CHELSEA KING - 17 yo - Poway/Rancho Bernardo CA

A man who pleaded guilty to raping and murdering two teenage girls
admitted involvement in other "assault-type" crimes but did not
implicate himself in additional killings, authorities said Monday.John
Albert Gardner III spoke with investigators for more than two hours
after he was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility
of parole for the attacks on 17-year-old Chelsea King and 14-year-old
Amber Dubois, San Diego County sheriff's Lt. Dennis Brugos said."He
didn't shed a lot of light, but he did speak about other cases," said
Brugos, who declined to elaborate about victims or provide other
details.The remarks came during a news conference involving a
number of San Diego County's top law enforcement officials who had
repeatedly refused to answer questions about the case since Gardner, 31,
was arrested Feb. 28 in suburban Escondido.Sheriff Bill Gore
said the news conference was intended to fill in the blanks, but
authorities revealed little new information about the case that sparked
widespread calls to change the way California tracks and punishes child
sex predators.Escondido Police Chief Jim Maher did acknowledge a
misstep after an officer was flagged down by a woman motorist who
reported she was being followed by a man in a nearby Ford Focus.The
officer approached the car and questioned Gardner, who was with his
girlfriend's 3-year-old son. However, the officer didn't pursue the
stalking report further because the woman left the scene and has never
been identified.Gardner was cited for driving with an open
container of alcohol in the April 2009 incident, but the information was
not given to detectives investigating the disappearance of Dubois
nearly two months earlier while she was walking to school."Revisiting
this, it certainly would have been better if the officer had made
personal contact with the detective," Maher said. "He didn't."Neighbors
had described seeing a red truck near the spot where Dubois vanished.
But Maher noted that Gardner was not driving a red truck when he was
cited for having the open container.The officer "did everything
he could under the law," Maher said.Gardner, a registered sex
offender in Escondido at the time, didn't become a suspect in the Dubois
case until he was arrested nearly a year after her disappearance by
police investigating the King abduction.Days after his arrest,
Gardner led authorities to the remains of Dubois in a rugged area north
of San Diego.Also Monday, San Diego police Capt. Jim Collins
defended his department's response to a jogger's report that she was
tackled by a man in December near the spot where King was attacked two
months later.Some critics have said police should have done more
to alert residents about the first attack, which was initially treated
as an attempted robbery because the assailant demanded money.Gardner
pleaded guilty to attempting to rape the jogger, who escaped after
smashing his nose with her elbow and later spoke at his sentencing
hearing.Collins said police attempted to have the jogger meet
with a sketch artist, but there were scheduling conflicts on both sides
before she returned to college in Colorado.Police collected DNA
from the woman's elbow that was tested after King disappeared but showed
no link to Gardner, police said."We didn't have a lot of
information on the suspect," Collins said.King's disappearance
unleashed a massive investigation in which the FBI said it searched 363
homes near the park with the consent of residents.Authorities
declined to detail how Gardner abducted King and Dubois.Carrie
McGonigle, the mother of Dubois, appeared on ABC's "Good Morning
America" and said Gardner told her in a jailhouse interview that he
trapped the girl on a fenced street and forced her into his car.Gardner
was previously convicted of molesting a 13-year-old girl in 2000.

