A violent sex offender was recaptured late Friday night after escaping from St. Francois County Jail in Missouri alongside four other inmates. Kelly McSean, a male who identifies as a woman, had been on the run for three days prior to authorities tracking him down.
McSean, born Larry Bemboom, was referred to as a “woman” by the St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department in their statements to media following his escape from the jail.
At approximately 7 p.m. on the evening of January 17, McSean and four other inmates entered a cell where a sink had been pulled from the wall. The men then climbed through a plumbing-access hole, making their way to a closet on the roof. They forced their way through the closet door, climbed out onto the building’s roof and fled.
Cameras that would ordinarily have tracked their escape were not functioning due to construction being done on the building. The prisoners weren’t discovered missing until a routine 10 p.m. inmate count.
The escaped prisoners were seen in street surveillance camera footage stealing a car with Missouri temporary tags from an office parking lot about a mile away from the jail. He and one of the other escapees, another sex offender named Aaron Sebastian, were captured by police after a car chase in the stolen vehicle. A third escapee, Michael Wilkins, was apprehended without incident after being spotted drinking at a bar. LuJuan Tucker and Dakota Pace have also been apprehended as of January 21.
McSean’s detention at the jail had followed charges related to committing violence against employees of the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment (SORTS) program. He had been involuntarily committed to SORTS after completing a prison sentence for rape in 2008 and being deemed a sexually violent offender.
While still living under his birth name of Larry Bemboom in 2003, he pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a 39-year-old African American woman. McSean had offered the woman a ride home, but instead taken her to his residence where he both orally and vaginally raped her.
During the assault, McSean made racially denigrating remarks to the victim, telling her that his ancestors owned slaves and ordering her call to him “master.” The woman managed to escape and fled nude from his residence. For the brutal attack, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Before his scheduled 2008 release, a prison psychiatrist reported that McSean met the statutory definition of a sexually violent predator and, after a second evaluating psychiatrist concurred, the state of Missouri filed a petition to involuntarily commit him to its Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Service program. A jury trial subsequently found that he met the legal requirements for civil commitment, and he was sent to reside at SORTS in Farmington.
McSean appealed the decision, but evidence presented by the evaluating psychiatrist provided insight into the predator’s extensive history of sexual violence dating back to when he was underage.
According to the evaluation — at 13 years of age, McSean molested an eight-year-old girl and forced her to perform oral sex on him. He also fondled and orally copulated a 12-year-old boy. The following year, he was sent to counseling after he was found soliciting other boys to perform oral sex on him in the school bathroom.
McSean was placed in sex offender treatment when he was just 15 years old after exposing himself to a younger relative, but while in treatment he molested another underage girl in his proximity.
Between the ages of 19 and 30, McSean would commit several more sex offenses, primarily against minors. He told the evaluating psychiatrist that he repeatedly raped a 16-year-old girl in 1995, as well as engaged in oral sex with her 11-year-old brother. He also stated that he moved in with two girls aged 14 and 16 in 1998, raped a 15-year-old girl, and molested a 14-year-old.
At age 30, he was arrested for sodomizing a 12-year-old girl after giving her marijuana. He received a suspended five-year sentence and three years probation. McSean said that while in the community, he committed a number of sexual assaults for which he was never charged, including molesting children as young as 8 at the Salvation Army, and raping unidentified male and female children.
In 2003, prior to being charged for the rape of the 39-year-old woman, McSean admitted to having kidnapped two teens and holding them captive at his residence where he forced them to perform oral sex on him.
McSean also said that around the same time, he was molesting a younger female relative and threatening to kill her if she told on him. He would sneak into her room at night, cover her mouth and rape her, as well as penetrating her with foreign objects.
In 2010, McSean’s appeal was denied and he has remained in civil commitment since. It’s unclear when he began identifying as a woman, but he is referred to by masculine pronouns in the 2010 court filings.
McSean is the third known violent offender in the state of Missouri to identify as transgender.
Another inmate, Patricia Trimble, is currently detained at a men’s maximum security institution in the state. Trimble, born Patrick, was convicted of two horrific crimes. Trimble raped two 9-year-old girls in 1978, and, while in prison for the crime awaiting trial, sexually and physically tortured his cellmate, an intellectually disabled man in custody for a non-violent offense. Trimble was ultimately sentenced to death, but had his execution commuted to a 50-year sentence.
Since identifying as transgender, Trimble has become a University-consulted “feminist” and “LGBTQ rights advocate.”
Another violent inmate in the state of Missouri recently became the first transgender person in the United States to be executed for his crimes.
Amber McLaughlin, born Scott, was executed by the state on January 3, 2023, after being sentenced to death for the brutal rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, Beverly Guenther in 2003. Just prior to his execution, politicians and activists rallied around McLaughlin and demanded clemency on the basis of his transgender identity.
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