That phenomenom is certainly true in Florida, where collections of unopposed housing for registered sex offenders collect, tailer parks, out-of-town rural areas, and one flop house for the absolute worst unrentable parolees: dubbed predator motel on Hwy. 41. Prisons tend to be rural and escapees offend nearby and often end up residing there eventually. Slim pickens for them but apparently one solo bicycler is enough.

That phenomenom is certainly true in Florida, where rundown units of unopposed housing for registered sex offenders collect, trailer parks, out-of-town rural areas, and one flop house for the absolute worst unrentable parolees: dubbed predator motel on Hwy. 41, where 26 of the 30 rooms were occupied by felons. Prisons tend to be rural and escapees offend nearby and often end up residing there eventually. Housing close to schools allow adults on bicyles to ride by children on playgrounds unchecked (I was a sub. teacher and noticed these voyers often, as well as library/babysitter sites next to elem. after-school). Slim pickens compared to huge, populous cities for them, but apparently one solo bicycler is enough.

This article is a breath of fresh air. It's about time someone started applying some real journalism to this case to debunk myths, rather than sounding alarms of moral panic with false association and bloated hyperbole.

This is uncanny---I was just discussing with my husband yesterday the events that happened in my childhood (I grew up in a very small southern town). There was the elementary school teacher who got away with molesting boys for thirty years before he was ever charged and convicted----everyone in town knew about him and those with good parents avoided him. The kids from overworked parents or absentee fathers often became his victms. There was the teenage boy who was raped by an acquaintance (the rapist was convicted); I myself had a very odd encounter that I look back upon now and realize just how dangerous it really was. There is no "safe" place---but there never has been.

I have lived in the same small town most of my adult life, and there is a definite divide between the outsiders and insiders, so the information which is available about people is very limited and biased, and also exploitable, not guarded the way the privacy act intends to be, gossip has destroyed people and serves the people who are protecting their own position in a very difficult market.

A while back, there was a little girl missing, and as it turned out, from what we know now, her murderer was babysitting her siblings while they were searching for her.

At the same time, the landlord in my building surrounded by all the elderly tenants that he could get off the sofa, and my mother who was visitng, were listening in horror to the police scanner as details of her situation came to to light, as clue after clue were found, in small town slow motion.

Of course I was still at work, oblivious to the whole thing, a little late, and when I got back home, everyone was standing in the hallway scolding me for giving them such a fright, I had no idea what was going on. Of course I wasn't listening to the police scanner, I never do, I don't even own one.

At the end, the teenager, as looking as a choir boy, presumed to have accidentally killed himself during auto-erotic asphyxiation, which I never heard of until he did it.

People were complaining how sloppy everything was during the investigation. The fact this kid was known to have abused before, was allowed to babysit, and actually was allowed to be alone with children after he had killed their sister I think was typical of the gong show which goes on around here. When someone with rotten teeth is playing the banjo, by the river, where big city folk are renting kayaks, you sort of shiver.

I meant: At the end, the teenager, DESCRIBED as looking as a choir boy, presumed to have accidentally killed himself during auto-erotic asphyxiation, which I never heard of until he did it.

Another thing the teens were doing here was picking fights, filming them, and putting them on Utube. Before Utube, there wasa horrific fight here that was videoed and made the big time press.

We also had a hotel demolished leaving all kinds of vulnerable people homeless, but before that happened, their tenancy rights were almost ignored, if it wasn't for a few people who found information which was not available locally, the tenants would have not been given the required notice.

We also have another hotel empty, while a homeless person died outside shoppers drug mart. There is no connecting here, I think that is why this stuff happens.

There is very little respect for citizenship here. If a person is not in the clique, well you are vulnerable, cause you are so isolated, and the yahoos are totally into ego gratification, at a very primal level.

I noticed one the pictures accompanying this article was of Caylee Anthony, suggesting that her murder in some ways supported the "findings" . That a mother would wait days or weeks before reporting a toddler missing is in no way a small town trend and that Ms Clark has a connection to the Caylee Anthony case suggests a self serving motive for the article and Caylee's inappropriate inclusion into it.

This is the first article that says police buy into myths also. I was a volunteer for 10 years with a police force in a large city and I was always surprised by the police; they used assumptions about people that I had thought was trained out of them. Myths and assumptions should be trained out of all police everywhere.

Your commentary on crime in small towns was right on. It made me think of Bracknell, the small town in the English countryside where I spent all my childhood. And I can attest to the Miss Marple theory that evil flourishes in these closed, homogenous environments. That's probably why Agatha Christie (and other mystery writers) set many of their stories in country towns.

The fact that most residents are from the same socio-economic background does not eliminate the envy, petty jealousies and retributions that exist in other communities. They are simply downscaled. And the fact that they are smaller in scope can make them even more lethal. There is no big-city noise, with all the attendant big-time difficulties of getting through the day, to put the squabbles into context. Small antagonisms can assume big proportions and, as you say, potentially troubled individuals can remain hidden.

I remember, back in the 1950's, when a neighbor of ours, Mrs. Wharton, lit a bonfire in her back garden. My mother had just hung out the family wash and Mrs. Wharton's smoke blew over and ruined it. My mother said she wanted to kill Mrs. Wharton, but instead they had a big row and didn't speak to each other for seven years - really. Country antagonisms die hard. The Hatfields and McCoys had nothing on them.

But I do recall that when Mrs. Wharton eventually died my mother was the one who bypassed the squeamish neighbors and laid out the corpse (you didn't just call the undertaker in those days.) So I guess all was forgiven in death.

Not the rape and murder you were referencing, I know, but it's surprising where those petty vendettas can lead. As they always say, what goes on behind those polite English lace curtains would make your hair curl.

It was Sherlock Holmes (Doyle) who observed that the quiet contryside was the perfect place to hide evil.

But cities will do as well.

Evil is not limited to geography.

A fascinating article, which makes a lot of sense on many levels. I'm alsi o really drawn to the letters on this one: Explora, where do you live? Sounds like you could write a book about this town!

The "small town" propensity for child murder here is only a peripheral issue in the Cantu case, if the population size has any bearing on the case at all. One can make a generalization that parents who bring up children in big cities tend to be more sophisticated and therefore are more savy about dangers and raise their children with an enhanced consciousness of possible perils to their well-being. Predators know this so they tend to practice in and choose their victims in areas where the pickings are easier. That being said, no child is secure from these sick minds, because they can be found anywhere and everywhere.

What did happen here in Tracey was bad police work; a failure of law enforcement to aggressively investigate suspicious incidents involving Huckaby early on. The police mind-set was pretty clear. These people were considered "low-rent" trailer dwellers, people of dubious credibility whose complaints were judged run of the mill domestic complications. This stereotypical pigeonholing led them to blow off Huckaby's alleged abduction and drugging of the first child. If they'd taken that incident seriously they no doubt could have prevented the death of little Sandra Cantu. A great guilt now rests on the shoulders of that police department for being unwitting accomplices to the heinous murder of an innocent child.