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Probation agents described Jones as 'cooperative'
They weren't told of alleged violations

By Julie Bykowicz
Sun Reporter
Originally published August 2, 2006

It appeared to the specially trained parole and probation agents who checked in on Melvin L. Jones Jr. for almost four years that he was following the rules.

All the while, Jones was consistently disobeying a court order to stay away from children by befriending - and even baby-sitting for - a Northeast Baltimore family, according to people who know him.That duality points to the need for agents to carry smaller caseloads and to the important role that the community plays in reporting violations, one probation official said.

"Do I think the agents were doing everything possible to make sure he was complying with his special conditions? Absolutely," said Elizabeth Bartholomew, spokeswoman for the state Division of Parole and Probation.

"Could they have done more if they had more time and fewer offenders in their caseloads? Absolutely," she said.

Jones, 52, a registered sex offender on a five-year supervised probation for a 2002 sex offense conviction, has been charged in the stabbing death over the weekend of Irvin J. Harris, an 11-year-old boy he frequently baby-sat.

On Sept. 14, 2002, when Jones was released about five months early from his one-year prison sentence, he was assigned a parole agent. After those five months, he shifted to the watch of probation agents.

Bartholomew said agents checked in with Jones monthly, if not more often - making visits to his home in the 3500 block of Old Frederick Road, calling his employer and speaking with him over the phone.

Complying with his court orders, Jones submitted his DNA for a database and registered as a sex offender, listing the Old Fredrick Road home as his address.

Bartholomew said she has reviewed Jones' thick probation folder, which includes about 70 pages of field notes from agents with comments such as "this offender has been cooperative" and "continued to report throughout."

What's missing from the folder are any references to tips from the community.

Almost as soon as he left prison, Jones met the Harris family through his brother, who was dating Shanda Harris, Irvin's mother.

Shanda Harris said Jones baby-sat while she was in drug treatment - unquestionably a violation of his court order to have no unsupervised contact with children.

She also said it appeared Jones was living at his sister's house in Belair-Edison, near the Harris family - a violation because that's not the address listed on the sex offender registry.

All of this was unknown to Jones' parole and probation agents, Bartholomew said, until Irvin disappeared Friday afternoon and was found dead early Monday in a wooded area near his house.

There are 4,000 registered sex offenders in the state, 1,792 of whom are actively on parole or probation.

Agents who are specially trained to deal with sex offenders keep track of 60 cases - less than the 80- to 100-case workload of other agents but still far too many, Bartholomew said.

She said emergency state legislation passed in June calls for the implementation of "sex offender management teams," meaning several agents will track each offender.

Bartholomew said the new laws should help agents keep a more watchful eye on the most dangerous offenders.

"These guys are really sneaky and deceptive, yet they're compliant, just like Melvin Jones," she said. "You really have to do more with sex offenders than with other clients."

Within a year, some sex offenders on parole or probation will be tracked through global-positioning devices. Bartholomew said Jones would have been a good candidate for that because of his previous sex crimes convictions.

Parole and probation agents are unarmed and lack arrest powers. When time permits, Bartholomew said, agents do field investigations of their clients.

She said that when an agent discovered a pathway to a neighborhood swimming pool on a sex offender's property in Roland Park, the agent set up a sting and caught him viewing child pornography on a library computer. He went back to prison.

In another example, agents and police videotaped a sex offender distributing lunches to children on their way to a school in Baltimore, Bartholomew said. He, too, went back to prison.

But far more often, Bartholomew said, an investigation starts not with an agent's observation, but with a community tip.

"Any call will generate some sort of an investigation," Bartholomew said. "If we didn't investigate, we would be remiss in fulfilling our obligation to the public."

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Inquiry of family begins
City to see if criminal charges are possible against slain boy's kin

By Julie Bykowicz and Sumathi Reddy
Sun Reporters
Originally published August 2, 2006

Baltimore prosecutors yesterday launched a child welfare investigation of the Harris family, saying possible charges against relatives and acquaintances of the 11-year-old boy who allegedly died at the hands of a registered sex offender could include child abuse and neglect.

Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for the city state's attorney's office, said the inquiry will be separate from the homicide investigation and will try to answer the question of whether there was any other criminal wrongdoing that led to the death over the weekend of Irvin J. Harris."If we suspect a problem, we are required under the law to report and investigate it," Burns said.

A friend of the family, Melvin L. Jones Jr., 52, has been charged with first-degree murder in Irvin's stabbing death.

What could be of key interest to prosecutors is Irvin's mother's admission that she knew Jones was a convicted sex offender, and yet continued to allow him to be around her children and grandchildren. Prosecutors said they also want to determine whether any adults outside the family knew about Jones' status as a sex offender.

Standing on the porch of her Lawnview Avenue home in Northeast Baltimore yesterday, Shanda Raynette Harris, 41, said she blamed herself for her son's death, saying she shouldn't have been so trusting.

But she also angrily said that police should have done more, given Jones' criminal record. And she said her family and friends have been supportive, insisting there is no one to blame but the man charged with the murder - a man her family has called a friend for about four years.

Bertha Reid, Irvin's grandmother, said she was suspicious of Jones because he hung out with children often.

"I told her I thought something was wrong," said Reid, 59, of Shanda Harris. "I told her when I first met him. She had a drug problem, so she couldn't see."

Irvin, who would have been a fifth-grader this fall at Collington Square School, grew up in a Baltimore family strained by violence, financial problems and drug abuse, court records and interviews show.

His mother has struggled with a longtime heroin addiction; his father has been in prison for murder since Irvin was 3 years old.

Shanda Harris has been arrested and cited about a dozen times in Baltimore, according to court records.

She was found guilty last month in District Court of petty theft and put on yearlong probation.

The judge also ordered Shanda Harris to work or attend school regularly, to allow probation agents to routinely visit her home and to continue with regular drug screening and drug treatment, court records show.

She pleaded guilty in April 1999 to a drug charge and was sentenced to five years in prison with all but a day or two suspended and three years of unsupervised probation. Several forgery, theft, open container and disorderly conduct charges over the years have been filed against her but not pursued by prosecutors, court records show.

District Court judges ordered Shanda Harris to pay her delinquent insurance bills in 2000 and her Baltimore Gas and Electric bills in 2004, court records show.

Irvin's father, Aaron Rodney Harris, 45, pleaded guilty in January 1998 in Baltimore Circuit Court to second-degree murder and using a handgun - convictions that brought him a 20-year prison sentence, court records show.

Enter Melvin Jones - a man with a history of sexual abuse who admitted to police in 2001 that he is a "pedophile who needs help."

Jones made himself an important part of the Harris family by providing free babysitting for Irvin and other young relatives. He gave the family money and became a sort of male role model, taking Irwin to the library to show him how to use a computer.

Shannon Venable, 23, who is Irvin's sister, said Jones helped financially when the family needed money but would not pay rent or bills. Shanda Harris said she is not employed. She receives disability checks, said her mother.

"If she needed help, he'd help her with it," said Venable of Harris. "He helped out a lot and did a lot of things for the kids."

Jones also bought Irvin a cell phone, family members said, and he would frequently call and text-message Irwin on the phone.

Harris said she saw a text message that Jones sent to her son recently that said, "I love you."

She said she confronted her son and Jones about it. "I cussed him out and said he can't be around my kids," said Harris. "I told my son not to be around him by himself."

Harris said Monday that she found out about a year ago from her drug treatment counselors that Jones was a registered sex offender. But she said that when she confronted him about it, he told her he had engaged in consensual touching and had not served any jail time.

Elizabeth Bartholomew, spokeswoman for the state Division of Parole and Probation, said sex offenders seek out families such as the Harrises. "They tend to prey on single mothers in particular," she said. "They justify their behavior by saying that they're doing the woman a favor by helping them out."

