John Brennan Crutchley - Release and Re-arrest

Release and Re-arrest

Writing in 1992 about the 1986 conviction, Ressler predicted that Crutchley's "25 to life" sentence would result in release as soon as 1998. In fact, Crutchley was released two years earlier than that.

After serving 11 years of his sentence, Crutchley was released on August 8, 1996 from Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida for the Brevard County Jail for good behavior. Officials in Bridgeport, West Virginia, where his mother lived, did not want him, nor did the people in Malabar and Melbourne. Therefore, he was transferred to the Orlando Probation and Restitution Center, a half-way house where he would undergo counseling and pay restitution even while serving his 50 years of parole.

Less than a day later, he was arrested again for violating his parole after being tested positive for marijuana. Even though he denied smoking marijuana (saying that inmates blew marijuana smoke in his face), prosecutors in the subsequent trial showed Crutchley confessing to a corrections inspector that he smoked the substance because he was nervous about his impending release and he was aware of the relaxing effects of cannabis.

This violation of his parole resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment to be imposed on Crutchley on January 31, 1997 under the "three strikes law." This was his third conviction; the first two were for the kidnapping and the rape of the Brevard teen.