http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=55117
Dangerous sex offender wanders homeless in Dallas
DALLAS - Larry Lee Edwards, labeled a violent, dangerous sex offender by the state, calls West Ellendale Avenue home. Any place along the avenue will do. He has no permanent address.
Authorities may find him in his sleeping bag under a shrub.
He was freed recently from the Santiam Correctional Institution in Salem after serving 18 years for kidnapping and sodomizing a 12-year-old Salem boy.
He is one of only nine people every labeled this way by the state, and on West Ellendale, some people are jumpy.
"Even if he was going to try to be a better person, his life is miserable right now," said Rebecca Moore, mother of a 3-year-old girl. "That could be another good reason for him to go do another crime. The world's against him, and he doesn't even have a place to live."
Edwards registered with Polk County as a transient sex offender but the county has no halfway houses for people like him. Yet he must serve his six months of probation in Polk County, where the crime took place.
Although probation officers would prefer all sex offenders register with an address at which they can be found, some have no place to go.
So they register as transients.
About 130 sex offenders statewide are registered as transients or without addresses, said Dan Malin, manager of the Oregon State Police's sex-offender registration program.
Edwards uses food stamps. His dinner one night was a rotisserie chicken from a grocery store, an apple and a banana.
He carries his few possessions in a plastic grocery bag, wearing headphones through which he listens to a small radio he purchased in jail. The radio is still etched with his prisoner number.
Officials believe the risk is high that Edwards will commit another sexual assault, based on psychological profiles and other reports.
Edwards says he regrets his crimes and wants his victims to know he is repentant.
"I never want to go back to prison. That's absolute. I never want to create any more victims," he said. "I'm going to do my best to show and prove to people that I'm very sincere about wanting to make it."
Polk County probation officials said Edwards has impressed them so far.
He must present himself to a probation officer twice a day and get sex offender counseling once a week.
"He's putting forth more effort than any of us can recall with any other offender," said Marty Silbernagel, director of Polk County Community Corrections. "We're seeing a tremendous amount of effort on his part to make things work this go-round."
County officials would prefer to have him at a permanent address. Edwards said he spends his days looking for work and a place to live. It's slow going on both pursuits. The job market is tight, and his past doesn't help.
Edwards considers himself a handyman and would like to study computer science but said those plans are on hold until he gets his life sorted out.
"I'm at a roadblock because I'm not sure how to get a place without money," Edwards said. And under his probation, he is not allowed to live near children.
"All it takes is one child on a specific street and I can't live there," he said.
He heard of the attention his release had generated on the radio and later in a newspaper.
He said he committed two offenses - the 1985 assault for which he served time and a 1980 sodomy charge for which he was tried as a juvenile. "It never entered my mind that one plus one equals 400," Edwards said.
"I'm not a Jeffrey Dahmer. I'm not a Westley Allan Dodd. Those are notorious offenders and I shouldn't be compared to them."