Man suspected in cold cases has worn monitoring device since 2006

02/28/2014


The city man arrested in a massive drug sweep this week who police suspect may have links to unsolved child killings is no longer on parole but wears a GPS ankle bracelet that tracks his movements, authorities said.

Charles T. Williams was one of 160 suspected drug dealers targeted in a sweep this week that followed a seven-month undercover investigation of street-level drug sales in Hackensack. Most were arrested Monday, when 250 officers fanned out across the city; 15 more were arrested in the past two days, bringing the total number of arrestees to 150, police said.

Williams, who served time for child rape and murder in the '70s and '80s, has drawn scrutiny after police said they gathered information during their investigation that could connect him to cold-case crimes, including the killings of boys in New Jersey and other states. Police Director Michael Mordaga said detectives are tracing his whereabouts and movements as part of their investigation.

As a Tier 3 sex offender – considered to be at high risk of a repeat violation — Williams' movements are recorded and stored by the State Parole Board through the GPS device on his ankle, said David Thomas, the board's executive director. He has been monitored by GPS since 2006, when his parole expired. His movements and travels are not restricted, and he has continued to wear the GPS tracker, which would sound an alarm if cut, Thomas said. The data can be used in investigations of any new sex crimes.

"The only thing we are allowed to do is track his movements," he said. "We are not allowed to supervise him because he is no longer on parole."

Williams spent 16 years in prison. He served five years for aggravated sexual assault in the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center, a New Jersey prison for sex offenders, between February 1974 and June 1979. Police said he sexually assaulted numerous boys in Bergen, Passaic and Morris counties.

He was taken from there to detention in Virginia, where he had been sentenced to two concurrent 20-year terms for second-degree murder. Williams had pleaded guilty to the killing and sexual assault of two boys, ages 13 and 14, in Petersburg, Va., in 1969.

The Virginia State Parole Board said parole records were not available, so it's not clear why he was released after 11 years in 1990.

Williams returned to New Jersey and remained here on parole until July 2006, according to state records. The Parole Board has no record of any violations during that time, Thomas said.

Tier 3 sex offenders typically must comply with lifetime parole under Megan's Law, but that did not apply to Williams because his crimes occurred before that law was enacted, Thomas said.

Williams was arrested early Monday, when police officers from the Hackensack Police Department, Bergen County Sheriff's Office, County Prosecutor's Office and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration crossed the city at 6 a.m. arresting suspected dealers.

The "border to border" sweep targeted dealers selling all kinds of drugs in the city, including Williams, who allegedly sold heroin and oxycodone out of his Sussex Street apartment.

Mordaga reported Tuesday that 135 people had been arrested. Initially, some two dozen suspects had not been located because they fled before police arrived or because they had multiple addresses, Mordaga said.

But police have continued their pursuit, and 15 more were arrested in the past two days. On Thursday, half a dozen suspected dealers were tracked down and arrested in Paterson. They had moved their drug sales there recently because of a Hackensack police crackdown, Mordaga said.

Police arranged to set up municipal court at the county jail instead of in the city's own municipal court because of the sheer number of people arrested.

Williams, who was charged with three counts of distribution of narcotics and three counts of distribution near a public park, was arraigned Wednesday before Hackensack Municipal Judge Richard Takvorian. He was also charged with aggravated assault, because police said they were able to tie him to a Feb. 6 stabbing in the city. His bail was set at $750,000.

Williams told his public defender, Navarro Gray, that he has three children and six grandchildren and that he has worked at his job at a Clifton furniture business for 20 years.

Timothy McMahon, a special agent at the DEA's New Jersey office in Newark, said he was not surprised by the extensive drug market in the city.

"The way things are today, the drugs are all over the place," he said. "Whether it's here in Newark, in the large cities, inner cities, spread out to the suburbs."

Hackensack, a city of close to 44,000 people, is located in an area with steady access to drugs near New York City and Newark, McMahon said. It would draw drug buyers from within the city and surrounding suburban towns.

"New Jersey is basically a crossroads here between the major airports in the area, the major ports, the roadway system," he said. "So drugs are making their way in and distributed down to the street level."

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