NARSOL asks TN. governor to remove registrant addresses from online registry

By Sandy . . . Vigilantes killing individuals required to be on a sex offender registry is nothing new. The first recorded case we found was in Nevada in 2005. Since then these murders have occurred in Maine (a double murder), in Washington State (twice, both double murders), another in Nevada, in California (at least four times), Texas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and at least another half-dozen states.

A significant number were cases where the murderers used the state’s registry to identify, locate, and slaughter their victims. One of the most horrific was when a couple, Jeremy and Christine Moody, tracked Charles Parker and, with gun and knife, slaughtered him and his wife Gretchen in South Carolina in 2013.

For shock value,  however, and horror verging on disbelief, it is difficult

to imagine anything more gruesome as what occurred on or about May 23, 2026, when Kian Neal slaughtered Robert Locke in Tennessee. Neal, who had been abused as a child, now–at 18 years of age–said that he decided killing someone on the registry would bring him justice. According to his statement, he used the registry to locate the registrant who lived closest to him, went to his home armed with a hammer, saw, and large trash bags, and beat Mr. Locke with the hammer repeatedly. When that was not totally effective, he choked him with the plastic trash bag ties.

Mr. Neal said that he then dismembered the body with the saw, put the body, hammer, and saw into the bags, and put them in a dumpster. Surveillance tape shows him loading two large garbage bags into a dumpster on May 23. Law officers have searched a landfill for the remains; they have not been recovered as of this posting.

This story is so fraught with tragedies that it is difficult to know where to begin.

It is a horrible tragedy that Kian Neal, for whatever reason, received no or so little help or therapy after his childhood trauma that he felt taking a man’s life would bring him justice.

It is a tragedy that Mr. Locke’s family, who reported him missing in late May, suffered the loss of their loved one in such an horrific manner and that, as of yet, they have no body to lay to rest.

It is a tragedy that persons who commit sexual crimes and are held accountable through our justice system are then marked, often for life, by public sex offender registration.

It is a tragedy that Tennessee, as well as the vast majority of other states, chooses to make the physical addresses of registrants available to the public in spite of the many, many known instances of vigilante attacks on the property, the homes, and the registered persons and their family members.

This all speaks to our justice system being broken, an utterly failed system when it comes to the handling of not only the persons who commit sexual crimes but also the persons harmed by them. For all of the millions spent on sex offender registries since their inception, they do not do what is needed.

They do not protect new victims from sexual crime; a very high percentage of all new such offenses are committed by first-time offenders. They offer no healing for previous victims. They impede, and are actually in conflict with, both private and state-sponsored rehabilitation mandates and programs.

And they facilitate vigilante activity against registrants. They allow disturbed men—and a few women—such as Kian Neal and others who have come before him to utilize the registry like a road map, locating and murdering persons they do not know out of some sense of twisted justice.

This particular situation has a relatively easy albeit temporary fix.

Whatever value is believed to be present by this information would still be accomplished with listings such as “500 block of Crawford Ave.” This would not stop vigilantes completely, but it would make them work a little harder to locate their victims. It could save some lives.

A “fix” of a more permanent nature will be much more difficult. That will require a revamping of sex offense legislation across the nation to reflect what addresses the needs of, not just victims, not just offenders, but society as a whole.

See the letter to Governor Lee here.

Written by Sandy Rozek

Sandy, a NARSOL board member, is communications director for NARSOL, editor-in-chief of the Digest, and a writer for the Digest and the NARSOL website. Additionally, she participates in updating and managing the website and assisting with a variety of organizational tasks.