PANAMA CITY — A sex offender released twice from custody is now being held without bond on a new rape charge stemming from a 1995 incident, according to court records.
Horace Monroe Wood, 45, was released on probation Monday for a second time after a Bay County judge found he had not violated his probation. Hours later, however, deputies took Wood back into custody and since have charged him with sexual battery.
Wood is now being held without bond in the Bay County Jail.
The sexual battery charge stemmed from a 1995 incident, according to Bay County Sheriff’s officials, in which Wood allegedly engaged in an unlawful sexual act with a person less than 16 years old. Further details of the charge against Wood were not made public Tuesday.
However, Circuit Judge James Fensom, who released Wood on Monday after a violation of probation hearing, ordered Wood to be held without bond.
Wood previously had been released the day he was supposed to go to trial at the end of October, although he was accused of sexual battery by four underage victims. He pleaded no contest to one count of lewd and lascivious molestation. Following Wood’s release, Sheriff Frank McKeithen criticized the handling of the case, stating Wood had “not been held accountable.”
Wood later complained that authorities excessively monitored his activities during his release.
According to the prosecution’s notes on the case, the incidents took place as far back as 2006 on girls as young as 3 years old. The time lapse since the incident and the ages of the alleged victims both conspired to result in deficient memories among the girls. Several of their accounts conflicted with one another when pressed on details, which would be used at trial, according to the prosecutor Matt Pavese.
Attorneys reached a deal, and Wood was released with three years probation. Prosecutors received a life-long designation on Wood as a sex offender.
Eight days later, probation officers caught Wood without his court-required electronic monitoring device and apprehended him outside a Youngstown motel. Fensom ruled the nearly two hours Wood spent without the monitoring device was not a “substantial violation” of his probation.
A few hours later, however, Wood was rearrested and charged with a sexual battery incident from 1995, BCSO said.
Wood appeared in court for his first appearance Tuesday. An arraignment date of Feb. 10 was set on the sexual battery charge.