Detectives: Only Romney warned about Tavares
TACOMA, Wash. -- Authorities in Massachusetts warned presidential candidate Mitt Romney about Daniel Tavares Jr. prior to Romney's campaign stop in Seattle, but failed to warn Pierce County detectives.
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom told the Boston Globe newspaper that the Massachusetts State Patrol suspected Tavares, who had threatened to kill Romney and other state officials before, was in Washington state.
But Det. Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff's Office said local authorities never received a warning.
"Obviously, we don't expect political candidates to go around notifying us about prisoners out here, but there should be someone out there that should be held accountable to have notified us, the same way they notified him," he said.
Detectives learned about Taveres after Brian and Beverly Mauck were found murdered in their Graham home. Tavares, Maucks' neighbor, told investigators he shot them after a fight over a $50 debt.
Tavares served 16 years for murdering his mother in Massachusetts. While in prison, he was charged with assaulting two guards.
In June, Tavares completed his sentence but prosecutors tried to keep him in prison for the alleged assaults against the guards. A district court judge approved bail of $50,000. In July, Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman overturned that decision and freed Tavares on personal recognizance.
Tuttman was appointed by Romney during his term as Massachusetts governor. He has called for Tuttman to step down from the bench in the wake of the Graham murders, but the judge is standing her ground.
The transcript of that hearing shows that prosecutors did not mention Tavares' alleged threats against Romney and others and did not ask the judge for a separate hearing on whether he would be dangerous if released while awaiting trial on the assault charges. Instead, they underscored his history of violence and asked that if he were to be released, he be monitored with a GPS device.
The judge declined to impose a monitoring system, saying she was presented with no evidence that he was a flight risk, and ordered Tavares freed on condition he call probation officers three times a week, live with his sister and work.
Tavares fled to Graham, Wash., with a woman he met while in prison and moved into a home in Maucks' neighborhood. He was arrested on Monday after the couple's bodies were found.
After Tavares was arrested, Pierce County deputies learned that the state of Massachusetts had a warrant out for his arrest and contacted the state.
But Massachusetts told Pierce County officials that even though they had issued the warrant, they will not extradite him. Under Massachusetts law, the state only extradites wanted criminals and suspects if they are caught in one of the states in the East Coast.
Troyer described Massachusetts' law as grossly irresponsible, stating it not only nullifies the purpose of warrants but also dumps the problem on someone else instead of solving it.
"You tell them if you get arrested on this warrant, if you're far enough away we're not going to extradite you. It's a great anti-crime program, just at the detriment of everyone else in the country," he said.
Romney's link to Tuttman has made Tavares a topic of discussion for candidates on the campaign trail.
Seizing on the case, one of Romney's GOP presidential rivals criticized the former governor's record on crime.
"The governor is going to have to explain his appointment and the judge is going to have to explain her decision," Rudy Giuliani told The Associated Press during an interview aboard his campaign bus during a stop in Laconia, N.H.
Giuliani pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket that listed FBI crime statistics for Massachusetts while Romney was governor. Murders were up 7.5 percent, robbery was up 12 percent, he said.
"He had an increase in murder and violent crime while he was governor," Giuliani said. "So it's not so much the isolated situation which he and the judge will have to explain - he's kind of thrown her under the bus, so it's hard to know how this is all going to come out. But the reality is, he did not have a record of reducing violent crime."
Edward P. Ryan Jr., a past president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, said the judge made the correct call based on state law "and for Romney to call for her to resign is nothing more than political expediency."
"If Romney had any courage, he would stand up and say this judge did the right thing," he said. Prosecutors "offered no facts other than to refer to his record" in arguing for him to be held on bail.
Tavares was accused of spitting on a guard in February 2006 and of hitting a guard in December 2005. His lawyer told the hearing that prosecutors waited more than a year to bring the charges against him as a way of keeping him behind bars past his manslaughter sentence.
Romney appointed Tuttman in April 2006. Fehrnstrom said Tuttman, a career prosecutor, had a reputation that suggested she would be a "law-and-order" judge.
"Otherwise, she never would have been appointed," Fehrnstrom said.
Romney was in the Seattle area on Monday last week and was warned that Tavares might be in the Washington state area, Fehrnstrom said.
Romney does not now have Secret Service protection. The Secret Service decides when to begin protecting presidential candidates based on considerations including the nature of threats made against them, and the likelihood of them becoming the nominee.
The Tavares case has echoes of a presidential campaign controversy two decades ago involving a Massachusetts felon named Willie Horton. Horton, serving a life term for murder, was granted a weekend furlough under a program overseen by then-Gov. Michael Dukakis. Horton escaped to Maryland, where he robbed and raped a woman.
A TV ad in the 1988 campaign associating Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, with the incident hurt him in his race against Republican George H.W. Bush, who won the election. |
