Judge Krichbaum returns parole violator to prison

The defense argued
unsuccessfully for a parole extension or house arrest.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — The judge who released a sex offender after he served eight months of his three-year prison term has sent the offender back to prison to finish his sentence after determining he violated terms of his parole.

On Wednesday, Judge R. Scott Krichbaum ordered Larry W. Sapp, 49, formerly of Struthers, back to prison after the Ohio Adult Parole Authority said he violated parole by failing to notify the authority of his address, having unsupervised contact with children under 18, failing to notify his live-in girlfriend of his sex-offender status, and failing to fulfill his child support payment obligations.

In asking the judge to extend or revoke Sapp’s parole, the APA, which arrested and jailed Sapp for alleged parole violations in August, also said Sapp went to North Carolina and Texas, formed a relationship with a Rootstown woman with minor children, and text-messaged a 14-year-old girl, all without the required authority permission.

Judge Krichbaum, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, had imposed the three-year sentence on Sapp in March 2004 after Sapp pleaded guilty to eight counts of gross sexual imposition for improperly touching a girl between the ages of 10 and 13 between 1997 and 2000.

Sapp’s July 2002 trial for these offenses ended with a hung jury, and Sapp entered his guilty plea in January 2004 as the prosecution was preparing for a new trial. The judge released him on five years’ parole in early December 2004.

Sapp’s statements

During the parole violation hearing, Sapp said he regularly made child support payments; truthfully reported his residences in Ravenna, Lake Milton and then Deerfield to the parole officers with whom he met regularly; left the state only for work; fully and accurately informed the Rootstown woman about the criminal charges against him and his parole; and did not live with the Rootstown woman.

But the Rootstown woman said Sapp lived with her and her children from January 2005 to March 2007 and told her he wasn’t guilty of the crimes he was accused of.

The woman identified for J. Michael Thompson, assistant county prosecutor, photos of Sapp with her minor children at various family functions. “We lived together and he was involved with my children very much,” she said. “We were a family,” she said, adding that Sapp had daily contact with her children.

Sapp’s lawyer, John B. Juhasz, acknowledged his client violated some of his parole conditions, but said Sapp sent no inappropriate text messages to the girl. Arguing that employment is the best preventer of a repeat criminal offense, Juhasz said that a parole extension or electronically monitored house arrest with work-release privileges was appropriate.

But, in revoking parole and sending Sapp back to prison for just over two years of time remaining on his sentence, the judge said he wouldn’t tolerate parole violations and announced that Sapp would have another three years of parole after he finishes his prison time.