State parole agents missed numerous chances to send a convicted child
molester back to prison before he raped and killed two San Diego-area
teenagers, the corrections department said Wednesday.John Albert
Gardner III wore a tracking device for a year before he finished parole
in September 2008, but his parole agent did not review the data because
he was considered a low-risk sex offender, Inspector General David Shaw
said.The data from the GPS ankle bracelet showed numerous
violations by Gardner, including the apparent commission of a new felony
by going to a state prison parking lot, the report said.He
repeatedly violated other parole conditions, including getting within
100 yards of places where children gather, that also could have put him
back in prison, the report said.Better monitoring "could have
sent Gardner back to prison, making it impossible for him to murder two
young girls and commit the attempted sexual assault," Shaw said in his
report. "The department did not identify Gardner's crime and parole
violations because it did not require parole agents to review the GPS
data."In addition, the public is endangered because the
department continues to poorly track 4,500 other sex offender parolees
who are not considered high-risk, Shaw said.After Gardner was
released from parole, he raped and murdered 17-year-old Chelsea King and
14-year-old Amber Dubois in San Diego County.Gardner, 31,
pleaded guilty to those crimes and was sentenced last month to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. He also pleaded guilty to a
separate charge of attempted rape.Gardner was a registered sex
offender off parole and living in Lake Elsinore at the time of the
attacks. In 2000, he was released after serving five years of a six-year
sentence for molesting a 13-year-old girl.Matthew Cate,
secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in a
letter to Shaw that the report criticized a parole policy that no
longer existed. The department changed its policy in March to more
actively supervise even parolees considered less dangerous.Previously,
the movements of lower-risk parolees were reviewed only when they were
suspected of a new crime or misconduct. Now agents are required to
randomly review their movements for two, 48-hour period each month.Shaw's
report said the new policy, "though improved, remains deficient"
because random reviews are unlikely to reveal violations. It still
ignores 87 percent of the GPS data collected for lower-risk offenders.Gardner
told the inspector general that he drove to Richard J. Donovan State
Prison on July 12, 2008, to drop off and pick up a friend so she could
visit a prison inmate.The San Diego County District Attorney's
Office told Shaw's investigators that prosecutors would have charged
Gardner with a third strike offense for visiting the prison, potentially
sending him to prison for 25 years to life.The report found
Gardner violated at least three other conditions of his parole on a
regular basis. The offenses included living within a half-mile of a
school, renting a storage facility and leaving his home in violation of a
curfew.In hindsight, Cate said, the answer would be to review
every offender's movements every day. But he said it was unclear how
this can be done, given limitations on technology and overworked parole
agents.Steps could include setting priorities for which
suspicious movements or electronic violation alerts should be
investigated or reviewing parolees' movements in higher volume to detect
patterns.

A man serving life in prison for the murders of two California
teenagers is sharing a prison unit with cult leader Charles Manson.Prison
officials said John Albert Gardner III was transferred last week to the
Corcoran State Prison near Bakersfield, which houses the state's only
protective housing unit.Gardner has his own cell but can
socialize with other inmates in the unit including Manson and Mikhail
Markhasev, who was convicted of killing Bill Cosby's son.Gardner
pleaded guilty in April to the murders of 17-year-old Chelsea King and
14-year-old Amber Dubois.Chelsea's body was found days after she
was attacked while running in a park in February. Amber's remains were
found in March, more than a year after she disappeared while walking to
school.

The family of slain California teen Chelsea King says they are moving
back to Illinois.

In a letter posted Friday on the website chelseaslight.org,
Brent and Kelly King and their 13-year-old son Tyler said they will
move next month to Naperville, Illinois, where they lived for 10 years
before coming to the San Diego suburb of Poway in 2007.

Brent King wrote that after the emotional turmoil that followed 17-year-old
Chelsea's murder the family wanted to return to a place where Tyler
could have both familiar surroundings and anonymity.

Convicted sex offender John Albert Gardner III has pleaded guilty to the murders
of Chelsea and 14-year-old Amber Dubois. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Family's Open Letter

To our family of Chelsea’s Light changemakers,

We want to share with you, as close to first-hand as possible, some news from Kelly,
Tyler and me.

In January of this year, with Chelsea preparing to
head off to college, and me actively looking for work, we decided we
would put our home on the market in late spring and downsize here in
Poway unless a job offer took us elsewhere.

Two weeks prior to
Chelsea going missing, we received an unsolicited offer on our home,
without it being formally listed. All four of us sat down as a family
and talked about selling our home, and accepted the offer with the
intent of downsizing in Poway.

As you are all aware, our lives
were forever changed on February 25th. We have experienced the deepest
pain a family can endure, and you in return have given us the deepest
outpouring of unconditional love and support we could imagine.

As Kelly and I begin to map out how to best move forward in our “new
normal,” our first priority is our son. After many hours of painstaking
contemplation, several heart to heart conversations with Tyler and with
the trusted counsel of our closest friends, family and health
professionals, we have made the decision to relocate to Naperville,
Illinois where we lived for 10 years prior to our relocation to Poway.

It is in Naperville where Tyler will be able to enter a familiar community
with a sense of anonymity, which for someone of his age and stage in
life, is of the utmost importance to his well being. It is in
Naperville, that Tyler will be reunited with a group of friends with
whom he has remained in close and regular contact with since our move to
California. This tight-knit group will welcome him with open arms. It
is in Naperville where Kelly and I feel we can provide Tyler with an
environment that will enable him to best adjust to his new life without
his best friend Chelsea.

