You know, when I heard this story, when I read it, the first thing that came to my mind I thought about was Cherished Perry Winkle.

Starting point is 00:03:21 It happened years ago, eight-year-old girl who was abducted, raped, murdered by a sex offender, Donald Smith out in Jacksonville, Florida, took her out of a Walmart. I think he was around the same age as the person of Mr. Hurley, who we're talking about here, he was convicted and he was sentenced to death. And it struck me how many times these things could happen or could happen at these kinds of stores. Yeah, and this in particular is a really dangerous situation.

Starting point is 00:03:50 You know, it's unusual for people like this to approach a child with their parents. there. We have to think about what was going to go down, what was actually going to happen, that the child is with their mother, was there going to be some sort of physical altercation with the mom and take the child? We don't know, but this is a particularly dangerous set of facts. Yeah, and I want to go through this. So I'm going to play this video so everybody sees it. Hurley is the man there with the white hair wearing a tan shirt and camo shorts. And he seems to enter and stand in line at the return area. And as he moves up in line, He appears to look at some of the Fourth of July merchandise that they have out before he moves out of frame.

Starting point is 00:04:31 And an overhead shot of the customer service area shows this 10-year-old girl and her mother, they're blurred for privacy. And you can see Hurley walk past them and seem to say something before he hands his merchandise to the cashier. There's no sound on the surveillance, but Hurley appears to look over at the mom and the daughter a couple of times. According to an arrest report, Hurley reportedly told the girl, I love your Mickey Ian. years and I think you're too big to be in that shopping cart. So the little girl reportedly took off the ears while Hurley was getting his refund. And that's when he reportedly said, I think you're so beautiful. John, let's stop right there. If this is true, and these are allegations at this point, what does that tell you? Well, it's a particularly bold individual. Like I was saying before,

Starting point is 00:05:18 to do this in front of the child's parent is really unusual. And to make a statement like, I think you're so beautiful in front of other adults, the mom, whoever else is in the checkout. This is somebody who is not, you know, engaging in, you know, kind of the more secretive grooming behavior that we usually see from somebody who is a child sex offender. Yeah, that's a really good point. Now, going back to this video, Hurley appears to wander around for like a minute before looking at items along the outside, the customer service area, pacing up and down the row. and you can see him pick up what appears to be a bottle of bug spray and then allegedly glancing up at the victim over the top of the shelf.

Starting point is 00:05:59 Now, the girl's mother reported that this guy was acting erratically, so she takes a picture of him. And as part of his probation, by the way, Hurley is required to wear a GPS monitor. It's difficult to see in the video because he's also wearing black socks, but it does appear that Hurley has a small ankle monitor on his right leg. And John, I think that's interesting whether you can see it or not, because according to the police, Hurley, quote, cannot have unsupervised contact with minors, including contact without the supervising adult being aware of his conviction. Now, this is an interesting question because if you see somebody with an ankle monitor and it doesn't appear that this mom did, but if you do see it, does that put a parent on notice and then it becomes okay if that person then speaks to their

Starting point is 00:06:45 child or just because they have an ankle monitor doesn't mean you know about them being a sex vendor. Yeah, you know, I always feel like an ankle monitor kind of puts us all on notice. If I see somebody walking around with an ankle monitor, there's some reason why a court has decided that they want to keep an eye on this person while they're out on whether it's probation or parole. So I think that would be a significant thing. But a lot of times, you know, particularly wearing a black sock, that's probably intentional. So it blends in with the ankle monitor, whether it's for nefarious reasons or just not wanting to look like you're, you know, out on parole or probation. So I think that, you know, the mom

Starting point is 00:07:19 did a good job. I mean, she may or may not have seen the actual ankle bracelet, but something, you know, kind of raised her hackles that this was not a safe individual, probably the comment about how beautiful her daughter was. But, you know, she did some smart things to try to keep her kids safe. And by the way, just to be clear, the monitor wouldn't have prevented this in any way, right? No, that's the thing with the monitors. I mean, you're just all that the parole or probation officer sees is that you're in Home Depot. And that probably doesn't get relayed to them unless something were to actually go wrong. So the monitor only tracks where somebody has been. And in this case, it can be helpful because, you know, there's going to be less of a chance that he could say

Starting point is 00:07:59 that, you know, maybe it wasn't him or something like that. They'll know where he was on the day in question. And also because we have this surveillance footage that we've been going through. So according to the arrest affidavit, quote, after pacing the aisle at least three times, the defendant attempted to approach the victim from behind, but is deterred and resumes walking around the area, before leaving the store. Now that is not the end of it, because when he gets out of the parking lot, Hurley allegedly parks his car illegally in front of the store to watch the door. He actually stays there for about 10 minutes.

