Atlanta serial rapist Lavelle (Lavel, Lavell) McNutt was sentenced to life this week for two rapes and two other assaults that occurred while the convicted sex offender was working in Atlanta’s Fox Sports Grill restaurant. When you look at McNutt’s prior record of sexual assaults and other crimes, you really have to wonder what inspired the owners of Fox Grill to endanger female employees and customers by choosing to employ him.
Particularly with McNutt’s history of stalking women. Particularly with the length of his record, and the density of his recidivism. Was some manager actually sympathetic to McNutt’s hard-luck story? This is no record to overlook. Below is my partial round-up of the crimes I could find on-line. I’m sure there’s more in arrest reports. This guy is the classic compulsive* offender.
[*Of course, in using words like “compulsive,” I speak strictly as an amateur. Northeastern University Criminologist James Alan Fox has handed down an edict informing all non-criminologists that they are not to use fancy criminologist lingo when talking about crime. Crime victims, especially, are not supposed to use big words or act like they know stuff. Furthermore, they’re not supposed to become journalists, because they’re, like, totally damaged.]
James Alan Fox, Professional
We’ll return to Dr. Fox soon. Very soon. Back to McNutt:
McNutt’s first adult rape conviction, for two separate rapes in New York State, occurred in 1976, just after he turned 18. When you see an 18-year old convicted of a serious offense, you have to wonder about the contents of his sealed juvenile record: 18-year olds don’t wake up one day, break into the first house they see, and rape the occupant. They usually start experimenting with sexual abuse early in adolescence, victimizing their siblings, peers, and other easy targets. How many children and young women had already been sexually assaulted by McNutt by the time he aged out of the juvenile system?
I believe those victims exist, and that unlike Lavelle McNutt, they were abandoned by society. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: the football coaches and college presidents who treated McNutt like a victim because he was a rapist abetted him in his crimes, thus sentencing his victims to a lifetime without justice.
The two rape victims in the New York State cases were also denied justice, only in a different way. McNutt was sentenced to a preposterously light term of five years for the two rapes. He served less than three years of that, and by 1979 he was a college student at Atlanta’s Morehouse University. Almost immediately, he was charged in another sexual assault, this time for aggravated sodomy. In May, 1979, he began serving a seven-year sentence for that crime. He got out in three years.
In 1982, Lavelle McNutt was 24 years old and already had three adult sexual assault convictions on his record. Two years later, he was convicted of aggravated assault in Clayton County. Was that a rape case, pled down to a non-sexual charge? He also had a burglary conviction in Fulton County, date unknown. Burglary and aggravated assault charges from the early 1980’s might very well have been rapes, or attempted rapes. Atlanta was notorious at that time for going easy on sex offenders — thanks largely to irresponsible jurors who rendered sex crime prosecutions almost impossible to win, regardless of the circumstances. An ugly contempt for victims of rape was the status quo in the courts. The malaise incited by public prejudices towards victims crashed the entire system, and Atlanta was a rapist’s paradise. And a victim’s nightmare. It would be very interesting to know more about those crimes.
In 1984, McNutt was sentenced to five years for the aggravated assault. Oddly, he did serve nearly all of that sentence, receiving only a few months off, probably for the time he was behind bars awaiting sentencing. This is another reason I suspect that the underlying crime was something more serious than aggravated assault. In any case, for five years the public was protected from him. Pre-sentencing reform, this was the best a prosecutor could do. In August, 1989, he was free again.
In 1992, McNutt was charged in Fulton County with the offense called “Peeping Tom.” Funny as that sounds, he was probably casing out a victim to rape or amusing himself between more serious attacks. He received three years for the Fulton crime and 12 months for a crime labeled “other misdemeanor” in Gwinnett County. He was out again two years later, in 1994.
And then the crimes started again. Disturbingly, there are parole officials and possibly prosecutors and judges in Metro Atlanta who then ignored Georgia’s new sentencing laws and continued to illegally grant McNutt leniency, enabling him to rape even more women. Why is nobody in the Atlanta media looking up these cases and asking the corrections department, to explain their actions? If I was one of McNutt’s later victims, I’d sue everybody involved in cutting him loose.
