To: T L Comiskey who wrote (64700 ) 4/19/2006 11:22:30 PM From: average joe Respond to of 362543 'No paper trail' in case of suspected Canadian killer and U.S. victims Last Updated Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:23:04 EDT CBC News An online sex offender registry remains the only connection between a Cape Breton man and the two registered sex offenders he is suspected of shooting to death before killing himself. Investigators in Maine say Stephen Marshall, 20, logged on to 34 individual names on the state-run registry, which provides addresses and conviction data of offenders. The two people he is believed to have killed, Joseph Gray, 57, of Milo and William Elliott, 24, of Corinth, were among those names. The case of the late Stephen Marshall, who travelled to Maine to visit his father and is implicated in the death of two sex offenders, is puzzling police.(Maine Department of Public Safety/Associated Press) But investigators in the United States and Canada have found no link between the three men. "So far there's been no paper trail we've found," Stephen McCausland of the Maine Public Safety Department said Tuesday. On a visit to his father's house in Houlton, Maine, Marshall stole his father's truck and three firearms, police said. They allege Marshall went to the home of Gray and Elliott and killed them before taking his own life on a bus near Boston. Gray's name was posted on the registry because he moved to Maine after he was convicted in Massachusetts of sexually assaulting someone under 14. Elliott's conviction was for having sex with a girl under 16. Marshall's motives unclear McCausland said it's still a mystery why Marshall looked at the website. "As to what his motives were, what he intended to do, unfortunately we don't have answers to that. But we're trying to get them." Investigators are asking Marshall's friends and family if they know of anything that might have triggered something in the young man, including the possibility he was a victim of sexual abuse. "So far, nothing," said McCausland. Investigators also hope a laptop computer Marshall was carrying contains some answers. Forensic work is expected to begin in the next few days. Police in Nova Scotia said Marshall had no previous run-ins with the law. Many U.S. states post their registries because, they say, it's information the public needs to have. Sex offender registries off-limits to Canadian public Ontario set up the first sex offender registry in Canada, and it now has 8,000 names. The federal government followed suit in 2004. In neither case is the list made public as details about sex offenders are only available to police. Ontario Tory MPP Gerry Martiniuk has introduced a private member's bill which calls for full public access to sex offenders' names, photographs and addresses. "We're not talking about suspicions, we're talking about people who have been convicted of a criminal offence, which many of them affect children, and I believe the public have the right to know more info than they have right now," he said. "We've had inquiries from individuals interested in searching names rather than addresses," he said. "They wish to search names for babysitting purposes, for dating purposes." But others say that sex offenders are more co-operative with police if they know the list is private. They say publicizing it only pushes offenders underground. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quick to signal Tuesday that he doesn't intend to make the registries public. "I think it's up to police to protect us from offenders. I'm not sure that that's a function we want to have dealt with on the street." cbc.ca