A homicide detective said there are no signs that Irvin was molested. The boy's body was fully clothed when it was discovered early Monday morning in the woods not far from the Belair-Edison home where the Harrises live.

[Admin]

Opportunities overlooked
Chances to separate suspect from boy missed

By Gus G. Sentementes and Julie Bykowicz
Sun Reporters
Originally published August 2, 2006

A series of caretakers and others knew that a registered child sex offender had befriended the 11-year-old boy he is now charged with killing, but they repeatedly failed to take steps that could have taken the man off the streets and away from children.

Missed opportunities helped Melvin L. Jones Jr. stay out of trouble with his probation agents despite orders that he not go near children. Over the years, he regularly baby-sat Irvin J. Harris, accompanied the child and his friends to Artscape and to July 4 fireworks, and went to the boy's school.In most cases, some officials and others who discovered Jones' predatory past did little beyond warning Irvin's mother or ordering the boy to stay away. The mother failed to heed the advice and let Jones, 52, hang out with her son.

"We wish everybody in Irvin Harris' life had done things differently," Baltimore Police Col. Fred H. Bealefeld III, chief of detectives, said at a news conference yesterday. He called the child's death "an enormous tragedy for everyone concerned."

Interviews and a review of court records and police documents show that officials had many chances to flag Jones long before police say Irvin was repeatedly stabbed behind a church near his home in Northeast Baltimore:

Irvin accused Jones of grabbing his neck and squeezing it during a dispute on July 4, according to a police report, and his mother assured a city officer that she would follow through on charges. She never did. A detective later assigned to the case could not locate the mother or Irvin, and police said he was unable to track down Jones or verify that he was the same person accused of assaulting the boy.

The principal of Collington Square School identified Jones as a registered child sex offender and banned him from the property more than a year ago, the head of the company that runs the charter school said. Police say they have no record of being notified of Jones' visits; any contact with children by Jones would have been a violation of his probation from a previous sex offense and could have landed him back in prison.

In an apparent oversight, Jones never had any sexual-offender treatment, even though a Baltimore judge made it a condition of his probation. State parole and probation agents never received that order, a state spokeswoman said. Agents tried to convince Jones he needed the treatment, but he refused it.

The victim's family acknowledged to police and to The Sun that they allowed Jones to have regular contact with the boy and his siblings - including stints as a baby sitter. Those contacts continued even after the mother read a cell phone text message from Jones telling Irvin, "I love you," the boy's mother said yesterday.

About a year ago, drug counselors who provided care for Irvin Harris' mother warned her that a child sex offender had befriended her son, the mother has said. She said she confronted Jones and ordered him to stay away from her children, but she later allowed him to stay in contact with the family.

Jones was arrested Monday and charged with first-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault, and use of a deadly weapon with intent to injure, court documents show. He was ordered held without bail yesterday.

Police believe the boy was killed Friday, but his body was found early Monday behind a church in Northeast Baltimore. The state medical examiner ruled that he died from stab wounds.

Police say Jones confessed to the crime, according to court documents, but they stopped short of alleging any sexual abuse in connection with the killing.

"At this point, the crime and the post-mortem examination does not show evidence of sexual assault," said Detective Robert F. Cherry Jr., a homicide investigator on the case. "That could change."


Defending police


Yesterday, Bealefeld resolutely defended the Police Department's handling of the July 4 incident. He said that a Department of General Services police officer encountered Irvin on the street with other children near the Inner Harbor, and the boy alleged an assault. That officer called Baltimore police.

A bike patrol officer arrived, took a report, then boarded a light rail train with Irvin and the other children and escorted them to a relative's house in Westport in South Baltimore. The officer contacted the mother, wrote up the incident as a common assault and was assured by the mother that she would seek criminal charges, Bealefeld said.

