4-24-2006 Connecticut:To find convicted sex offenders in your neighborhood, all you need is a computer with Internet access.
That's also all it takes for vigilantes to hunt down these offenders.
That's what happened this month in Maine, where 20-year-old Stephen A. Marshall shot and killed two registered sex offenders whose addresses he found on the state's on-line registry. Marshall then took a bus to Boston and shot himself to death as police officers were approaching to apprehend him.
This wasn't the first time a vigilante used a registry to find and kill sex offenders. Last August, a man in Bellingham, Wash., posed as an FBI agent to get into the home of two registered sex offenders and fatally shot both of them.
While Connecticut also lists all of its sex offenders on the Internet, vigilante retaliation has not been a problem here so far, said Sgt. J. Paul Vance, Connecticut State Police spokesman. The state's on-line registry includes photos and information about 4,053 convicted sex offenders, including each offender's name, address, birth date, race, height, weight and conviction information. Most people use the site for information, not retaliation, Vance said.
