Background: News footage of the St. Peter Treatment Center in St. Peter, Minn. where Steven Loren Edwards allegedly escaped (KMSP). Inset: Steven Loren Edwards (St. Peter Police Department).
A man confined to a Minnesota treatment center for convicted sex offenders was apprehended by police after he escaped by strapping his GPS monitoring device to a dummy.
According to a criminal complaint obtained by local Fox affiliate KMSP, Steven Loren Edwards, 53, was reported missing on Saturday. The documents stated that Edwards’ roommate told the facility’s staff at about 7 p.m. on Saturday that Edwards — who had first been committed to the St. Peter Treatment Center for the Minnesota Sex Offender Treatment Program in October 2011 — had been in bed all day, showing no signs of movement for “quite some time.”
When the staff pulled the bed’s blanket back, they found a dummy wearing the GPS ankle bracelet assigned to Edwards.
According to court documents, staff observed Edwards allegedly leaving the facility on surveillance camera footage shortly before 7 p.m. on Friday.
As police began to figure out Edwards’ whereabouts, court documents stated that they found out the alleged escapee had placed a phone call to his son following his exit from the facility. The documents stated that he used a phone that was associated with an unnamed man who was using a nearby laundromat on Friday night.
The man reportedly told police that he witnessed Edwards enter the laundromat and told him that he had been kicked out of the house and needed a ride to Albert Lea, Minnesota. The man told police that he agreed to drive Edwards to where he needed to go, and the pair reportedly took a detour to a casino in Iowa.
After their purported casino trip, the man drove Edwards to a hotel in Albert Lea and rented the alleged escapee a room for the night. The man then went back to St. Peter.
Police learned that Edwards purchased a car in Albert Lea, which was later spotted in Missouri on Sunday. Knowing that Edwards’ mother lives in Webb City, Missouri, KMSP reported that police thought to conduct a welfare check on her at her home.
There, they found — and arrested — Edwards, who was charged with two counts of felony escape.