But she never did. Police officials reviewed the crime report about a week later and upgraded the incident to the more serious crime of aggravated assault, police officials said. A detective was assigned to the case, with the possibility that a warrant could be issued for Jones' arrest.

But Bealefeld said the detective could not reach Irvin or his mother or verify that the suspect was the same man listed as a sex offender on the state's registry. Bealefeld said the detective had a photo of Jones in his case file.

"Without showing it to the child, to verify it was the same guy, [the detective] could not act independently without getting that photo confirmed," Bealefeld said. "It is heartbreaking. There's no way around it."

[Admin]

Yearning boy, troubled man
A boy who was lacking a father, a sex offender who befriended him

By Julie Bykowicz
Sun Reporter
Originally published August 6, 2006

Melvin Lorenzo Jones Jr. is a man who understands his compulsions.

He has described himself as a "borderline pedophile" and asked police at least twice for help. And in an August 2001 interview with Baltimore police, he worried aloud that his behavior would turn violent."I hate being this way, I really, I really do, I hate living like this. I mean this is the truth coming out, I hate living like this, you know," he said in the police interview, according to a transcript obtained by The Sun.

"I don't want nothing to, I guess, occur anymore, or to say if it did lead to violence, which I don't [know] that it would. ... I'm asking for help from somebody. 'Cause I'm tired of going through this."

Now that he is accused in the stabbing death of an 11-year-old, his warning from years ago seems all the more haunting.

Jones was charged last week with first-degree murder in the death of a boy whose family he had befriended. Irvin J. Harris disappeared last Friday with Jones, and the boy's body was found overnight Sunday in Northeast Baltimore's Belair-Edison neighborhood.

The portrait of Jones, a 52-year-old registered sex offender who had lived with his mother, that emerges through old police reports, charging documents and court records is one of a man who took advantage of the children around him, even though he knew it was wrong.

A thin, 6-foot-tall man with wire-rim glasses and a neat goatee, Jones kept his head down and said, "No comment" on Monday, as he was led from police headquarters to a van to take him to jail. His attorney, Bridget Duffy Shepherd, warned: "Don't jump to conclusions based on what you hear from the state's attorney and the police."

According to charging documents, Jones gave police a statement "implicating himself in the homicide." The documents also state that he called his daughter and Irvin's sister to let them know where to find the boy's body.

Police said they have not found evidence that Irvin had been molested. But Jones had a lengthy relationship with the boy, baby-sitting him and taking him on outings. Shortly before the boy disappeared, Jones sent Irvin a text-message on his cell phone saying, "I love you," Irvin's mother said.


Early case dismissed


Jones never received the help he had asked for in that August 2001 police interview. In fact, he told detectives then that the only treatment he'd ever had was six months of court-ordered group therapy in the early 1990s. Jones' assessment: "It didn't work."

For a time Jones' family lived in the 700 block of W. Fayette St. That's where he met the little girl who may have been his first victim.

In July 1970, a mother came home to her apartment to find her 5-year-old daughter with her underpants off and a 16-year-old neighbor with his pants unzipped. That neighbor, according to the police report, was Melvin Jones.

The mother asked Jones why he would do such a thing, and he replied that "he had simply gotten the urge," according to the report.

Although Jones was charged with attempted rape, a judge dismissed the case, prosecutors said. Laws in Maryland make it particularly difficult to prosecute sexual child abuse cases with young children, said Julie Drake, head of the city state's attorney's felony family abuse unit.

Jones graduated from high school, he said in a police interview, but he didn't say which one. He is the father of at least two daughters.

Jones' criminal record shows convictions in 1988 for battery and 1989 for harassment.

Then in September 1989, a 4-year-old girl whispered to her mother as she was being tucked into bed that a relative had been touching her, a police report states. The mother called police, and later that month, a detective interviewed Jones.

At first, Jones told the detective that he sometimes bathed the girl and that she must have mistaken that for inappropriate behavior. The detective pushed. Then Jones admitted, she "wasn't lying, he did fondle her," the police report states.