Georgia’s sentencing reform law was passed in 1994. It was supposed to enhance sentencing for repeat offenders and extend sentences significantly for so-called “serious violent offenders.” But the law was passed with several default mechanisms that enabled judges to keep releasing repeat offenders onto the streets. Consider this language:
Except as otherwise provided in subsection (b) of this Code section, any person convicted of a felony offense in this state or having been convicted under the laws of any other state or of the United States of a crime which if committed within this state would be a felony and sentenced to confinement in a penal institution, who shall afterwards commit a felony punishable by confinement in a penal institution, shall be sentenced to undergo the longest period of time prescribed for the punishment of the subsequent offense of which he or she stands convicted, provided that, unless otherwise provided by law, the trial judge may, in his or her discretion, probate or suspend the maximum sentence prescribed for the offense [italics inserted]. (O.C.G.A. 17-10-7)
In other words, a criminal must be sentenced to the maximum penalty the second time he is convicted of a felony unless the judge decides to sentence him to something other than the maximum penalty, such as no time at all, as in the case of six-time home burglar Johnny Dennard. What is the point of a law like this? The point is that the criminal defense bar still controlled the Georgia Legislature in 1994, and other elected officials lacked the courage to stand up to them. The rest of the story is that too many judges betray disturbing pro-defendant biases, even when it comes to violent predators like Lavelle McNutt.
Nevertheless, other portions of the 1994 sentencing reform law did strengthen sentences for repeat offenders. In 1996, McNutt was charged with aggravated assault and stalking in Fulton County. Aggravated assault is not one of the “seven deadly sins” that trigger sentencing as a “serious violent felon” under the 1994 act: if it were, he would have been sentenced to life without parole due to his prior rape convictions.
Yet even as a “non-serious violent felon” repeat offender, McNutt was still required under the 1994 sentencing reform act to serve the entire sentence for his crimes. But he didn’t. He was sentenced to six years and served less than four. He walked into prison in January, 1997 and walked out again three and a half years later, in July of 2000. Even counting the time he may have spent cooling his heels in the Fulton County jail before being transferred to the state prison (or maybe not), he was out of prison four years and two months after the date of the crime for which he was sentenced to no less than six years behind bars, with no parole.
Here is the code section that restricts parole for four-time felons:
[A]ny person who, after having been convicted under the laws of this state for three felonies or having been convicted under the laws of any other state or of the United States of three crimes which if committed within this state would be felonies, commits a felony within this state other than a capital felony must, upon conviction for such fourth offense or for subsequent offenses, serve the maximum time provided in the sentence of the judge based upon such conviction and shall not be eligible for parole until the maximum sentence has been served. (from O.C.G.A. 17 -10-7)
Can anybody explain the fact that McNutt was granted parole? Who let him go early, apparently in direct violation of Georgia’s reformed sentencing law? Did the prosecutors fail to record his three prior felony convictions dating back to 1976 — two rapes (counted as one, unfortunately), aggravated sodomy, and the 1984 aggravated assault? Did the judge ignore the law of Georgia in sentencing McNutt? Did the Department of Corrections ignore the no-parole rule? Who is responsible?
These questions remain unanswered since 2009. Heck, they remain unasked, in the Atlanta media market. More questions:
- Why didn’t the judge give McNutt a longer sentence in the first place? How could any judge look at the accumulated evidence of violently predatory sexual behavior, of repeat offenses rolling in after each brief incarceration, and not decide that it was his or her duty to protect the public for longer than six years? Does anybody on the criminal justice bench in Atlanta even contemplate public safety in sentencing?
- Why was McNutt charged with stalking and aggravated assault for the same incident? Was he actually attempting to commit a sexual assault? Could he have been charged with attempted sexual assault instead, a charge that would have triggered the life sentence (read: 14 years) as a serious violent felon and repeat offender? Was he permitted to plead to a charge that didn’t carry life imprisonment? Did the Fulton prosecutor’s office do everything it could do to keep McNutt off the streets, given his disturbing prior history and relentless sequence of serious crimes?
- Was McNutt’s DNA checked before he was released from prison in 2000? Could other rapes have been solved, and charged, before he walked out of prison again? How many rapes could have been prevented, including the four recent Buckhead-area sex crimes, if this had been done? His first adult rape conviction occurred in 1976 — his latest rape charges occurred quite recently. Does anybody believe he took a twenty-year hiatus from hunting and torturing women?
I have said before that if McNutt had been labelled a hate criminal, someone in the media, or the legal world, or the activist circuit, would have cared. Serial rapists are hate criminals, at least by the definition created by the activists, no matter how much these same activists try to keep rapes of women out of the discussion.