As certain as we are that we have made
the right decision, it did not come easily and without trepidation. Our
San Diego community has cradled us in the darkest time of our lives and
made it possible for us to put one foot in front of the other in a
moment when it felt utterly impossible. The lifetime friendships we have
formed are sacred and in the months since Chelsea went missing, we have
been brought to our knees by the outpouring of love, compassion,
support, generosity and kindness of this magnificent community.

To stay connected to each of you in the community, and continue to nurture
and expand San Diego-based Chelsea’s Light Foundation nationally, we
have secured a second residence in San Diego where we will commute to
and from Naperville on a monthly basis. We have set up our Chelsea’s
Light Foundation office in space graciously offered to us rent-free by a
San Diego company.

We look forward to staying close to all of
our friends and supporters not only in San Diego, but all of California.


Additionally, we look forward to reacquainting with our friends
in Naperville and providing Tyler with a sense of normalcy in these very trying times.

In closing, we sincerely thank each of you who
have gifted us with your love, prayers, emails, letters, calls,
personal time to support Chelsea’s Law, participation in Chelsea’s Light
events, and your remarkable dedication and actions to help protect
children in our Chelsea’s name.

Brent, Kelly and Tyler

Few political issues are as difficult to tackle as laws dealing with California's ever-growing number of convicted sex offenders.
For years, experts on the issue have complained that state laws were
determined more by sound-bite politics than policies that improve public
safety and protect children. Elected leaders, wary of accusations that
they were being soft on sexual predators, have historically stayed clear
of reforming such laws, except to make them harsher.
But this week, Sacramento lawmakers will take up a measure that has
been greatly revised since its introduction earlier this year to include
provisions such as ongoing treatment for sex offenders and sentences
tailored to the severity of a crime.
Backers say the changes to AB1844 would focus the state's limited resources on the worst child molesters
and will make great strides toward fixing how California deals with
people found guilty of sex crimes - even if, at first glance, some of
its provisions appear to ease restrictions for some convicted criminals.
Perhaps just as unusual - the revised bill is the result of a rare
bipartisan collaboration.
The proposal is called Chelsea's Law, after a San Diego teen killed by a registered sex offender
in February. Like many legislative responses to horrific crimes against
children, it began as a punitive measure that would have increased the
sentences and parole terms given to child molesters.
The changes made last month include tailoring those sentencing and
parole requirements to specific crimes, instead of taking a
one-size-fits-all approach. It would match treatment approaches to
ongoing assessments of offenders, and it would use polygraph tests for
parolees.
The measure still doesn't tackle what many experts consider one of
the biggest failures of current sex offender law: restrictions on how
close convicted sex offenders can live to places like parks and schools.
That restriction has forced thousands of parolees into homelessness,
which critics say actually hurts public safety because the offenders
become harder to track.
However, the newly proposed changes do conform with many of the other
recommendations that the state's own experts - the California Sex
Offender Management Board - have made for years.
"The bill, as introduced, was trying to get at some solutions to
pretty complex problems, and as it went through the process it got
better and better," said Robert Coombs, a victim's rights advocate who
chairs the board. The bill still includes harsher sentences for violent
sex crimes against children, lifetime sentences for the most horrific
offenses and lifetime parole for others - "tough on crime" approaches
that are easy to sell to both lawmakers and voters.


New approach
"There are still some elements of just straight-up
sentencing enhancements there, but for the most part it is stepping away
from a just over-generalized approach and starting to take a look at
what we know works instead of what we feel works," Coombs said.
The deal worked out between Republican Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher of San Diego and San Francisco
Democratic Sen. Mark Leno, chairman of the public safety committee,
represents a marked departure from past efforts to tighten those laws.
In 2006, for example, Republican sponsors of a bill known as Jessica's Law went straight to the ballot after the measure was killed in the Assembly Public Safety committee, which Leno then chaired.
That measure included the restriction on convicted sex offenders
living within 2,000 feet of schools or parks. Leno was vilified for his
opposition, but as an April Chronicle story noted, the residency rules
in Jessica's Law are now under attack by an increasing number of state
officials, law enforcement experts and some victims' advocates for
forcing sex offenders into homelessness.
That problem is particularly acute in dense, urban areas such as San
Francisco, where 84 percent of paroled sex offenders are transient.
Studies have shown there is no connection between where a person
lives and whether they will commit another crime, and that instability -
such as homelessness - can actually make a sex offender more likely to
re-offend. Other states - including Iowa and Georgia - have recently
scaled back or eliminated similar residency restrictions. As part of
their agreement, Fletcher pledged to revisit the residency issue with
Leno next year. He hasn't promised to support a potential bill or ballot
measure, "but I am committed to working with him, because there's a
fair conversation to be had about what's in the best interest of public
safety," Fletcher said.