"At the end of the interview, Mr. Jones stated that he really hated that he hurt his [relative] and brought disgrace to his family," according to the police report. "He stated he didn't believe he would do anything like that again but he really wanted to get psychiatric help."

Jones was charged with second-degree sex offense and sexual child abuse. He pleaded guilty in 1990 to the abuse charge and was sentenced to seven years, with all but seven months and seven days suspended, and five years of probation.

The judge ordered Jones into group therapy. Jones said in the August 2001 police interview that he attended a "sex therapy group" for six months in the early 1990s at the Walter P. Carter mental health center downtown.

"It was no help," he later told a detective. "That's the only help that I got, the only help that I got."

Over most of the past 15 years, Jones has lived with his mother, who has health problems, in a modest brick rowhouse she rents in the 3500 block of Old Frederick Road in Southwest Baltimore.

It's the address listed for Jones in his entry on the Maryland sex offender registry. His parole and probation officers have visited him there at least monthly for the past four years, and city police officers who monitor sex offenders checked on him there are recently as May 26.

It's also the site of three sex crimes for which Jones has been accused: indecent exposure in 1994, a May 2000 accusation of molesting a second young relative and a sexual relationship with a teenager that spanned 2000 and part of 2001.

The house is only three doors away from Sarah M. Roach Elementary School and a block from St. Bernardine Catholic School.

On Feb. 18, 1994, three 9-year-old girls on their way to the elementary school saw Jones standing near his mother's house. He had his pants down, and was touching himself, according to the police report.

The girls told a school employee and then police - adding that they'd seen Jones expose himself other times, too, the police report states.

Jones was sentenced to nine months in prison for indecent exposure and two years in prison for violating his 1990 conviction.

In May 2000, as a mother prepared to take her 8-year-old daughter to the Old Frederick Road home, the girl said she didn't want to go because Jones was living there, according to a police report.

The girl said she had been molested years earlier, when she was about 4, by Jones, who'd been living in the basement of the Old Frederick Road home, the police report states.

A follow-up police report from June 22, 2000, shows that Jones denied that accusation - but made a shocking one of his own.

"He did state that he was a `borderline pedophile' who has not received any help," the report reads. "If any other child would have made those allegations he `probably' did it, but since it was his [relative] he did not do those things."

Prosecutors said they dropped the third-degree sex offense case, in part, because of letters written by Jones' mother, a sister and a neighbor, all saying that Jones was never alone with the child.

As those charges were unfolding - and then folding - Jones was becoming involved with another young person.

One day during the winter months of 2000, Jones stood on his mother's porch and called over a 13-year-old boy who had been walking home from a nearby private school, according to a police report. The two had a conversation, hugged, and then Jones led the boy inside where they had sexual relations, the police report states.

About 10 times between then and July 2001, when the boy told his mother and then the police, the two had sexual relations, according to charging documents. Jones and the victim said it was consensual, police said, if not legal.

'You know I'm sorry'

Police interviewed Jones on Aug. 8, 2001. The transcript obtained by The Sun has numerous spelling and grammatical errors and omissions but the 24-minute interview includes a revealing self-analysis.

"Well, well what I would like to say is that you know I'm sorry that I caused any of you know traumas or pains [for the victim's family]. And you know my family as well. And I, I need help. You know I guess this is my way of crying out for some type of help. Because I really need help, and I'm tired of living this way."

Jones pleaded guilty in January 2002 to two counts of third-degree sex offense. A Sun review of an official court tape of that proceeding shows that defense attorney Gregg Fischer, Assistant State's Attorney Adam C. Rosenberg and Circuit Judge Allen L. Schwait discussed the plea agreement at a bench conference.

Schwait reviewed Jones' criminal record and concluded: "He has a real history of this with his priors, doesn't he?"

