Man accused of killing sex offender believed police weren’t doing enough, Texas cops say
UPDATE: The man’s bail amount has been updated from $250,000 to $1 million.
A Texas man who said police weren’t doing enough to protect kids from sex offenders is now facing a murder charge, officials said.
James Lewis Spencer III, a 24-year-old from Alvin, was arrested Jan. 31 and is accused of posing as a minor to lure and kill sex offender, according to court records.
Contact information for Spencer’s public defender wasn’t immediately available.
On May 29 around 3:50 a.m., Houston police responded to reports of an unresponsive man lying in a ditch with multiple gunshot wounds, officers said.
The victim, later identified as a 37-year-old man, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
An investigation into the incident found that the victim believed he was meeting up with a minor for sex acts, court records show.
Cellphone records show Spencer posed as a minor to make the meeting arrangements and placed him at the crime scene, police said. Spencer admitted to owning the phone number used to communicate with the victim, according to police.
Video shows a vehicle pulling up and someone firing “a string of rapid gunshots” at the victim, police said.
Spencer wanted to “rob and harm those types of men because they would do bad things to little children,” a third party told police.
Spencer said he knew how to track people using a phone app, and “if the cop were not going to do anything maybe he should kill them himself,” records show.
“This was diabolically cunning,” Victim Services Director of Houston Crime Stoppers Andy Kahan told Houston’s KPRC. “When I look at this, I’m going ‘this is the stuff you see in movies.’”
The victim, who served time in federal prison on charges of possession of child pornography, failed to register as a sex offender, the station reported, citing documents.
Court records show Spencer was out on bail on a possession of a controlled substance charge at the time of the May 2023 incident.
Spencer’s bond is set at $1 million and he is due back in court Feb. 5, records show.
This story was originally published February 2, 2024, 2:21 PM.
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