Sexual Predator Taken Off Streets
April 1, 2004
The Huntington Police Dept. had been working in conjunction with the Northampton based District Attorney's office for the past year on a case dealing with a sexual predator. The Huntington Police Dept. is pleased to announce that the defendant in this case was found guilty on all counts today in regards to this. The information regarding this case is now public knowledge. Here is a recent article about it from the Springfield, MA Republican.
03/26/2004
By NANCY H. GONTER
ngonter@repub.com
NORTHAMPTON - Alone on a bridge crossing the Westfield River, a 13-year-old girl searched her handbag for hair spray or anything else she could use as a weapon because she had noticed a man staring at her intently as he drove by.
The man stopped near her, and yelled, "Get in the car!" First Assistant District Attorney Renee L. Steese told a Hampshire Superior Court jury yesterday.
The man drove by again, repeating his request. The girl could see that he was exposing himself, and that his arm was tattooed, Steese said in her opening statement.
That man was Patrick A. Staples, 50, who had had addresses in the Feeding Hills section of Agawam, Chicopee and Springfield. He has pleaded innocent to charges of attempted kidnapping, enticing a child under 16, assault with a dangerous weapon (a car), and open and gross lewdness in connection with the August 2002 incident in Huntington and another incident in Ware last May.
Staples' defense lawyer, Jonathan R. Elliott Sr. of Springfield, told jurors that the Huntington case was one of mistaken identity.
"That person was not Patrick Staples. He wasn't there," Elliott said.
Steese told the jury that the victim, who saw the man twice, the first time when he exposed himself and a second time two days later, obtained the license plate of the car, which turned out to be rented to Staples.
However, Elliott said the victim was confused and did not get a good look at the man.
In the Ware case, which involved a 15-year-old girl who was five months pregnant, Elliott acknowledged that Staples had a conversation with her in which he said she revealed that her father had assaulted her, that her mother suffered from mental illness and that she had had a fight with her boyfriend.
"It was a too-much-information situation," Elliott said.
Steese told a different story. She said that Staples noted the girl's pregnancy, pointing out that she should not be smoking and that she would not have to worry about getting pregnant because she already was.
Staples offered the girl cocktails, told her she was beautiful, and offered to give her a ride home. When she threatened to call police, the court was told, he drove off and returned quickly, cutting her off as she walked and ordering her in the car.
"At Walnut Street," said Steese, "she saw a man going into a house with his kids, and she yelled to him, 'A man is trying to grab me. Get your children inside the house.'"
The trial is expected to last several days.
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From April 3, 2004 Springfield, MA Republican
Sex offender, kidnapper gets 23 years
04/03/2004
By FRED CONTRADA
fcontrada@repub.com
NORTHAMPTON - A Hampden County man with a lengthy criminal record that includes kidnapping
women was sentenced to prison yesterday for trying to force two teen-age girls into his car
in separate incidents.
Patrick A. Staples, 50, has spent much of his adult life in prison. He will now spend most
of its remainder there, thanks to a 22-23-year sentence handed down by Hampshire Superior
Court Judge Mary-Lou Rup.
"I venture to say it is a very rare experience when a judge feels that the maximum sentence
should be imposed on a person," Rup told Staples as the two victims and their families
looked on. "You are that person."
On Thursday, after deliberating for less than three hours, a jury convicted Staples of
enticement of a child, lewd and lascivious conduct, and assault with a dangerous weapon.
In the 2002 Huntington case, Staples, who has previous addresses in Springfield, Chicopee,
and Agawam, drove up alongside a 13-year girl in a sparsely populated part of that town
and yelled at her to get into his car, according to Northwestern 1st Assistant Attorney
Renee L. Steese. He then exposed himself to the girl and followed her in his vehicle as
she tried to flag down a passing car.
Staples was free on bail on those charges when he approached a 15-year-old Ware girl last
May and asked if she knew where he could buy some pot. He drove away when the girl refused
to tell him where she lived, but came speeding back a minute later, Steese said, blocking
the girl's path and yelling at her to get in the car.
In light of his criminal history, Staples was also charged with three counts of being a
habitual offender. He pleaded guilty to those charges yesterday, allowing Steese to seek
longer prison sentences on the other convictions. Police and court officials were standing
by to testify that Staples had been tried and sentenced on earlier felonies.
In her summary of the evidence, Steese detailed some of those crimes, beginning with a
break and entering conviction in 1970. Staples was subsequently found guilty of possession
of a dangerous weapon, trafficking in cocaine, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon,
and twice escaping from jail, among other crimes.
Both times he walked away from work-release programs, Staples kidnapped a woman while
wearing a nylon stocking over his head. In 1974, he accosted a Springfield woman at
knife-point, forced her into a car, and made her drive to Chicopee, Steese said. The
victim jumped out of the moving car, fracturing her skull.
On the second occasion, Staples made a Chicopee woman get into his car where he punched
and threatened to kill her, Steese said. That victim also escaped by jumping out of the
vehicle. In the 1970s, according to Steese, Staples raped a 29-year-old woman who was babysitting
for three young children in a Chicopee apartment. In that incident, he appeared at the
door in a stocking mask, forced his way in at knife-point, cut the woman's clothes off,
and threatened to hurt the children if the woman continued to scream. He then raped her.
"Mr. Staples poses such a great danger to the public that he should be incarcerated for
as long as possible," Steese told the judge. "All of his incarcerations have done nothing
to rehabilitate him from this conduct."
In her victim's statement, the Ware girl called her encounter with Staples "one of the
scariest things that ever happened to me."
"I think he has to go away for as long as possible, and I hope he never gets out again,"
she said.
The girl from Huntington said she has not been able to sleep since the incident.
"It disgusts me that you have nothing better to do than stalk innocent children"
she told Staples. "You are a waste of oxygen and a piece of trash."