The judge and the attorneys agreed to a plea deal for Jones. His sentence was two concurrent terms of 10 years in prison, with all but one year suspended, and five years of supervised probation with special conditions.

One of those special conditions was supposed to be to give Jones the treatment he had long been seeking. But in apparent error, it was never entered into Jones' file as a condition.

[Admin]

Mother of boy killed in July is charged with endangerment
Harris allowed registered sex offender to baby-sit son

By Julie Bykowicz and Kelly Brewington
Sun reporters
Originally published October 6, 2006

At Irvin's funeral this summer, mourners blew kisses to show support for a mother whose 11-year-old had been stabbed to death near the family's Northeast Baltimore home.

But many in the community were outraged that Shanda Raynette Harris had allowed Melvin Lorenzo Jones Jr., the registered sex offender accused of killing Irvin, to baby-sit and befriend her young children.

Yesterday, Harris, 41, was arrested at her home on Lawnview Avenue, a place where there's a wooden sign emblazoned with the words "RIP Irvin." Harris is charged with reckless endangerment and four counts of a charge that prosecutors liken to criminal neglect.

Leon Henry, director of the Maryland Children's Action Network, said Harris' arrest could divide the community. "Some may think, 'It's about time.' Others may feel like it's piling on, because she lost a son."

Days after Jones, 52, was charged with first-degree murder in Irvin's death, city prosecutors, police and social workers began investigating what, if anything, Harris did to protect her children from a man twice convicted of molesting children.

Bail for Harris was set at $100,000 last night by a District Court commissioner, who included an order that she have no unsupervised contact with three surviving minor children should she be released, according to Marty Burns, a spokeswoman for the city state's attorney's office. A bail review hearing is expected today before a District Court judge.

Social workers picked up Harris' young children after school yesterday, according to a relative. Harris is the mother of seven children, ages 9 to 25, and the grandmother of half a dozen, some of whom live with her.

One daughter, Shannon Venable, 23, said her mother was surprised by the arrest even though a social worker has made frequent visits to the Harris house and warned of the possibility.

"She didn't expect nothing like that to happen to her after all she's been through," Venable said. "She just lost her son."

The statement of probable cause, written by police and prosecutors, reveals new details about the relationship between the Harris family and Jones - who told police years ago that he is a "borderline pedophile."

Several children in the household told investigators that "they saw Irvin Harris and Melvin Jones in bed together." Irvin's adult relatives have said they do not believe that Jones molested the boy.

"Jones would spend the night at their home and would sleep downstairs with Irvin and his grandmother," one child told investigators, according to the charging documents.

The charging documents indicate that Jones may have directed violence toward Irvin. On several occasions, the children told investigators, they "saw Melvin Jones shake Irvin Harris."

On July Fourth at the Inner Harbor, Jones allegedly grabbed Irvin by the throat and tried to choke him, according to Harris' charging documents and other police records.

Police were investigating that charge when Irvin disappeared July 28 as he headed off to buy a snowball near the Clifton Park Golf Course.

Witnesses saw Jones approach the boy and the two walk off together. Irvin's body was found a few days later, after Jones called one of Harris' older daughters, the daughter said. Police said Jones gave a statement "implicating himself in the crime."

Jones is scheduled for trial in January in Baltimore Circuit Court.

Harris' past interviews with The Sun show conflicted feelings about her culpability. She has angrily said that police should have done more, given Jones' criminal record. But she also has said she shouldn't have been so trusting of Jones,

"I thought that everyone could change, and I see now I was really wrong," she said the day Jones was charged.

For more than three years, Jones had ingrained himself in Harris' family - becoming, as Harris said, "like a male role model" for Irvin. Jones sat in on classes and lunches at Irvin's Collington Square School and accompanied Harris and the children to Harris' drug treatment program. She said she has long struggled with a heroin addiction.

About a year before the killing, Harris learned of at least some of Jones' troubling past: He pleaded guilty in 1990 to sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl in his family and in 2002 to having repeated sexual contact with a teenage boy.

