Undercover identity
Sister of local woman who innocently invited a sexual predator from the U.S. to live here speaks out about their relationship

By Carla Garrett STAFF WRITER
Woodstock Sentinel-Review

Friday January 26, 2007

WOODSTOCK - Sarah had a gut feeling about her sister’s new live-in boyfriend.  And it wasn’t good.  “He never had any money and he always had a story for everything,” said Sarah, recalling the brown-haired, blue-eyed man.  She has asked that her real name not be used.  

Her sister, who lives in a two-bedroom apartment in the northwest part of the city, was introduced to Kevin Paul Patterson through the Internet.  He was a 33-year-old, 220-pound man from Jacksonville, Fla., who liked to play online war games with the woman’s two sons.  

After frequent contact with the teenaged boys, Patterson asked to meet their mother.  She was 47 and divorced.  

“She was vulnerable.  She had been through a rough marriage and has been a single mom for 10 years,” Sarah said.  

The two started chatting online and within six months, Sarah heard Patterson was moving from the U.S. to live with her sister in Woodstock.  

This abrupt move by a man her sister had never personally met, sent red flags up in Sarah’s mind.  But she said her sister assured her “she knew him and he was really honest.”  

“She really felt in her heart she could trust him,” Sarah said. “But my instincts said something was not right.”  

Patterson flew to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport in late September on a one-way ticket.  

He taught the woman’s boys how to cook and had them help out around the house more, Sarah said.  She added Patterson appeared to genuinely care for her sister.  But his stories of a violent past haunted Sarah.  

“He told us brutal war stories from when he was a Navy Seal in the military,” she said, adding he graphically described being captured and tortured.  Stories, Sarah said, that were traumatizing to hear.  He even had an e-mail allegedly sent from the White House congratulating him on receiving medals of honour.

“He said he wanted to leave that life behind,” she said.

Patterson told Sarah he didn’t give the military a forwarding address.  That way he couldn’t be taken away from her sister’s family on a secret mission.

But just before Christmas his story changed.

At that point he explained to Sarah that the military had a warrant for his arrest because he didn’t provide his new address.  She said he told her the computer system wouldn’t let him input a Canadian address.

“I wasn’t going to challenge him,” Sarah said. “He was a big guy and talked about snatching the life out of people.”

Sarah didn’t know what to do with her suspicions.  So, she waited to get a second opinion from her brother-in-law, a private investigator, who was visiting for the holidays.  

On Dec. 30, Sarah invited the family to her Woodstock home.  Within an hour, Sarah said her brother-in-law knew Patterson “was full of it.”  

Immediately after Patterson left with Sarah’s sister, the family got on their laptops and started searching online for information about him.  

They knew he came from Florida, which was enough to find out what they had suspected.  

Patterson was a sexual predator.  

“I was just about sick. I was shaking,” Sarah said after she learned of his three convictions of sexual assault in 1997.  

He was telling the truth when he said there was a warrant out for his arrest, but it wasn’t the military looking for him.  It was the Duval County Sheriff’s Department in Jacksonville, Fla. because he failed to provide his new address upon leaving the state.  

Just as easy as the Internet brought the two together, it broke them apart.  

Sarah’s brother-in-law took this information to the Oxford Community Police Service and officers arrested Patterson shortly after midnight on Dec. 31.  

“It was very surreal,” Sarah said. “My sister was pretty shocked.”  

She said Patterson contacted her sister from jail and denied everything.  

Luckily, for this local family, no harm was done.  Patterson was returned to Florida without incident.  

But Sarah said her sister’s experience could serve as a lesson for everyone.  

“Love is blind,” she said, adding people need to be really vigilant. “It’s easy to be anyone you want online.  

“It makes you wonder how widespread this sort of thing is.”  

Police frequently warn the public about whom they meet online and too often report incidents of Internet predators luring and abusing children.  

Recently, four families filed a lawsuit against News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after adults they met on the site sexually abused their underage daughters.  

As of Monday, Patterson was still in custody at the Duval County jail.  

Sarah said she hopes he gets the help he needs.  

“I don’t want this to happen to someone else.”  

Border Entry

At the time of Patterson’s arrest, border officials didn’t know how he gained entry to Canada or whether or not he used his own identification. Details of his entry were unavailable Thursday.  

Sarah said his luggage tags read Kevin Patterson and he said he had some trouble at the border.  

Andrea Kent, a spokesperson for Canada Border Services Agency in Windsor, said anyone coming into Canada is obligated to truthfully answer questions about their visit and citizenship.  

“Most are legitimate visitors,” she said, adding officers are trained in interview tactics to spot potential inadmissible visitors.  

Generally speaking, she said if further checks were needed a person’s criminality would be included in the database.  

She adds it is a progressive process and it would not be practical to query in all  cases.