Ed: This is just Part 1! What a diatribe! Read it if you can stand to...
"Pedophiles are vampires, they never stop til you drive a stake through their heart and they die."
These deadly words roared like thunder from the anguished voice of Frank Sedita, the district attorney for Erie County in Buffalo, New York.
Sedita's wrath describes a diminutive man with his shoulders hunched over. 5"5, 130-140 pounds, with snow white hair and piercing blue eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses.
His name: Theodore A. Sypnier.
In order to understand Sedita's anger directed toward this frail senior citizen, you must first know the history behind this very old and crusty villain.
He's not 99 and a half. He's 100! And at 100, Mr. Theodore Sypnier is not only America's oldest pedophile to be released from prison, he is, so far, the oldest pedophile under parole supervision in the world!
This past November, the career pedophile was released from prison and sent to a halfway house after serving 15 months for violating parole, stemming from a 2000 conviction on multiple counts of child molestation and the sodomy of children.
If District Attorney Sedita had the last word against the habitual child-molester and rapist, whose career spans over 60 years of terror and perversion, this true menace to society would spend an eternity behind bars.
"I want him away from society as long as possible," DA Sedita told New York media reporters during a press conference.
"It doesn't matter if he's 100 years old. He's an evil pedophile and pedophiles are the worst."
Convicted previously on numerous charges of child molestation, rape and sodomy upon children as young as 4 years old, he is also a prime suspect in dozens of other similar cases including accusations from his daughters that he raped and molested them decades ago.
Even now, at 100, Sypnier is highly alert, physically fit, capable of living alone and taking care of himself. These attributes for a man of his age mean that he is still considered dangerous by authorities.
After reaching his 100th birthday shortly before release from the Groveland Correctional Facility during the approaching holidays in 2009, the retired telephone company worker vowed to appeal his conviction, which forbade him from contact with children. If the appeal is won, the future victory will allow him to spend time without restrictions with his great-grandchildren, who have disowned him.
"I'll tell them I've never harmed a child," Sypnier told a news journalist.
A former daughter-in-law rebuffed the old man's desire to visit his offsprings.
"No one from the family plans to have any contact with him," the irritated relative responded in a Buffalo News article.
Child molesters are professional con-artists, adept in manipulating children with 'sneaky' grooming methods designed to establish a special bond of warmth and trust with a child.
These methods may involve lavish attention and gifts, money, alcohol or drugs, or the befreinding of parents to have access with their child.
Some will volunteer to be a child's godparent and engage in the kind of games a child likes to play, then begin touching them in a playful way to feel them out, all in an effort to create an atmosphere of secret keeping.
Theodore Sypnier was not a scary looking old man clad in a trench coat, hiding behind bushes in the dark of night, waiting for the pivotal moment to kidnap and molest children. He was highly visible and well known as 'grandpa' by adults and children throughout the neighborhood of Tonawanda, New York.
Neighbors adored the soft-spoken man and knew him as a very generous person who often gave rides to adults along with handing out money and candy to children.
Being generous to children is of course no crime but experts have characterized Sypnier's approach with children as typical of a molester whose intention is the creation of a relationship geared toward moving in for the sexual encounter.
Grandpa Sypnier often availed himself to adults to babysit their children, free of charge. The two victimized sisters also called him 'grandpa,' their mother said, speaking at the time of the assaults in 1999, adding that it was "a total shock" when police showed her sexually explicit photos of her girls, aged 4 and 7, found in Sypnier's apartment.
Prior sex-related convictions revealed that in 1987, Sypnier was given three years probation for the sexual abuse of a minor and in 1994 he served a year in prison on a similar charge.
Neighbors in Tonawanda never knew of his background because he was convicted before laws were passed nationwide requiring sex offenders to register with police.
Released on parole in 2007 following the 2000 convictions, the unrepentant offender returned to prison in 2008 after stubbornly refusing to attend sex-offender counseling while living in a halfway house.
When the house director, Reverend Terry King, warned Sypnier of the consequences of not complying, the geriatric molester snapped: "I am 100 and I'm not gonna change and nobody will tell me what to do."
Despite a long history of abusing children and pleading guilty to related charges beginning many years ago, the old fellow insists he is innocent of every allegation and was wrongly convicted.
"He's in denial," an unidentified relative said in a newspaper interview. "He is a very sick, evil man, and I hope he dies."
When a Buffalo Newspaper reporter contacted Sypnier to comment about the controversy surrounding his case, he dismissed the child-rape convictions as pure fiction and blackmail cooked up by lying, immoral parents.
The sex offender told reporter, Lou Michel: "They were all single mothers with children and wanted my money. They were blackmailing me, threatening me with jail if I didn't give them money."
Highly publicized news of Sypnier's release into a halfway house trumpeted across the front pages of newspapers, tv stations and internet news sites throughout the world.