Harris said she met Jones in the fall of 2002, when she was dating his brother. That was about the time Jones was released from prison in the 2002 case. A condition of his parole was to have no unsupervised contact with children, but he soon began baby-sitting for the Harris clan.

Harris has told The Sun that she did not allow Jones to be alone with her children after learning of his sex offender status. But charging documents in her case contradict that assertion.

At least two adults, the documents state, told Harris that Jones was a registered sex offender a year or more before Irvin was killed. A social worker at her drug treatment program showed Harris Jones' photograph from the state sex offender registry, the documents state.

Harris "actually knew of Melvin Jones' status as a child offender for almost a year before her son's death and knowing this still let him go to the Inner Harbor with Jones," the documents state.

Henry, the child advocate, said Harris' actions - or inaction - "painted authorities into a corner. They had to do something."

"It's unbelievable that a parent would allow someone with that kind of a history in their house on a regular basis," he said.

Others have a more sympathetic view.

Phyllis Mickle, an elder at the Kingdom Worship Center who gave a eulogy at Irvin's funeral, said at the time that people support Harris.

"We love her," she said at the funeral of about 500. Addressing Harris, Mickle said there is "nobody in this room that hurts more than you and your family."

About the time of the funeral, Harris attended an emergency court hearing on the custody of her children. The judge said the children were safe with their mother, said Venable, Harris' 23-year-old daughter.

"They said the kids were not in danger," Venable said. "So, since we hadn't heard anything, we didn't expect this to happen.

[Admin]

Abuser slipped past police
Detectives suspected molester choked boy weeks before killing

By Gus G. Sentementes, Annie Linskey and Julie Bykowicz
Sun reporters
Originally published October 7, 2006

About three weeks before 11-year-old Irvin J. Harris was stabbed to death, Baltimore police suspected that a convicted child sex offender might have choked the boy and threatened to kill him.

But the extent of the police follow-up to the July 4 choking at the Inner Harbor consisted of one phone call, to a cell number that did not work, police acknowledged yesterday.

"We wish everybody, not just us, we wish everybody had done more," said Col. Fred H. Bealefeld III, chief of detectives. "Do you think that detective - in light of this horrible crime - do you think he's not thinking about how he could have done more? Of course. Everybody is thinking that."

The sex offender, Melvin Lorenzo Jones Jr., 52, is charged with first-degree murder in Irvin's death July 28. Jones pleaded guilty in 1990 to sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl in his family, and in 2002 he admitted having repeated sexual contact with a teenage boy.

This week, police also charged Irvin's mother, Shanda R. Harris, with reckless endangerment and four counts of a charge similar to criminal neglect, alleging that she failed to protect her son from a man she knew was a registered child sex offender.

Jones, who is scheduled for trial in January on the murder charge, is not charged with molesting Irvin. But other children in the Harris family told police they saw the two in bed together, according to a statement of probable cause in Shanda Harris' case.

A judge at the Central Booking and Intake Center cut Harris' bail in half yesterday, to $50,000. Her attorney said at the hearing that she is a recovering heroin addict on methadone and that she tried to kill herself in 2002.

Questions about the July 4 incident - and how thoroughly police investigated and followed up - re-emerged because of the charges against Irvin's mother. Charging documents in Harris' case say she "actually knew of Melvin Jones' status as a sex offender ... and knowing this still let him go to the Inner Harbor with Jones."

After that incident, however, police joined the boy's mother on a growing list of people who knew or suspected that Jones had a history of molesting children - and were aware that Jones was in contact with Irvin.

"If a known sex offender is commiting a violent act and threatening to kill the young child, urgent action was required," said Mitchell Y. Mirviss, a Baltimore attorney who has monitored child welfare systems and represented abused and neglected children since the 1980s. "That's the end of any reasonable debate on the issue."

