Gun rights advocates believe that defensive uses of firearms save
thousands of Americans from becoming crime victims each year. Here is a
case where a serial rapist was captured by armed citizens.
Unfortunately, he was turned loose by the criminal justice system and we
can count the number of pre-teen victims he later assaulted.

In the early 1980s, a rapist was terrorizing women and children in San
Antonio, Texas.
He had stalked hundreds of victims, peeping into their windows. Once
they went to sleep, he would break into their homes–if the victim
continued to sleep, he would molest her, but if she awoke, he forcibly
raped her. In many cases, his victims were as young as eight. Police had
no clue as to the assailant’s identity but the local newspapers had a
name for him: the Ski Mask Rapist.

In 1983, he broke into a house at 931 Sumner Lane. He assaulted the
woman who lived there, then fled undetected. One month later, he
returned. He again raped the hapless victim and again escaped leaving no
clues.

This was enough for the woman. She moved out. But this time, a concerned
neighbor decided to set a trap for the rapist. Gene Allred, in an
interview with ABC’s 20/20, said, “I figured [if] this guy was crazy
enough to come back the second time, he’d come back again.”

With permission from his former neighbor, Allred and his son-in-law
installed microphones in the house next door, and placed a mannequin
wearing a wig on the bed. They made sure to leave a nightlight on so
that the rapist could see the outline of his intended victim underneath
the covers. They also kept their handguns at the ready.

Sure enough, almost exactly one month later, the rapist returned. Allred
was asleep when the microphones indicated that someone was breaking into
his former neighbor’s house. He later said, “We grabbed our pants and
pistols and my son-in-law went out the front door…and I went out the
back.” Other family members surrounded the house to keep the intruder
from escaping. Allred and his son-in-law encountered the man attempting
to leave through a window. He ran into an alley, but was tackled by
Allred’s son-in-law. A brief struggle ensued until Allred pulled his
gun, subdued the man, and handcuffed him.

Police were called, and they arrested Joseph Frank Smith whom they
suspected of being the Ski Mask Rapist. Although he later admitted his
guilt in more than 200 cases, he was tried and convicted only of raping
the woman who had lived in the now-empty house.

Had the story ended there, an armed citizen would have saved 83 more
children the trauma of sexual assault.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end with Smith’s capture. His attorney
convinced the court that he was a candidate for a new procedure called
“chemical castration.” Instead of imprisonment, the convicted rapist was
released on probation with the stipulation that he take Depo-Provera and
maintain weekly counseling sessions. The drug is a birth control pill
that reduces testosterone levels. This, his lawyer claimed, would reduce
his sex drive so that he no longer had a desire to rape women and
children.

Smith moved to Virginia to attend counseling sessions at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore. He seemed to have changed and was featured on
“60 Minutes” as a poster boy for chemical castration. Texas authorities
eventually lost track of him, and Virginia police never knew about him.
Smith married one of his counselors, stopped taking Depo-Provera, and
eventually had children of his own.

But in the early 1990s, in Virginia, a series of rapes of pre-teen girls
began. Police were stymied. An intruder would break into homes where
children were sleeping. If they didn’t wake up, he would molest them–if
they did….well, you guessed it.

Then, in 1993, Smith’s wife caught him molesting their eight-year-old
daughter and two other children who were sleeping over. Police were
called. When they ran his DNA through the state-wide database, it came
back positive for the rape of a five-year-old girl. Smith later
confessed to assaulting 83 other young girls and was sentenced to forty
years in prison.

While there are numerous issues we could discuss about this case, I’ll
concentrate only on the collateral benefits of guns.

Each time a citizen uses a gun to kill, incapacitate, or capture a
criminal, many other victims are spared. While it is usually difficult
to put a numerical figure on the number of crimes stopped, in this case
we can see that 83 young girls would not have been subjected to the
trauma of assault had Texas authorities kept Joseph Frank Smith
incarcerated.

After having been captured by an ingenious family of gun-owners, Smith
should never have been allowed to walk the streets again. After he was
turned loose, Gene Allred was among those who were enraged. He later
recalled, “I was numb….We could have shot him out there in that alley.
That would have been the best for Mr. Smith and for his victims.”

Had Smith been shot and killed, 83 innocents would have been spared.
Unfortunately, the criminal justice system failed miserably, and the
collateral damage to those children is immeasurable.

Robert A. Waters is the author of “The Best Defense: True Stories of
Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves with a Firearm.” His second
book containing similar cases is due out in May.

http://www.robertwaters.net