PANAMA CITY — A released sex offender was re-arrested after a DNA test revealed he was the father of a child allegedly conceived during a rape, officials with the Bay County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Wednesday.
Horace Monroe Wood, 45, was at the edge of conditional freedom Monday after a Bay County circuit judge said he did not violate terms of his probation on lewd and lascivious child molestation charges. However, only moments before Wood left police custody, authorities received DNA results confirming Wood was the father of a child born in 1995 after an alleged sexual battery on a 14-year-old victim, BCSO officials said.
Wood was taken back into custody, charged with sexual battery and ordered to be held indefinitely without bond.
It was the second time Wood neared freedom before swiftly being arrested. The first time, Wood called Sheriff Frank McKeithen to complain of deputies monitoring his activities and disturbing him throughout the night.
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 and received probation and the lifetime designation as a sex offender.
At the time, though, investigators were awaiting paternity tests ordered by the court.
Investigators were “still investigating a case involving (Wood) and … a victim from 1994, who had a child with the defendant when (she) was 14 years old,” Matt Pavese, prosecutor in the case, wrote in an October memo. “We are currently awaiting DNA results of that case.”
But the case concluded with the State Attorney’s Office not being able to place any of the alleged victims on the stand, since several years had passed since the alleged 2006 child molestations. Some of the children’s accounts, from when they were as young as 3 years old, conflicted with others.
“I have little doubt these girls are telling the truth; however, time has eroded their stories and their memories,” Pavese wrote.
In general, the statute of limitation on a first-degree felony is about four years after the victim turned 18, according to state law. However, prosecution of a sexual battery can commence within one year after substantial DNA analysis of the crime is conducted, according to state law.
Wood was released with three years of probation, but eight days later, probation officers caught Wood without one piece of his court-required electronic monitoring device and apprehended him outside the Youngstown Motel, 12434 U.S. 231. Circuit Judge James Fensom later ruled the nearly two hours Wood spent without the monitoring device was not a “substantial” nor “willful violation” of his probation.
Wood again prepared for his release. However, as his probation reinstatement was processed, authorities received notice that DNA evidence from the pending paternity case had been returned, and the results identified Wood as the father of a child allegedly conceived in rape, BCSO said.
Wood was again taken into custody Monday before exiting the Bay County Jail. He has been charged with sexual battery and also has a pending child support case that has been reopened in the Bay County courts.
Wood is currently being held without bond.