According to a police incident report obtained yesterday by The Sun, officers learned Jones' full name and approximate age the night of July 4.

About a week later, after a standard review of reports, the choking incident was upgraded from a common assault to an aggravated assault, Bealefeld said. A Central District detective was assigned to the case.

The incident report states that Irvin told police Jones had put his hands around his neck and squeezed while saying, "I'll kill you."

Bealefeld said the detective researched the suspect and knew that a man by that name was a registered child sex offender.

The detective had a picture of Jones in his case file and planned to show it to Irvin and his mother as part of a photo array, Bealefeld said.

Typically, police need a victim to cooperate and make an identification before an arrest warrant can be issued, Bealefeld said.

The detective made a call to a cell phone number that Shanda Harris had given to police on July 4, but he did not go to the Harris house on Lawnview Avenue, Bealefeld said.

Bealefeld said there was nothing to prevent the detective, whom he did not identify, from visiting the house, but he noted that district detectives have large caseloads that include violent crimes.

"The detective did try," Bealefeld said. "Did we succeed in our effort? No, we did not. We did not succeed in our effort to locate and follow up."

Mirviss said Irvin's death "could have been prevented and should have been prevented."

"This child was at grave risk, and only the police at that point could have saved him," he said. "It's a shocking set of facts."

Bealefeld said the boy's mother told the officer who took the initial report July 4 that she knew Jones and that she would follow up and press charges against him.

But the mother never did.

At her bail review hearing yesterday, Harris wore a pink prison jumpsuit, and her hands were cuffed. She appeared calm, but when the judge ordered a suicide evaluation, she yelled in disgust: "I'm not going to kill myself."

Harris has been unemployed for a year, has an 11th-grade education and has been using methadone to treat a heroin addiction for two years, according to a pretrial services employee.

Jones befriended the Harris family in fall 2002, shortly after his prison release, Shanda Harris has told The Sun. Harris said she had been dating Jones' brother.

Jones babysat some of Harris' children, including Irvin, and some of her grandchildren. Jones sometimes accompanied the Harris family to Shanda Harris' drug treatment program and visited Irvin at Collington Square School, Irvin's relatives have said.

A social worker at the drug treatment program and the principal at the elementary school have said they were aware that Jones was on the state's sex offender registry. They said they made Shanda Harris aware of Jones' status.

A spokeswoman for the state Division of Parole and Probation said no one, including law enforcement, notified Jones' probation agent of any possible violations.

Jones had been ordered to have no unsupervised contact with children as a condition of the 2002 conviction. Despite that order, Jones never disclosed to probation agents that he was spending a significant amount of time around children at the Harris household, and sometimes, police believe, sleeping there.

[Admin]

Suspected Pedophile Victim's Mom Pleads Not Guilty
Dec 1, 2006 11:48 pm US/Eastern

(AP) Baltimore, MD The mother of an 11-year-old boy slain, allegedly by a convicted child sex offender who was caring for him pleaded not guilty in court Friday to failing to protect her son, the state's attorney's office.

Shanda Harris, 41, of Baltimore, is charged with reckless endangerment and contributing to the condition of a child for allowing Melvin Jones Jr., 52, to be around Irvin Harris, even after Jones threatened his life.

From July 1, 2005 to July 30 of this year, court documents show, Harris allegedly permitted Jones to be around her children even after she was informed he was a registered child sex offender.

Jones' criminal record dates to 1970 and includes convictions for child sexual abuse, indecent exposure, harassment and battery, according to prosecutors. His most recent conviction came in 2002 for a third-degree sex offense involving a 15-year-old boy.

Irvin Harris' decomposed body was found July 31 in a heavily wooded area at Clifton Park Golf Course near his home. He had been missing for three days.

Jones is charged with first-degree murder and other charges in Irvin Harris' death.

The judge scheduled Shanda Harris' jury trial for Feb. 15. She remains held in lieu of $50,000 bail at the Baltimore Detention Center.