Earl Kenneth Shriner is a US-American criminal who in 1990 was convicted of first-degree attempted murder, first-degree rape and first-degree assault of the 7 year old Ryan Alan Hade[1] and sentenced to 131 years imprisonment.
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Shriner, who was described as “a slightly retarded man with a bizarre physical appearance”[2] and tested to have an IQ of 67[3] had a long history of sadistic sexual assaults but only one conviction. “Shriner was in the community without supervision because his sentence had expired and a judge had ruled that he did not meet the stringent ‘imminent danger’ criteria necessary for commitment under the State's mental health laws.”[2]
In 1966, when Shriner, at that time sixteen, was detained for choking a seven year old girl, he led the police officers to the body of a retarded fifteen year old girl instead, whom he had strangled. He was confined to ten years, but committed as a ‘defective delinquent’ to a hospital,[4] but not convicted of a crime. Between 1977 and 1987, while serving a ten year sentence for abducting and assaulting two sixteen year old girls, Shriner had repeatedly disclosed not just fantasies but detailed plans how he would kidnap, confine, and torture his victims.[5]
The final sexual assault Shriner committed in May 1989, caused a nation-wide public outrage, that has been cited as one of the main catalysts for new laws allowing indefinite confinement of sex offenders.[6][7] The formation of a victims advocacy group Tennis Shoe Brigade, named in reference to the discovery of a child's tennis shoe leading the police to the assaulted boy,[2] rallying for toughening the laws, raised the public pressure on Washington's Governor Booth Gardner.[8][9] Subsequently, the Washington state legislature unanimously enacted the first "sexual predator" law, allowing to indefinitely lock up perpetrators of any sexual crime, if a "mental abnormality" causing someone to commit another sex crime can be attested.[10][11] A pivotal part of the 1990 Community Protection Act (Washington)[7] this legislation was subsequently adopted by many other U.S. states.
Shriner was also cited by PETA in their campaign against animal abuse as an example of notorious criminals that started torturing animals long before turning to children.[12] The Animals' Voice describes him as "being widely known in his neighborhood as the man who put firecrackers in dogs’ rectums and strung up cats".[13]