Funding Chelsea's Law
For Leno, one of the biggest issues was reining in the cost of longer parole and prison sentences.
In order to offset the anticipated increase in inmates, Fletcher
agreed to raise the prison threshold for those convicted of an unrelated
crime: repeat offenders that commit petty theft. The change means more thieves will stay in county jails instead of state prison.
Even with that change, it's not entirely clear what Chelsea's Law
will cost; an updated analysis is expected to be released within the
next week. The original bill was estimated to increase state costs by
tens to hundreds of millions of dollars over the next two decades.
However, both Leno and Fletcher argue that portions of Chelsea's Law
could ultimately save the state money while better protecting children.
That's because the state will be required to closely monitor a parolee's
risk of re-offending, and to tailor treatment based on those risks -
likely resulting in fewer victims, less recidivism and lower prison
costs.
This containment model has been proved to work in other states, they said.
Chelsea's Law is not without some opposition: Defense attorneys and
the ACLU have concerns about the longer prison sentences and the lack of
treatment when offenders are in prison. Coombs also said it remains to
be seen how well state officials implement the bill. But, he added,
Chelsea's Law is a step in the right direction after Jessica's Law,
which he considers a failure.
"We're left to pick up the pieces after someone introduces an
initiative that is not well thought out, doesn't address a well-realized
problem and is based more on bumper sticker politics," he said. "This
is probably one of the bigger steps."

A state lawmaker who wants to
put certain child molesters in prison for life after a first offense is
trying to reduce the cost of his bill. Republican Assemblyman
Nathan Fletcher of San Diego has offered several amendments to the
legislation, some of which would save money elsewhere in state
corrections spending. One includes allowing many people convicted of
petty theft to serve their time in county jails, rather than being sent
to prison. Fletcher says the state needs to focus on putting people in prison who pose a real threat to rape and murder. The
bill, Chelsea's Law, is named after Chelsea King, a 17-year-old who was
murdered this year in San Diego County. AB1844 is to be considered by
the Senate Appropriations Committee this week.

The parents of Chelsea King are opening up about how their family is
trying to heal following the murder of their daughter earlier this year.

King died at the hands of a convicted sex offender who buried her body in a shallow grave in San Diego. John Gardner pleaded guilty to King's murder and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Chelsea's family is hoping to take this tragedy and use it to help
prevent other families from feeling and loss they are going through
right now. "You have to choose hope and you have to be an agent for
change, that's what our daughter would ask of us," said Brent King,
Chelsea's father. Chelsea King would have turned 18 last month,
and she likely would have started college this week. Instead, her family
is marking a bitter sweet victory in the California legislature and
vowing to bring their cause to other states, including Illinois. For Kelly and Brent King, life without their daughter is a day to day struggle. "We're
learning every day how to navigate our new life. It's not getting
easier, we're just learning to steer through the days," said Kelly King.
It was six months ago today that Chelsea's body was discovered
near San Diego. She had been raped and murdered while out jogging by a
registered sex offender who had broken parole and, unbeknown to
police, had killed another girl one year earlier. "The way our daughter was taken only spoke to one thing. It was a preventable issue," said Brent King. Since
then the Kings have become outspoken advocates for tougher laws against
sex offenders, including a mandatory life sentence for some first-time
child predators. On Tuesday, a bill they spearheaded in California named Chelsea's Law passed a crucial vote in that state's senate. "I had tears streaming down my face. I was so, so very proud," said Kelly King. After
three years in California, the Kings, earlier this summer, returned to
Naperville where they had previously lived for ten years. It was less a
move than a search for the familiar and a chance at a fresh start for
their 14-year-old son Tyler. "In San Diego, Tyler is known as Chelsea's brother. Here, Tyler can be Tyler," said Brent King. "Even
the simplest things in life will be altered by our pain and our grief.
We don't recognize each other. We don't recognize ourselves," Kelly King
said during a statement in court in May. When asked if
returning to Naperville has helped, she said, "it's been a tremendous
comfort. We've been so blessed in so many ways. "Chelsea was
running towards becoming a marathon runner. And she continues to let us
know, 'hey, great job in California.' That was our test, right? We're
going to keep running," said Brent King. "This is our marathon," said Kelly King. The
Kings have started a foundation called Chelsea's Light, and their
Facebook page has almost 100,000 supporters. They say they plan to work
on get-tough legislation against child predators in Illinois, just like
they did in California. Their first priority is to get settled in
Naperville. Their son Tyler started high school this week.

