SEDALIA, Mo. — A man with ties to Shelby County, allegedly kept a woman in a wooden box.
According to the victim, she’d been living with James Horn at a home in Sedalia, Missouri.
She was able to call 911 after escaping Thursday night.
James Horn was on the national sex offender registry for crimes committed here in Memphis.
On Friday WREG learned that in the past a Federal Judge ruled, despite pleading guilty to multiple sexual abuse and kidnapping charges, Horn was not considered a sexually dangerous person.
That made some wonder if a different ruling could have prevented Thursday’s disturbing discovery.
Now police said he’s on the run and they don’t know what his next move will be.
Back in 1993 Horn plead guilty to sexually abusing and kidnapping his girlfriend and went to jail for two years.
Then in 1997 he faced similar charges against his second wife.
For that he served 15 years in Federal Prison.
Missouri Police said his latest victim was another girlfriend.
“She was claiming her boyfriend was keeping her in a wooden box during the day. He would lock her inside for approximately the last four months,” Police told WDAF-TV in Missouri.
Authorities raided the house the couple shared and found a box consistent with what the victim described, but they can’t find Horn.
Here’s why people are on edge; before Horn got out of prison, federal prosecutors filed new charges to keep him in jail.
They tried declaring him “sexually dangerous” on top of already being a registered sex offender.
It was an effort, they said, to protect his former victims, but a Senior US District Judge hearing the case disagreed.
“Horn will not have serious difficulty controlling his behavior,” the judge said in his ruling, “because his sexual offense history has been confined to very specific circumstances relating to the unwanted end of an intimate relationship.’
Horn was set free in 2011 and ordered to serve five years of probation and sex offender treatment.
Now he’s back on the radar for another alleged sex crime.