Democratic Assemblyman, Sam Hoyt is campaigning for Sypnier's confinement to a mental health facility.
Sypnier's release 'shocked' New York Supreme Court Justice, Penny Wolfgang. In a plea-bargain back in 2000, Wolfgang sentenced the child molester, then aged 90, to 10 years in a state prison for the molestation and rape of the two girls, aged 4 and 7. Wolfgang also added concurrent sentences of ten years on an additional 15 counts of child sodomy that Sypnier was charged with.
After sentencing the elderly defendant, the judge said that she thought a 90-year-old child rapist like Sypnier "would die in prison."
But age is a number that keeps on ticking for as long as mankind lives. And human fate is unpredictable. Both are inextricably timed by the creator.
Despite the odds in the age game, Theodore Sypnier outlived the judge's prediction and all the haters who wished him dead for his perverted devious sins against vulnerable innocent children.
A Pedophile's Daughter Speaks Out
Blessed with two lovely, highly educated children, a devoted husband, and a college degree that enabled her to earn a wealthy living in her professional career, Velma (not her real name) 57, is the daughter of Theodore Sypnier.
Notified months ago of her father's scheduled release, the woman was petrified. A victim herself of repeated molestation several years ago by her sick father, she well knew that once the old man was released he would again prey on children.
Meanwhile, she has joined forces with authorities to have her father committed for life into a mental health facility under New York Civil Confinement Law.
But Velma's passionate journey to make it happen won't be easy. In 2006, New York State Mental Health officials ruled against civil confinement for the elderly man, stating, "he does not have a mental abnormality to warrant civil management."
Under New York civil confinement law, the State Office of Mental Health determines whether a sex offender has a mental abnormality that would, for legal cause, lead to life time confinement.
Velma insists that the State Mental Health officials are clueless about her father's dangerousness toward children.
"I know that man. I know first-hand about his character and the evil inside him. He is angry now and once he's on the loose he's extremely dangerous."
In December 2009, during an exclusive interview with a reporter from the Buffalo News, Velma Sypnier recalled a nightmarish childhood.
"I've actually witnessed him raping children when I was a child. And I was one of his victims."
"He would come in my bedroom and rape another child spending the night."
Overwhelmed with shame and sickness, Velma further said, "I would have to comfort the child after it was done."
Bizarre tactics were cleverly used to seduce children. "There was a time when he engaged in black magic," Velma recalls in the Buffalo News article.
"I found out about it as a young wife and mother when I went over to the house and found snips of hair."
Once, she confronted her father and his response was to shout in a deep voice, "Well, I'm using black magic to get what I want."
Frightened, Velma shot back, "this is absolutely evil!"
Still experiencing horrible flashbacks of being raped by the man who gave her life, Velma was determined not to become just another casualty among millions of grieving rape victims unable to live a normal life after being victimized sexually by a predator.
"It was my goal to define my own life on my own terms, not his," she lamented. "I was going to have a life; seek happiness and beauty in the world, and I believe I've achieved that."
Another Daughter Cries For Justice
We'll call this relative Martha. Now 70, the woman gave an interview last year with Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde. As a child, Martha said her perverted father would slam her against a wall and beat her mercilessly.
Rehashing vivid memories of her father's physical and verbal abuse, Martha said the reason she doesn't remember the actual sexual abuse that followed is because her mother, while on her death bed, told a relative that Sypnier had molested her when she was an infant.
Martha told columnist Esmonde that she remembers hiding her developing body under baggy clothes in an effort to protect her from Sypnier's "leering eyes" and "dirty mouth" comments.
"It made me feel filthy and I avoided being alone in a room with him."
"He's a maniac," Martha bluntly stated. "He is never going to change his ways."
Sypnier boldly told his daughter, "Nobody is going to tell me what to do -ever".
Martha issued a dire warning: "I would like to see him dead. He looks harmless, but please, people need to look beyond that. He is a threat."
Should Child Predator Theodore Sypnier be Confined For Life Under New York Mental Health Civil Law?
While the public outcry raged across New York state and throughout America about the 100-year-old high-risk sexual predator being scheduled for release, both daughters of Theodore Sypnier and the two girls he was sent to prison for raping in 1999 have unified to work non-stop with state lawmakers to keep the him off the streets. Also on the agenda is the pressuring of the State Mental Health officials who have already rejected Sypnier for continuing treatment, to reconsider him for life confinement under the mental health statute.
"The thought of Theodore Sypnier as a free man is a chilling prospect. He should never be allowed to even look at a child again," a New York lawmaker wrote in a letter to the State Mental Health office.
Three years before the law was passed, Republican New York assemblyman, James P. Hayes, even used Sypnier's pedophile history as a "case in point" to sway the state to pass a civil confinement law for repeat sex offenders.