A special 5-mile-long message in honor of slain Poway High teenager Chelsea King will appear briefly high in the sky Thursday above the North County.

At 3:30 p.m., Worldwide Sky Advertising will write out a message that "celebrates the love the San Diego community has shown for Chelsea, and the King family's love for the San Diego community," said family spokeswoman Sara Muller Fraunces.

The message comes the same day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be at Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park to sign legislation named for Chelsea. Brent and Kelly King, Chelsea's parents, will be present for the morning signing event, along with the bill's author, Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, R-San Diego.

Assembly Bill 1844, also known as Chelsea's Law, requires a life sentence without the possibility of parole for forcible sex acts against minors. It would also tighten sex offense parole guidelines and require lifelong tracking of certain sex offenders.

Thursday's skywriting message was arranged by Padres announcer Mark Grant and friends of the King family, and underwritten by an anonymous donor, according to the spokeswoman. It will for sure be visible from Poway High School, where Chelsea would have graduated last June had she not been raped and murdered by sex offender John Albert Gardner III on Feb. 25.

The Kings and their extended family planned to view today's skywriting privately from a hilltop spot somewhere in Poway.

Pilot Greg Stinis will spend about 10 minutes writing out the message over 5 miles, Fraunces said, adding that each character will be as tall as the Empire State Building.

Gardner, 31, was sentenced in May to two life terms without parole for murdering and sexually assaulting Chelsea and for abducting, raping and fatally stabbing 14-year-old Amber Dubois of Escondido a year earlier.

A package of bills promoted by Amber's father that are intended to improve law enforcement handling of missing person cases also await the governor's signature.

After helping push Chelsea’s Law through the California Legislature, Brent and Kelly King announced Wednesday five initiatives for their Chelsea’s Light organization. The foundation was formed after the murder of their 17-year-old daughter, Chelsea, who went missing Feb. 25 while running near Lake Hodges in Rancho Bernardo.The organization will focus on enacting Chelsea’s Law throughout the nation; providing scholarships; funding a peer counseling program at a California high school; developing an outreach and support program for victims of sexual assault; and improving safety education in schools. The Kings said in a news release that they are looking at Florida , Ohio , Colorado or Texas as the next state where they will lobby for Chelsea’s Law, which went into effect Sept. 9, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed it. The law imposes tougher penalties on and increases parole supervision for sex offenders. Scholarships will pay for college tuition, awarded based on academic merit and community service, and activities that “Chelsea held dear such as music, art, literature, athletics and preserving our environment,” the release said.Poway High School has a peer counseling program in which Chelsea served as a counselor. The Kings want Chelsea’s Light to help pay for a similar program at a high school. The organization is based in Carmel Valley, in an office donated to the Kings by a leasing services company, MD7. It is currently staffed by volunteers, with the Kings and Chelsea’s uncle, Chuck McCully, as board members. They plan to add three non-family board members soon, the release said. They hope to eventually have a 10-member board of directors.John Albert Gardner, a registered sex offender, is serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole for the rape and murder of Chelsea and Escondido teen Amber Dubois.

The parents of murdered San Diego County
teenager Chelsea King said Friday that they will not sue the state of
California over its failure to put the sex offender who later killed
their daughter back in prison after he violated his parole for an
earlier attack on a young girl.
Brent and Kelly King had filed a claim with the state, often a precursor to a lawsuit.
The claim was not approved.
In a news conference, the Kings said a lawsuit would be a long and
difficult process and require them to relive the agony of their
daughter's murder. Chelsea, 17, an honor student at Poway High School,
was abducted in late February while jogging near Lake Hodges.

John Gardner III pleaded guilty to murdering Chelsea King and an
Escondido teenager and is serving a life sentence. He had served four
years in prison for attacking a 13-year-old girl; although he violated
his parole on several occasions he was allowed to remain free, officials said.
The Kings, working with Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher (R-La Jolla),
convinced the state Legislature to pass what is called Chelsea's Law
calling for tougher sentences and better monitoring of sex criminals who
target young victims. The bill was signed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Kings said they hope to meet with Gov. Jerry Brown about additional moves to safeguard children from sex criminals.