For, serial rapists choose one random victim after another to target; they attack the things that make their victims women (their sexual organs, and the same goes for serial rapists who target men); they use sexual slurs while violating their bodies; they attempt to degrade them; they spread fear among other women. So why didn’t the hate crime activists utter a peep over McNutt’s crimes, or the crimes of any of the other serial rapists blighting women’s lives in Atlanta over the years? Why does the media give hate crime activists a pass — the gay groups, the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, CAIR, and Justice Department officials, especially Eric Holder –as they labor hard behind the scenes to keep serial rapes from being counted as hate crimes?
At the very time hate crime activists in Atlanta were busy trying to find the first case that would showcase their new law in the way they wished (the Georgia law is since overturned), Lavelle McNutt slipped out of prison, unnoticed.
Lavelle McNutt had been a free man since July, 2000, working in Atlanta-area restaurants, even managing them. He wasn’t hiding. As if his prior record isn’t bad enough, the current allegations about him are sickening: an informant reported that he carried “duct tape, wigs, lubricant and sex toys” in his car, to use during sexual assaults.
McNutt has now been sentenced for two rapes and two other assaults between 2007 and 2009. And what was he doing between 2000 and 2007? Where was he?
In April 2007, authorities said, McNutt raped a woman inside her Sandy Springs home on Riverside Drive after holding a knife to her neck and bounding her with duct tape.
Later in February 2009, McNutt was charged with being a Peeping Tom after a woman at Macy’s at Lenox Square in Buckhead discovered a man watching her disrobe in the women’s dressing room.
In March 2009, prosecutors say McNutt attacked a Buckhead woman as she was leaving her apartment on Canterbury Road. He began dragging her away when she broke free and ran for help.
That same day in March, McNutt stole the purse and apartment key card of a woman walking her dog in Piedmont Park. The next day the woman found underwear missing from her home and later discovered hanging in a tree.
She is lucky she didn’t walk in on him. Lavelle McNutt is a dangerous sadist. Gerald Ford was president when he was first caught. Gerald Ford. The Bicentennial. Patty Hearst. Farrah Fawcett. Apple computers invented. You know, 35 years ago.
As a society, we simply lack the willpower to behave as if certain crime victims even deserve justice.
It took 35 years to put McNutt away. Next, I predict, activists will begin trying to overturn his life sentence. We aren’t done paying for this guy’s lawyers yet.
[formatting updated 8/18/11]
McNutt’s quite a piece of work. I find it interesting that I could only find one photo of him and that using the spelling of “Lavell” rather than the other two options. Do you have any thoughts on how much race had to do with how his many many cases were handled?
And re: James Alan Fox, sounds like some sour grapes from someone who doesn’t understand why he hasn’t been given his own TV gig yet.
My sister was one of the New York victims in 1976. Because McNutt was a West Point cadet and raped her on West Point’s campus, he was tried in a military court. The charges carried the death penalty but the military prosecutor pled the case down to that ridiculously low sentence. The civilian case was pled down too and he was treated as a youthful offender and got a sentence concurrent with the military one. He spent a few years in Leavenworth and was free to rape again.
McNutt played football at West Point and was sponsored to the Academy by Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller.
My family is pleased that he’s finally locked away from society and cannot hurt more women. Thank you for writing this piece or we wouldn’t have known.
Thank you for writing and sending this additional information.
The whole thing is sad and unfortunate on all counts. I don’t revel in his convictions or the victims being victimized. I worked under his management for 2 years not knowing. He needs fererent prayer at this point. Court mercy isn’t helping obviously. Repeated behavior is a sickness. He needs healing and reform.
I agree with you that it’s sad, and people can appear to have different sides of their personalities.
But remember, he’s a sadist and a torturer who played the system by playing the victim. Rapists of his type are often far more prolific than their records reveal. With his level of violence, too, I would not be surprised to hear of him linked to murders as well.
Nobody revels in his convictions. Victims want justice and safety for themselves and others. He may experience some degree of reform behind bars, but even doing so doesn’t mean that he should ever be free again. Real mercy is putting him where he cannot hurt women anymore and making sure he doesn’t victimize men, either. Real reform is taking real responsibility for his actions, which includes accepting that he deserves his life sentence.
Thanks for writing.
I also worked under his management for a couple of years, and knowing him in the restaurant you would have never guessed he was a total creeper-rapist. He was friendly and frankly a pretty good manager, but in retrospect I can think of a couple of instances that now creep me out. Talk about living a double life, Lavelle was a pro.
The comments of those who worked with him prove and didn’t know or suspect the level of his evil proves one thing to me. Character witnesses have no place in the courts. A testimony on behalf of a thug’s character proves only that he is good at fooling people not that he is a good person. Only testimony germaine to the facts of the case should be allowed, both in the trial and the sentencing phase.
