Residents Enraged To Learn Neighbor Is A Child Molester Man Tormented, Threatened By Neighbors Near Spirit Lake

Neighbors spin their truck tires on the dirt road outside Erland D. Kautz’s trailer, just to send a plume of choking dust in his windows.

Others hang a sign - “PERVERT” near the 61-year-old man’s home.

Some mutter threats about killing him.

“People are offering to do things, anything it takes, to get him out of here,” said Kautz’s closest neighbor, a hulking landscaper named Mark Lehan.

“I’ve had people offer to burn his trailer. I’ve had every offer, including some disgusting offers about body parts,” said Lehan. “It touches a real dark side of ordinarily good people. They want to protect their children.”

Unlike Washington, Idaho has no law providing for neighbors to be notified when a convicted sex offender moves in nearby.

Because of that, no one told residents on Ediah Road, a dirt track north of Spirit Lake, that their new neighbor was convicted of sexual abuse and lewd conduct with children five years ago. Or that he’s admitted to - although not been convicted of - molesting more than two dozen girls in the past three decades. Few of the victims have ever been located, and some of those who could be found were too young at the time of the abuse to remember anything.

Prosecutors three years ago charged Kautz with two counts of lewd conduct with a child, but dropped them because doctors said a trial would kill the suspect, who has a heart condition. Today, Kootenai County’s prosecutor believes justice is best served by holding the charges over Kautz’s head - he can be arrested upon violating terms of his probation.

Still, Kautz’s neighbors are upset that they weren’t told about his history. Most found out through neighborhood gossip that culminated when Kautz was confronted by a neighbor.

“Shouldn’t they notify me? I have children. The police should protect me by letting me know,” said Claudia Saterfiel, 28, mother of two.

“We had to find out just by ourselves. That’s not right,” said her husband, truck driver Ron Saterfiel Jr., 28. “Who knows … what would’ve happened before we found out?”

In the past five years, many states - including Washington - have adopted so-called “Megan’s Laws” designed to inform communities about dangerous sex offenders. The laws are named after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and strangled by a sex offender who’d moved in across the street.

Depending on how dangerous the sex offender is perceived to be, police will meet with neighbors, print posters or send out press releases about the person. In Louisiana, dangerous sex offenders can be required to send postcards about themselves and their crimes to everyone living within a one-mile radius.

In extreme cases in Oregon, state officials nail up big red “Sex offender” signs in the yard.

Many people in law enforcement would like to see Idaho’s law changed.

“Right now the sheriff cannot release that information unless you have that person’s name, date of birth and Social Security number, which is ridiculous,” said Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas.

“You’d think it’d be a no-brainer. Parents need to know when registered sexual predators are in the neighborhood.”

In cases of predatory pedophiles, “I think the general feeling is that it would be great if these people were painted red,” said Bonner County Sheriff Chip Roos, president of the Idaho Sheriffs Association.

A bill providing for neighbor notification was proposed during Idaho’s last legislative session. But it never got out of committee. Legislators called it “a little harsh.”

Help may be coming from the federal government.

Congress and President Bill Clinton last month overwhelmingly approved a Megan’s Law of their own and, on Saturday, Clinton proposed a national system for keeping track of molesters.

Under the federal version of Megan’s Law, police have to notify the public when offenders deemed dangerous move into their neighborhoods. States and local police can set up their own procedures for notification, but failure to comply with the federal rules costs states part of their federal crime-fighting money.

Nonetheless, Idaho probably won’t set up a notification system immediately, said Lonnie Gray, operations officer with the Idaho Bureau of Criminal Identification. Court challenges to Megan’s Laws already are under way in Washington, New Jersey, New York and Alaska, he said.

“That is a really touchy issue,” he said. “I think we’re going to do a sitand-wait-and-see. I think the federal law is going to be challenged.”

Civil libertarians - and some in law enforcement - say notifying the public often does more harm than good.

“There’s no reminder to the community to respect the rights of the offender coming out (of prison),” said John La Fond, a law professor at Seattle University Law School.

Officials tend to exaggerate the danger and panic the community, he said.

In the resulting furor, offenders can lose jobs, housing and friends, and be driven further underground.

Sometimes, the backlash is even worse.

Joseph Gallardo, now 38, served 18 months in prison for raping a 10-year-old girl. He was released in 1993. Hours after neighbors held a rally opposing his return to Lynnwood, Wash., an arsonist torched his house.

In New Jersey in January 1995, two men broke into a house and beat a man they thought was sex offender Michael Groff. They were wrong. The man was a 41-year-old truck driver staying at the same home. The men were arrested for assault.

The key to avoiding such problems, officials say, is to balance the threat with the offender’s rights.

Washington has a three-tiered system, ranging from Level 1 to Level 3 - highly dangerous. At Level 1, police generally are the only ones informed. At Level 2, notices go to schools and neighborhood groups. At Level 3, police distribute posters, issue press releases and run mugshots on TV.

In Oregon, Department of Corrections workers often call a dangerous offender’s landlord, family and employer one day before telling the public.

Initially, there was a furor over each announcement, said Faye Fagel, coordinator of Oregon’s sex offender supervision network. Some offenders were threatened, their homes vandalized. One had a gun pointed at him.

Oregon tells worried neighbors that offenders under supervision are much less dangerous than offenders who haven’t been caught. Stranger-to-stranger sexual offenses are rare - about 7 percent of the sexual offenses in Oregon.

Most sex offenders aren’t strangers who “grab you out of the bushes, molest you, cut you and throw you away,” said Fagel.

Since Idaho has no such system in place, Kautz’s neighbors wonder how much of a danger - if any - they face.

“You try to explain it to your kids without scaring them away from other adults,” said Ron Saterfiel Jr. “It’s really hard to get the distinction across.”

For now, Kautz’s neighbors are playing it safe. Children don’t ride their bikes down the road. Friends and relatives are leery about visiting people on Ediah Road. Shortly before Kautz moved in, the Saterfiels’ 7-year-old son got a tent for his birthday. But the boy’s not allowed to sleep in it, even in their yard.

Ron Saterfiel bought three-wheel motorcycles for his sons. The machines broke down, and he refuses to fix them.

“It’s easier to leave them broke than to say ‘No, you can’t ride them,”’ Saterfiel said. “In a way, it’s not fair.”

Farther down the road, retired Boeing engineer Martin Waller has his own set of worries. He and his wife moved to 10 acres on the road last summer, to enjoy the outdoors. But at 61 years old, Waller is exactly the same age as Kautz, and even bears a strong resemblance. The soft-spoken engineer worries that he’ll be mistaken for Kautz.

“This here picture isn’t all that clear or all that precise,” Waller says, pointing to Kautz’s washed-out mug-shot on the neighbors’ homemade “Beware: Child Molester in Spirit Lake” posters.

Lehan, the landscaper, stands 6 feet 3 inches inches tall and weighs 275 pounds. He’s become the point man in the neighborhood’s effort to get Kautz to leave.

“I put the word out: ‘Do not do anything to this guy,”’ said Lehan. “Let the system work.”

Lehan went to police and compiled a lengthy dossier on Kautz’s background. In the reports, Kautz generally is the victim of crime - burglaries, cut phone wires, cut brake lines, threats from business deals. In May 1990, a car hit him while he was walking along Post Falls’ Seltice Way. The driver fled and never was caught.

Lehan has urged the landowners where the trailer sits to evict Kautz.

Still, there’s one thing that troubles Lehan.

“What eats away at me, really eats away at me,” he said, “is where am I sending this guy to?”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos (1 color)