Convicted Pedophile Wayne Chapman To Be Free After 41 Years In Prison
SHIRLEY (CBS) – A convicted sex offender who's spent more than 40 years in prison could be a free man very soon.
Wayne Chapman, 70, is currently being held at MCI-Shirley. He was sentenced to 30 years back in 1977 for raping two boys from Lawrence. When Chapman finished his sentence in 2007, prosecutors fought for a civil commitment to keep him locked up as "a sexually dangerous person."
But this year, when he petitioned for a review, two psychologists the state considers experts said he's no longer a danger.
"Under court order, the Department of Correction was notified that Chapman must be released," said DOC spokesperson Jason Dobson. Chapman's lawyer told WBZ-TV Wednesday it's still being worked out exactly when his client will be released and where he will go.
State authorities say Chapman is not on probation, so there won't be any conditions with his release, and there will be no GPS monitoring. He will have to list his address with the Sex Offender Registry, where he's already classified as a level 3 offender, the most dangerous.
Billie Scharn is outraged. Her nephew Andy Puglisi disappeared from a pool in Lawrence in 1976, when he was 10 years old. Back then, police called Wayne Chapman a "person of interest" in the case.
"What makes anybody think that he's not going to pick that right up and do it again?" she told WBZ-TV, adding that she thought Chapman would eventually die in prison. "That's what was my hope, that he would stay in jail long enough that God would take him."
"I think the public needs to know we're not protecting our kids good enough, we really are not if we're allowing someone like this back on the street we're not doing our job," she said.
