APPLETON — An Appleton man accused of abducting and sexually assaulting a 3½-year-old boy Tuesday evening told a police officer he probably would have killed the child had he not been tracked down.
Joseph G. Skenandore, 28, told police he snatched the boy from his front yard and fled with him after touching him outside the home.
Skenandore was charged Wednesday in Outagamie County Court with first-degree sexual assault, child enticement and abduction of a child.
Friends and family said the boy was playing in the yard just before a storm hit Tuesday when Skenandore walked up, grabbed him, put him under his shirt and fled the neighborhood.
"He's a little peanut," his aunt, Jennifer Grossinger-Stulo, of Menasha, said Wednesday. "He's only 3½. He can't weigh more than 20 or 30 pounds."
Skenandore, 28, was found an hour later with the boy in Kiwanis Park, about a mile west of the northside neighborhood after family, neighbors and police mounted a search. He had taken the boy there to escalate the sexual assault, he told a police officer after he was apprehended.
Skenandore lived in a group home around the block from where the child lives. He has a history of arrests for crimes against children, but was not on the state's Sexual Offender Registry because he was not competent to stand trial and instead was institutionalized.
Court Commissioner Maureen Roberts Budiac ordered Skenandore held on a $250,000 cash bond. Defense attorney John Zadrazil asked for a hearing to determine whether Skenandore is competent to proceed. A hearing wasn't immediately scheduled
Grossinger-Stulo said a woman witnessed the abduction, and said other neighbors said they have seen Skenandore "cruising around" the quiet, older neighborhood just north of the Wisconsin Avenue business district, watching the children playing in their yards.
"He has been watching the house," she said. "He has been driving around the neighborhood looking at kids."
The boy's mother was in the home's living room with her son, and thinks maybe he let himself out when she went downstairs to do laundry, Grossinger-Stulo said.
"He's figured out the locks," she said.
The boy's mother noticed him missing and called police immediately.
Skenandore told police he touched the child inappropriately near the home and took him to the park, the criminal complaint says. He told police he was looking for secluded spots to continue the assault.
As the boy's mother carried a photo of her only child around the neighborhood, a woman at nearby 10th Frame, a bowling alley, said she saw Skenandore put the boy under his shirt.
Police and neighbors joined the search, and officers learned Skenandore was missing from a group home less than a block away, said Sgt. Pat DeWall.
Grossinger-Stulo said several relatives and neighbors went to that home because "we had a hunch about Skenandore."
People at the neat single-family home — which has a view of the boy's home through the backyard — refused to talk to the boy's family or give any information to them, she said.
Police and relatives at first had incorrect information about who ran the home.
The home — with a 24-hour security sign posted in front — is operated by Innovative Services, a nonprofit corporation with its main offices in Appleton and Green Bay, said Rick Bahr, Innovative's chief operating officer.
Bahr declined to answer questions about the home, the number of residents, how residents are supervised or how Skenandore was able to leave what is supposed to be a supervised setting.
"We are in the middle of a ongoing investigation. I am not at liberty to share any information," he said.
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