Starting point is 00:08:31 And the mom told police that she was worried something may happen, so a store employee helps her get her items out to the parking lot. And you can see them leaving the store and walking behind Hurley's car. According to the report, the mom noticed he was there, took a photo of his license place, He then seems to back up the car and allegedly follows them down the parking lot aisle, and he stops at a stop sign but doesn't appear to start moving again. Now, the girl and her mother are just across from him in another parking lot. A rooftop camera gives us kind of a better angle of what's going on.

Starting point is 00:09:06 We've sped up the video a bit, but you can see Hurley backing up his car, getting the stop sign, staying there despite the parking lot being very busy. And according to the arrest affidavit, the mom didn't want Hurley to know what her car looked like. so they were standing in an empty space. And Hurley's there for about three minutes when a man in a black truck pulls up, confronts him. You can see him point toward the girl and her mom who are still with the Home Depot employee.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Hurley allegedly drives away and slowly passes them. So thank goodness that there was people who are helping this family out. Police find Hurley about two weeks later on July 23rd. They arrest him on that charge of aggravated stalking of a minor, which is when a person willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows harasses or cybersecurity, stalks a child under 16 years of age, and this is a felony. Now, is this aggravated stalking,

Starting point is 00:09:55 John? Because could he say, you can't prove I was following her? Maybe I wasn't doing this willfully or maliciously. What's your take? Well, I mean, just from watching the video, it looks bad. And one thing you have to keep in mind is we can see the video, but it was probably, I'm suspecting it was worse than what we see in the video in terms of the following and the kind a creepy behavior because if you ask most moms, how many times in your life have you actually asked a store employee to walk you to your car because you're creeped out about another individual who's shopping there? I'm sure that if you listen to the mom described what happened, it was something more significant than we can even see on the video. If you see the video of the vehicle

Starting point is 00:10:38 backing up and then following them, that's the piece that I think is where it gets particularly scary. And as a defendant, you can certainly give an alternate explanation. You know, given what we know about his background, it seems like the intent is, you know, is something that a jury would really have a hard time, you know, listening to an explanation that he was just minding his own business. If he's convicted, what could he face? I read five years in prison, but I don't know if I'm right about that with this charge. And I don't know if given his past history, if it could be more more than that. Yeah. So there's definitely so a couple things. I mean, he's it's five years for the underlying charge. This is an aggravated version. So there may be an aggravated range that he can

Starting point is 00:11:20 be sentenced to. But the thing that I think is significant is, you know, he only did three years on his sentence for child molestation, which is kind of disturbing in its own regard. But if he's on probation or parole, that means he has additional time that he could be sentenced to on that underlying charge. So even if the following in public is something that's limited and capped at five, years. The underlying charges and what time he may have left on those charges could be even more significant than the current charges at the Home Depot. That's a good point. That's a good point. And a Miami Day judge set his bond at $10,000, which is our understanding higher than the average bond for a charge like this. Let's hear how that went down. If it was a different type of offense,

Starting point is 00:12:02 totally unrelated, then I would be setting the standard bond. So for those reasons, I'm setting the elevated bond. Mr. Hurley, you, We'll see Judge Kabarga, probably tomorrow. John, is that appropriate? $10,000? You know, I think we've gotten to a point where bonds are a lot lower than they used to be. I would feel more comfortable with a much higher bond that would make it difficult for him to get out. But we've kind of gotten away from that as kind of our main focus on bonds.

Starting point is 00:12:33 So it's appropriate that he has a higher than average bond. I would be more comfortable with a higher bond than $10,000. well according to the miami dade jail website curly is still behind bars and his next hearing is scheduled for september 19 john clune thank you so much for coming on appreciate it thanks jesse all right everybody that's all we have for you right now here on sidebar thank you so much for joining us and as always please subscribe on apple podcast spotify youtube wherever you get your podcasts i'm jesse weber i'll speak to you next time You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series

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Law&Crime Sidebar - Convicted Florida Sex Offender Stalks 10-Year-Old in Home Depot: 'You’re So Beautiful'

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