This case simply shows how we have perverted the meaning of mercy. Earlier courts thought they were being merciful, but what they in fact did was to unleash this monster on more victims – how unmerciful can it get. As Adam Smith wrote more than 200 years ago: “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
That’s a very good point about character witnesses, and a great quote. Thanks for writing.
I went to High School with this (Mc)NUT!!!! in Maryland
I was in macy’s at lenox in 2009 the day that mcnut was peeping in a womans dressing room. When I walked into the fitting room I saw an older well dressed black guy on the floor on all fours looking inside a fitting room. I thought at first he was a manager there and the door to the dressing room may have been locked on the inside. He looked back at me and then turned to look under the fitting room door again. I walked off to look for another dressing room. And I quickly found out the juniors side did not have any other fitting rooms so I went back to the fitting room where the guy was. I walked past him and went into the one beside him. As I was starting to change I looked at the floor of the fitting room beside me and saw feet of a woman standing in one place as if she were facing the mirror. I thought it was strange that the person didn’t move the entire time I was in there. When I left the fitting room the man was gone. And the victim was at the cashier begging the lady to call security. When security came the lady had to threaten to sue before they walked her to her car. I remember she said I’m so scared what if he kills me. I think about this incident everyday and I wasn’t even the victim. It scares me to know that he was able to get basically a slap on the wrist everytime for hurting women like this. They should do some digging to find out who he knew that helped him get such light sentences with his background.
I’m going to look into this more. Like another commenter, Darrell, says here, “peeping” is often a “day job,” or a fun distraction, for sexual predators. That’s why the head of security of the Atlanta Public Library was working really hard back in the early 90’s to get people to take those incidents in the library seriously. But he was alone in this fight.
The store should be sued for failing to act on incidents like that. A few lawsuits would clean up their behavior. If they’re providing places for women to change, and if they have security cameras for shoplifting, the only reason they’re not being cooperative is because they don’t want bad publicity.
But they certainly weren’t alone in not caring. I have file folders full of sex criminals who got away – literally — with murder and rape for decades because they kept getting released whenever they got caught. A lot of people in our courts have a lot to answer for. I’ll keep looking into this.
Thanks for writing. Tina
I was the woman in Macy’s.
He stuck his head under the fitting room while I was trying on some denims. I screamed, quickly dressed and ran out looking for him. He was gone.
I alerted Macy’s store security however, they thought it was funny, walked me out to my car and didn’t bother to take a report.
That night I kept thinking I knew his face from somewhere…& while I sat reading, there was a bar scene being described and it immediately came to me. Fox Grill in Atlantic Station. My boyfriend at the time & I frequented that bar every Friday & Saturday. Well, I called the restaurant and asked if they had an older black gentleman with glasses working there. The guy put me on hold for about 3min. The call was picked up & it sounded quieter. The person said yes, that is me. I asked him his name and when he told me. I asked him if he was in Macy’s that day. He said yes. I told him I will be stopping by the next day.
The next day I went to the restaurant & somehow, he had quit. I was disappointed and terrified all at the same time. I called my mum who told me to go to the police and report it. I did just that.
WSB interviewed me a week later & concealed my identity since he was no where to be found.
I was then contacted by a detective about a month later who wanted me to come in to see if I could pick him out of some photos. The detective also told me not to come alone. I went alone.
They showed me 6 pix – Lavell McNutt was one of them but the pix of him was much younger. I was paralyzed with fear, I couldn’t drive myself home.
It turns out that he’s been raping women from the 1970’s and I was just lucky that I got away.
For months, I was afraid but I was also determined to find him. Call me crazy but I just couldn’t rest until I did. Well, he ended up raping someone in Buckhead and then they caught him. I attended the court hearing and was there for his sentencing. As Trump would say…he’s a bad hombre.
My heart goes out to all the victims and survivors ?
You’re not crazy Sandi: you’re one brave, sane, and tough gal, and I commend you for working as hard as you did to get McNutt in back prison where he belongs. I know the cops and retired cops who are my friends would commend you. If everyone worked together to keep these predators off the streets, McNutt would have had just one victim — his first one — or maybe none at all.
A very wise Atlanta Police Department Superior Officer — I don’t recall his rank, who ran security for the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library System in the early 90’s told me once that peeping, flashing, and that sort of behavior is, his words, “a day job for rapists.” It’s how they get their kicks between more serious attacks. I am contacting Macy’s for comment about this letter.
You’re a hero. I’ll try to follow up on this story soon. Keep in touch!