Sex offender lived near daycare for at least two years
A man arrested for failing to register as a sex offender was in Columbia, unregistered, for two years prior to his arrest.
The Boone County Sheriff’s Department arrested Gregory J. Moore, 54, Monday morning at 110 Ripley Street, just east of downtown Columbia, for failure to register as a sex offender, living less than 1,000 feet from a child care center and two charges related to drug sales. He’s held in the Boone County jail on a $40,000 bond.
Detective Tom O’Sullivan said Moore was being investigated in an “unrelated” case when law enforcement noticed he was a sex offender. Moore, according to online court records, pleaded guilty to second-degree statutory sodomy and supplying liquor to a minor in St. Charles County in 1996, when he was 33, making him a sex offender under Missouri law. The Boone County Sheriff’s Department’s probable cause statement said Moore told the Department of Corrections he would be heading to Texas upon his release in 2004.
The statement goes on to say that from August 2014 to September 2016, “Moore contacted the Columbia Police Department nine times for assistance. The incidents were reported by Gregory James Moore and he gave the dispatch the address of 110 Ripley Street” each time. That apartment is less than one thousand feet from Stephens College Children’s School, and certain sex offenders aren’t allowed to live that close to a school or daycare.
Dispatch records show Columbia police took three reports from calls regarding Moore’s address – two larceny calls and one burglary call. Officer Latisha Stroer told ABC 17 News that just because Moore would have called police for help, it doesn’t mean an officer would have searched his criminal history. She didn’t know the details of all nine calls, but said officers “have to have reasons” to access the statewide criminal background database, and in this case, realize Moore’s sodomy conviction.
Missouri court records show no other convictions or cases against Moore since his release more than 10 years ago.
O’Sullivan told ABC 17 News the department keeps a close eye on the registrations of sex offenders in the county. Sex offenders must show up in person several times a year to either update or confirm their address, employment other information, he said, but can’t know if someone is in the county if they never register.
“We do a couple of ’round-ups’ every year, and we are constantly checking and monitoring to make sure they’re living where they’re supposed to be living, and doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” O’Sullivan said.
