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www.crimeincharlotte.comLast week, an anonymous person posted a message on the CinC message board about his sex offender neighbor named James William Kelley. Kelley had an outstanding warrant because he hadn’t checked in with the Sheriff’s Department in over a year. He posted the message because he was frustrated…he said he called Crime Stoppers, the Sheriff’s Office and 911 to report Kelley’s whereabouts but nothing happened.
According to North Carolina DOC records, James “Jamey” Kelley was convicted in 1995 for taking indecent liberties with a child, second degree rape and second degree sex offense against a child. A Judge agreed to a plea bargain and he went to jail for one year and seven months before he was paroled. In 1999, Kelley violated his parole for failing to register as a sex offender and he was sent back to jail for five years and nine months.
The anonymous writer mentioned in his message that Kelley lived at the same address for a couple of years. The sex offender registry reported Kelley’s residence was verified in April of 2006 and anonymous claimed he still lived there. However, Kelley’s current address is listed as ‘unknown’ in the registry. If someone in Kelley’s neighborhood searched for sex offenders in their area, Kelley would not appear in the list. I believe the sex offender registry is a wonderful tool but if the information is outdated and inaccurate, it defeats the purpose entirely!
For some reason, this situation really bothered me and I was determined to find the truth. I verified with CMPD the warrant for Kelley was active. I went uptown to the Sheriff’s Office to obtain his last known address. The woman I spoke with told me the Sheriff’s Office made several attempts to locate Kelley at the address she provided to me. She said they had a signed statement from someone verifying Kelley was no longer living at the address so they issued the warrant for his arrest.
I was not convinced. The authorities dropped the ball at least three times with this guy and I had a gut feeling anonymous was telling the truth about Kelley. I wanted to check it out but I’ve never done anything like this before so I didn’t want to do it alone. I spoke with my buddy Rob Tufano at WBTV and we met at the condo complex, located off Sharon Lakes Road.
We walked up to the possible residence of Jamey Kelley and knocked on the door. To our surprise, he answered the door and identified himself. I walked off and called 911 to report Kelley and Rob continued to talk to him. It was somewhat strange because Kelley willingly spoke to Rob on camera for a long time. He told us everything… more than any of us wanted to hear…it was sick stuff.
In short, Kelley said: In 1994, he moved in with a woman and her 10-year old son as roommates. He told us he was left alone with the boy and he performed oral sex on him. He said it only happened one time- he admitted to what he did, served his time, and hasn't done anything since he got out of prison. Kelley told us he had no idea he had a warrant for his arrest. He said the Sheriff’s Office never came to his condo to check on him, which I had a hard time believing. He was hiding in plain sight!
Steele Creek Division officers responded a while later and they were MAD! I thought I was helping but we could tell by the looks on their faces that they were not happy with us. We stood in the parking lot and waited to see Kelley in cuffs. The police were so angry with us; they moved a patrol car in front of Kelley’s building as a decoy and walked Kelley all the way around the back of the building so we wouldn’t see him. The police carted Kelley off to jail.
This is where the incident turns ugly. I debated sharing the following information for two days. I decided it was best to tell the whole story of what happened on Friday evening and not ignore a situation that made me think twice about helping CMPD…
Sergeant B of the Steele Creek Division walked up and told us that we put his officers in serious danger by doing what we did. He explained why and I completely understood his point and I felt awful. We apologized profusely to Sgt. B but he didn’t want to hear it. We explained to him that we honestly thought we were helping and we'd never do anything to put an officer in harms way.
It didn’t matter what we said, Sgt. B was fired up! The more I apologized, the madder he got and this is where the incident turned really bad… Sergeant B’s face turned red, he pointed his finger in my face and started yelling at me. He said many demeaning things that I will not get into but one statement hurt the most. He called my website “trash dot com.”
He was yelling and I stood there in complete shock!! My own mother hasn’t yelled at me the way he did… and she can yell! After a couple minutes, I found my voice and asked him to stop yelling at me. Sgt. B stopped and walked back to his patrol car. I burst into tears!
Sergeant B had every right to be angry with me. I made a huge mistake! However, I did not intentionally do anything to hurt anyone, the situation was over and thank God nobody was hurt. Sgt. B had absolutely no right to yell in my face like he did. Police Officers are supposed to be professionals. I work in a professional environment and if I treated a client half as bad as Sgt. B treated me, I would be fired on the spot. Why should it be acceptable for a police officer to act this way?
I am so glad that I have come in contact with so many wonderful CMPD officers since I moved to Charlotte, because this one rare bad apple left a terrible taste in my mouth!
The good news... James Kelley is sitting in jail with a $75,000 bond. The sex offender registry will be updated and his neighbors will know to keep their kids away from him.
