Widow Assails Officials Over Suspect’s Mistaken Release

A widowed mother of four blasted law enforcement officials Saturday, saying they not only failed to warn her that her husband’s alleged murderer was mistakenly released from jail, but then raided her home in search of the suspect.

Rhonda Davis, 37, said she has been living in fear since she learned that Gregory Stinson, 31, walked away from the Men’s Central Jail early Thursday because of a clerical error in the jail’s Inmate Reception Center.

Stinson--the fifth homicide suspect to be mistakenly released from the Los Angeles County Jail in a little more than a year--remained at large Saturday.

The Sheriff’s Department acknowledged Saturday that its policy is to notify everyone involved in a case of escape or mistaken release. But in the Stinson case, said Sgt. Richard Dinsmoor, court records were “not immediately available” and therefore deputies were not able to contact Davis.

He said it also took some time to identify the Los Angeles police detectives who had worked on the case who had information about Stinson. Once deputies got the records, Dinsmoor said, they interviewed Stinson’s family and neighbors to try to find him.

Deputies are staking out Stinson’s likely hangouts, and law enforcement agencies throughout the region are on the lookout for him, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Carrie Stuart. “He’s still out there somewhere,” she said.

Davis said she learned of Stinson’s release from her mother, who saw a news report about it Friday morning. That night, she said, police raided her South Los Angeles apartment looking for Stinson.

Davis said she would never consider protecting her husband’s alleged killer. In fact, she said several relatives are staying with her to watch over her.

“I’m trying to protect my kids, damn him,” she said.

Stinson was arrested in 1993 in the shooting death of Davis’ husband, Julius Matthews, 38. Davis said she had known Stinson and believes he killed her husband out of jealousy.

Of the five county jail inmates erroneously released over the past 15 months for reasons ranging from miscommunication among law enforcement agencies to paperwork errors at the jail, four, including Stinson, remain at large.

On Saturday, Sheriff Sherman Block addressed the latest release, calling it “unfortunate,” but saying the department is trying to correct the system that let Stinson free.

“When that happens, you try everything you can to try and find what it is in the system that perhaps could be corrected, and that’s happening this time,” he said in an interview on KCET-TV Channel 28’s “Life & Times.” Block said he hopes a computerized system can be perfected to better track court rulings and inmate information.

Although Matthews was slain in 1993, Stinson’s prosecution was put on hold pending a mental competency evaluation. In July 1994, he was certified incompetent to stand trial and was being held pending more court hearings, officials said.

The murder charge was dismissed Tuesday in Superior Court because it was not filed “in a timely fashion,” Block said. Although the charge was immediately refiled in Municipal Court, Block said the paperwork apparently did not get into the jail’s computer system.

Davis said she believes Stinson is dangerous but has no idea where he may be hiding. “I ain’t seen him in three years. I don’t know what he may be up to,” she said.

Matthews woke Davis one night three years ago to tell her that he couldn’t breathe, she said. When she saw blood on his lap, she called paramedics. It wasn’t until he died at a hospital that she learned he had been shot, Davis said. Los Angeles police told her later that Stinson was the prime suspect after he failed a lie detector test.