Records obtained by The Associated Press show a convicted sex offender charged with killing a 17-year-old San Diego County girl could have been sent back to prison for violating his parole.
The records show parole officials found John Albert Gardner III was illegally living within a half-mile of a school in September 2007.
They decided to keep him on parole.
Had he been returned to prison, he could have been evaluated for commitment to a state mental hospital as a sexually violent predator. He also would have qualified for a lifetime of GPS tracking of his whereabouts.
Gardner pleaded guilty in 2000 to molesting a 13-year-old girl.
He pleaded not guilty this month to murdering Chelsea King in San Diego County and to the attempted rape of another woman.
