We, the
comrades of Unit 1012, will honor and remember 7-year-old Megan Kanka every
year on December 7 and July 29. We, the comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP, will
make her one of The
82 murdered children of Unit 1012, where we will not forget her. Let us
remember how she lived and not how she died.
In loving
memory of her, we will post information about her from Wikipedia
and also endorse Megan’s Law and the Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation.
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Megan Kanka [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sgpd.com/html/megan_s_law.html]
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Kanka's family set up a charitable
foundation, the Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation, with the aim of preventing
crimes against children.
Jesse Timmendequas
Jesse K. Timmendequas (born April 15,
1961) had two previous convictions for sexually assaulting young girls. In 1979
he pleaded guilty to the attempted aggravated sexual assault of a five-year-old
girl in Piscataway Township, New Jersey. He was given a suspended sentence but,
after failing to go to counseling, he was sent for nine months to the Middlesex
Adult Correctional Center. In 1981, Timmendequas pleaded guilty in regards to
the assault of a seven-year-old girl, and was imprisoned at the Adult
Diagnostic & Treatment Center (ADTC) in Avenel, New Jersey, for six years.
Timmendequas reportedly participated
little in the treatment program offered at the ADTC. He was described by one
therapist who treated him at the facility as a "whiner" who spent
most of his time sleeping. Another therapist stated that she had believed that
Timmendequas would eventually commit another sex crime (although she did not
believe he would commit murder).
Murder and trial
Timmendequas lured Kanka into his
house by offering to show her a puppy and subsequently raped her. She was
slammed onto a dresser, suffocated and strangled to death with a belt. He moved
her body to his truck, assaulting the body again before placing it in a wooden
toy chest and dumping it in nearby Mercer County Park. The next day, he
confessed to investigators and led police to the site.
Evidence included bloodstains, hair,
and fiber samples, as well as a bite mark matching Kanka's teeth on
Timmendequas' hand, and led to a guilty verdict on charges of kidnapping, four
counts of aggravated sexual assault, and two counts of felony murder—committing
murder in the course of a felony. The court sentenced Timmendequas to death,
and the sentence was upheld by the New Jersey Supreme Court on appeal. Congressman
Dick Zimmer stated, "I believe he is exactly the kind of predator that the
legislature had in mind when it enacted the death penalty."
Timmendequas remained on New Jersey's
Death Row until December 17, 2007, when the New Jersey Legislature abolished
the state's death penalty. As a result of the ban, Timmendequas' sentence was
commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Megan's Law
One month after the murder, the New
Jersey General Assembly passed a series of bills proposed by Paul Kramer that
would require sex offender registration, with a database tracked by the state,
community notification of registered sex offenders moving into a neighborhood
and life in prison for repeat sex offenders. Paul Kramer expressed incredulity
at the controversy created by the bills, saying that "Megan Kanka would be
alive today" if the bills he proposed had been law.
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Megan
Kanka [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.mcccvoice.org/megans-law/]
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Nicole_Kanka_Foundation
The Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation is a non-profit charity
founded by the family of Megan Kanka with the intent of preventing crimes
against children.
Megan's death resulted in the New
Jersey Legislature passing Megan's Law, which requires notification when a
convicted sex offender moves into a neighborhood; there is now a similar
federal law, passed as an amendment to the Jacob
Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration
Act.
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