From Trusted Leader to Convicted Predator: The Fall of Fredericktown’s Police Captain

Photo courtesy of  St. Charles County Department of Corrections

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This blog is an excerpt from my latest book “Madhouse Madison County”

The holiday celebrations had ended, and 2010 was a new landscape of hope. What would this year hold? Well, in Fredericktown, it would hold nightmares. Untold horrors lay ahead as the world would finally see what kind of monster held the title of police captain in this small rural community. (Just to give you some context and a Time frame, This case happened just a few months before Doug Teel’s body was found on the road.)

Kenneth D. Tomlinson II was a behemoth of a man. He stood 6’6″ tall and weighed close to 400 lbs. He had been a patrolman for the area since 1997 before eventually becoming the Police Captain. He was also the local Boy Scout Troop Leader for Troop 27, and most people in town thought he was one of the good guys. They couldn’t be more wrong. Tomlinson gave himself the nickname “Big Dog,” but the teenagers were wary of him and called him “Baby Huey.” This should have been a red flag, but no one noticed. 

On January 2, 2010, a concerned mother found sexually explicit text messages on her child’s phone from “Big Dog.” She was horrified. It was the beginning of the end of the pervert police officer. On January 5, Tomlinson was arrested and charged with 16 counts of felony sex charges with underage boys. Sergeant Jason Gordon was appointed as the temporary head of the department. Tomlinson would eventually plead guilty to 22 counts of sexual abuse of minors, 12 counts of 1st-degree statutory sodomy, and deviate sexual intercourse with three underage boys. They were seventeen, fourteen, and twelve at the time. 

The investigation revealed his sordid routine to the world. After Boy Scout meetings, the policeman would give young boys pornographic images of girls and then force them to let him perform sexual acts upon them in his truck. He would videotape the encounters and make the boys watch. Later, he would destroy the videos so there wouldn’t be evidence. This hideous routine continued for years. You might ask why he would make them watch it. It was another form of controlling their trauma. They knew he would have evidence to “tell on them.” It was another way to control the boys and keep them from exposing the truth. They didn’t know that he was destroying those videos, so there wouldn’t be evidence against him. All of this would later come out in court, leaving the public horrified. The victims were brave and faced their abuser in court, and no one could dispute their pain. So many victims don’t have the strength to do what those boys did. 

After hearing the victim impact statements in court, “Baby Huey” read an apology to the victims & their families, claiming he was sorry and promised to get counseling in prison as if that was going to take away the pain and trauma these poor boys had faced. He was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences plus 22 years. This disgusting piece of flesh sits rotting in the Jefferson City Correctional Center to this day. 

In September 2013, the victim’s families sued the Boy Scouts organization claiming negligence. There had been more than 60 incidents reported and they went unnoticed. They knew Tomlinson wasn’t following the standard protocol concerning the “Two-Deep” guidelines which prevent one on one contact between troop leaders and scouts. Think about it. Sixty incidents had been reported. How many more weren’t reported? Could more victims be too traumatized to come forward? Maybe we may never know. 

According to an article on NPR’s website, over 82,000 people have filed lawsuits against Boy Scout Leaders citing sexual abuse. In 2020, the Boy Scouts of America organization filed bankruptcy and created a $2.4 billion fund for the victims. 

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Check out my video about this case:

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