Man says killing sex offender is ‘justified’ & jury won’t convict

A MAN who is accused of killing a sex offender believes his alleged actions are “justified” and doesn’t think a jury would convict him.

James Fairbanks said he was searching for a rental home for him and his 12-year-old son in the Omaha, Nebraska, area when he decided to research sex offenders in the area.

Fairbanks, 43, said he found that Mattieo Condoluci — a 64-year-old convicted sex offender — lived close to a place he said he was interested in.

As Fairbanks drove by Condoluci’s address, he said he saw the man watching kids play — and spotted a playground in the man’s backyard.

“I was literally ill. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat,” Fairbanks told KETV. “I was so in knots about the whole thing.”

“I decided to go back and basically threaten him. I drove to his house. I pulled up. I was walking up to his front door. I don’t know if he seen me coming or what he was doing but anyway, he opened up his door as I was approaching, and I pulled out my gun and told him to back up,” Fairbanks said.

The man said Condoluci “backed up into the house,” and noticed a purse on the table, and thought someone else might be inside.

“At that point, he just came forward. He’s a big man,” Fairbanks told the news outlet. “I started shooting as soon as he started coming forward.”

The father left the house on May 14, expecting to soon be arrested, but nothing happened.

“For a little while, I thought, ‘Hey, I’ll get away with this,’ I can do this. I can just get rid of everything and just pretend like it never happened,” Fairbanks said, but added: “That didn’t sit right with me.”

So, according to KETV, he emailed the news outlet four days after the shooting, and police arrested Fairbanks the following day.

Fairbanks has been charged with first-degree murder and has been denied bail twice, and last week, a judge again ordered him held without bail during a bail review.

He said he sent the email because: “I didn’t want…the fact that he was a two-time sex offender with a playground in the backyard, and what I had seen, just kind of get swept under the rug.”

He said he doesn’t “have remorse” for Condoluci, but said he has “regrets” because he believes he hurt his own children by his actions.

Fairbanks told the Omaha World-Herald that he’s most likely guilty according to the law.
“However, I do believe, if they pick 12 Omahans to put in the jury box, some if not most will agree that the law failed in protecting our children in this case, and what I did was — maybe not completely right — was justified, and not send me away for the rest of my life,” he said.

Fairbanks was placed on leave from Omaha Public Schools, where he worked as a paraprofessional.

The dad said he’s worked with some children who endured abuse, and said he spoke out about what he did to change sex offender laws.

The father said he wants to see mandatory minimum sentences for offenders, and stricter rules when repeat offenders re-enter the community.

“Once you do it a second time, like Mr Condoluci had, you don’t get a third time. You don’t get another chance to move into the neighborhood.”

“Whether you’re in prison for the next 20-25 years or they come up with a housing situation where they house 20 guys in a house. A sex offender house,” Fairbanks proposed.

According to KMTV, Condoluci served about 1.5 years in prison of a 5-year sentence for sexually assaulting a child in 2006, and was convicted of similar crimes in Florida in 1993.

Per the World-Herald, thousands of people have supported Fairbanks online, and a store in Nebraska is selling shirts that read Fairbanks “did the world a favor.”

Fairbanks said he’s received around 100 letters from across the US and claimed that inmates cheer for him when he walks through the halls.

“I’m honestly not that concerned about spending the rest of my life in prison,” he said. “But if all that happens out of all this is I’m free but nothing changed, then it was all kind of pointless.”