Charges Likely Against Convicted Sex Offender

Tuesday, February 6th 2007, 10:16 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Police in Oklahoma said Tuesday they will recommend felony molestation charges against a convicted sex offender who posed as a 12-year-old boy to enroll in Arizona schools.

Investigators have a video showing Neil H. Rodreick II, 29, having sex with an 11-year-old boy from El Reno, a suburb west of Oklahoma City, El Reno police Lt. Van Gillock said.

Gillock said marks on Rodreick's body confirmed the identification. Police believe Rodreick pretended to be a 13-year-old boy when he lived in El Reno from 2003 to 2005.

"There's a skate park where the boys like to skateboard, and that's where he hung out and skateboarded," Gillock said.

Gillock said the mother of the boy, who is now 13, contacted police in Arizona after learning about Rodreick's true identity and told them her son met Rodreick through skateboarding. Arizona authorities contacted El Reno police, who took pictures of the boy and compared those to the images in the video.

He said that early next week police will present a report on the case to prosecutors, who will decide on what charges will be filed against Rodreick.

Gillock said Rodreick and another convicted sex offender, Brian Nellis, 34, took the boy on a trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona over spring break in 2005, and that there may be other victims from El Reno.

"It's highly possible," Gillock said. "We know the names of other young men here in El Reno that he did hang around, and we're going around to each one of them and talking to them."

El Reno investigators traveled to Arizona to interview Nellis, who is cooperating with authorities, Gillock said.

A message left on Tuesday with Rodreick's Arizona attorney, Steve August, wasn't immediately returned.

Rodreick was arrested last month in Arizona, when he tried to enroll in a charter school in Chino Valley. At the time, he and Nellis were living with Lonnie Stiffler, 61, and Robert J. Snow, 43, another convicted sex offender.

Arizona authorities say Rodreick conned Stiffler and Snow into believing he was a young boy, and that Stiffler pretended to be his grandfather when he tried to enroll him at the Chino Valley school.

All four were charged in Arizona with conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit forgery, and Rodreick, Snow and Nellis were charged with failing to register as sex offenders.

Rodreick also is charged with other counts, including misdemeanor assault for an incident involving a girl. He remains in the Yavapai County jail.

If convicted of lewd molestation or sodomy in Oklahoma, Rodreick would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole because of his previous conviction. Rodreick already served more than five years in prison in Oklahoma for a 1996 Grady County conviction connected to a lewd proposition of a child.

Federal charges against Rodreick also are possible stemming from more than 1,300 images of child pornography discovered on a computer Nellis rented, Gillock said.