ROGERS, Ark. — The Arkansas Department of Public Safety issued a correction to the sex offender registry after a property owner found an offender was registered at his address.
Jeff Crump retired to live out his days in East Rogers, just a few miles from Beaver Lake. The property owner became concerned after a neighborhood rumor was brought to his attention.
"I received notice from my realtor, Deanne Edwards, that somebody had posted that a registered sex offender had moved on to the property and was paroled, which was not true," Crump said.
Neighbors believed George Lynn Perez lived on Crump's property, but as Crump explains, "he's been incarcerated for 20 years, and to have it show up yesterday is I have no reason why."
A spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Corrections confirmed that Perez had been incarcerated since 2007 and is serving a life sentence at the Cummins Unit for kidnapping and rape.
Crump bought the property in question back in 2017 as an addition to his own. He bought the home as the highest bidder in an estate sale. He believes the previous owner's daughter was married to Perez. However, what adds to the confusion is the home is no longer there.
"There used to be a three-bedroom, two-bath house, brick house, and it was in bad shape, so we tore it down," Crump said.
At the time of writing this story, Perez did not appear on Benton County's sex offender registry but did show up on Arkansas' registry with Crump's address. According to the state's sex offender registry disclaimer, the information on the site "is provided as a service to the community and is reviewed and updated regularly by the Arkansas Crime Information Center [ACIC]."
"I'd like to see the man's mailing address removed from my address because he hasn't been here in 20 years and he's a convicted felon. It just looked bad for me and my family," Crump said.
After multiple inquiries to the Department of Public Safety and ACIC, communications director Cindy Murphy made the following statement:
"George Perez resides at Cummins Unit of the Division of Correction. He has been incarcerated since 2007. The last address update ACIC received from Benton County was in 2006. We have corrected the address in ACIC, and the changes should be updated on the public registry by tomorrow morning."
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