Chelsea King Case: Outrage Over Sex Offender Monitoring Reaches White House
March 4, 2010— -- He was in court for just minutes, but the mere sight of the convicted sex offender charged with raping and murdering 17-year-old Chelsea King set off a fresh round of outrage that reached as far as the White House.
John Albert Gardner III, 30, pleaded not guilty Wednesday, but the community obviously had a very different opinion.
In the hours before his court appearance in San Diego Wednesday, someone spray painted his mother's garage with the words, "Chelsea's blood is on you -- move out." And neighbors screamed at two men who tried to paint over it.
"You're protecting somebody who has killed an innocent girl," one yelled. "Get out of here."
John Walsh, host of "America's Most Wanted," said he met with President Obama Wednesday to discuss child protection laws and funding for the Adam Walsh Act, signed three years ago by President Bush.
The law promised to create a national registry of sex offenders and keep closer track of the most violent of them, but it did not come with the funds needed to carry it out.
"President Obama said yesterday, 'As the father of two girls, John, I will get the Adam Walsh law funded,'" Walsh told "Good Morning America" today.
Walsh, whose 6-year-old son for whom the law is named and who was kidnapped and murdered in 1981, knows firsthand the grief King's parents are experiencing.
"They're in the worst place a parent could be," he said. "They look in that courtroom and see a guy who should have never been out on the streets."
King, a well-liked honors student, vanished after heading out for a jog in a semi-rural San Diego County park. Her body was found less than a week later, buried in a shallow grave near the shore of Lake Hodges, about a half-mile from her car.
But the outrage grew with the arrest of Gardner, a known violent sex offender who has since been charged with the December assault and attempted rape of 22-year-old Candice Moncayo in the same park where King's body was found.
"I think everyone asks the same question," Walsh said. "Why was this animal out on the streets?"
