Vaseline, Disguise Found In Sex Offender’s Car

Sex Offender Naked "There's no doubt in my mind he was fixing to strike again" said Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd.

by Jessica Taloney

Published: Wed, December 19, 2007 - 5:55 pm CST Last Updated: Wed, December 19, 2007 - 6:00 pm CST

A Mobile County man is behind bars after he was spotted walking naked in a Hurley, Mississippi Park.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd arrested Michael Ryan South, 45, at Lum Cumbest Park Saturday after receiving a tip from two young boys.
South, a convicted sex offender, served 15 years in an Alabama prison for sodomizing a 10-year-old girl. Investigators believe he may have been looking for another victim.
"There's no doubt in my mind he was fixing to strike again," said Sheriff Byrd, who was the first on the scene. "I walked up and I asked him who he was," said Byrd.
The sheriff says South first told him he was simply using the bathroom, but then changed his story saying he liked to walk around in the nude. Byrd says he didn't believe any of it, and then proceeded to check South's car, where he found a clown wig, a fake mustache and a jar of vaseline.
"I knew right then we had a predator," said the sheriff.
South is charged with indecent exposure for the incident in the park, but during the course of the investigation, officers also slapped him with a child enticement charge. Sheriff Byrd says one of the boys who spotted South said the suspect tried to lure him into the woods last month.
South, who is a registered sex offender with a Whistler address, faces up to 20 years in prison for the enticement charge.
He's being held in the Jackson County jail on $25,000 bond.

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