Aware of Sypnier's release into a halfway house, Hayes expressed anger, "I am at a loss to explain why Mental Health authorites did not recommend Mr. Sypnier for civil confinement."
So, what is the full scope of this law, and how would it affect or help Theodore Sypnier?
In passing the law in New York state in 2007, Governor, Eliot Spitzer, said, "we must do all we can to protect society from individuals who prey upon innocents."
"This legislation will improve our ability to identify and properly confine the most dangerous sexual predators, while also expanding supervision and treatment of all sex offenders."
Here's how the New York mental health law works: Codified as Mental Hygiene Law Article 10, the act requires the Office of Mental Health to assess "sex offenders requiring civil management " toward the end of their prison term.
Simply put, this would apply to Sypnier since he has been tentatively approved for parole.
Once a paroled sex offender has a civil commitment trial, a jury must find, by clear and convincing evidence, that the offender suffers from a mental abnormality which predisposes him or her to commit sexual offenses.
Sypnier, having twice been rejected for civil confinement, one may never know if he actually suffers from an abnormality of the brain causing him to continually molest children.
Critics define civil confinement in the opposite way: "When the most dangerous sexual predators are due to leave prison....officials can revoke their freedom and toss them into mental hospitals indefinitely."
Despite vigorous oppositon from civil rights groups, twenty of the United States passed laws allowing civil confinement for sex offenders. One case in Kansas was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court but the court ruled the law constitutional.
The Civil Confinement Law, nonetheless, is fraught with a catch-22.
For one, a convicted offender might defeat a prosecutor's attempt to keep him confined because if the offender can show, through preponderance of evidence, that despite suffering from a mental defect, he still possesses a reasonable degree of self control and competency, even if this is deceptive, he will most likely avoid civil confinement.
But Sypnier's relatives, and the two girls he molested in 1999, will keep pressing forward through political channels to have him removed from the halfway house and placed back into custody for a life time of mental health treatment.
Yet the State Mental Health officials, as mentioned, have rejected Sypnier twice now for permanent confinement.
So, how will the opposition prevail? It most likely will boil down to a legal showdown of good versus evil.
"These bureaucrats look at the paperwork in front of them; they can't make an approriate judgement until they consider what the man is," a relative of Sypnier said in a published news article.
Democratic New York Assemblyman, Sam Hoyt, joined by a host of supporting Assembly members has kicked off a political battle with the State Mental Health authorities.
In one of a series of letters Hoyt sent to Commissioner Michael Hogan of the State Office of Mental Health, he stated:
"The civil confinement law of 2007 was established to deal with sex offenders who suffer from mental abnormality and present a real threat to the community. Mr. Sypnier's own family and his current halfway home director see him as a likely repeat offender. His three convictions, parole violation and the expressed desire to be in contact with children all seem to qualify him for consideration for civil management under New York State Law".
Assemblyman, Dennis Gabryszak, weighed in with: "It is a crucial responsibility of the Office of Mental Health to protect the children in our community from predators like Sypnier and take appropriate measures to prevent him from offending again,"
As Theodore Sypnier now settles down at the Saving Grace halfway house, located at 1900 Bailey Avenue, the director issued a public warning to let the citizens of New York know that the elderly great-grandfather has not changed from the manipulator who, for decades, used his grandfatherly charm to snare and rape victims as young as 4.
"Whether he's 100 or 105, the same person who committed these crimes many years ago still exists today with an unrepentant heart," said the Reverend Terry King, who monitors the operations of the facility.
Sypnier has lived here 'twice', a number of years ago as a result of sex-related convictions.
"He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear."
With all the political forces arrayed against him and the daily news reports traveling with lightning speed throughout the nation, the spotlight is kept focused upon Sypnier as the oldest sex monster prowling the earth. And he responds as if weapons formed against him should not prosper.
First of all, the convicted predator says he will hire a lawyer to appeal his child molestation convictions of 2000, primarily because according to Sypnier, when he pled guilty, there was no stipulation as part of the conviction to bar him from being around children.
If the appeal fails, Sypnier boasted, "I'll be off parole in 2012 anyway."
A parole official confirmed the fact the elderly offender will removed from being under parole supervision in 2012, and with no restrictions placed save for the exception Sypnier must register with the state as a sex offender.
Still denying guilt for the rape of children, and in particular those he went to prison for in 2000, he gave this version to the media: "Those children crawled into bed with me because they were frightened, but there was never any sexual hanky-panky."
In the face of overwhelming evidence and the multiple sex crimes that Sypnier has pled guilty to committing more than two decades ago, he insists that he is innocent and plans to hire a lawyer to clear his name.
"I want to see my five great grandchildren and tell them I've never harmed or abused children. I love children."
Now ask yourself: Does Grandpa Sypnier love children too much, and in a perverted way?
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