Theodore A. Sypnier
Theodore A. Sypnier is a century old, but you wouldn't know it by looking at him or talking with him.
He is highly alert, physically active and very capable of living alone and taking care of himself.
Theodore A. Sypnier also is a pedophile.
He has been convicted at least twice of molesting children and suspected in other cases over the last six decades in the Town of Tonawanda and Buffalo, and psychologists, police and others say he is likely to molest children again.
Therein lies a big problem.
Sypnier has been in prison for most of the last nine years and is soon to be released into a one-room apartment in Buffalo to live on his own.
If ever there was a person who should be permanently confined, even after serving out his prison term, police and experts say, it is Sypnier.
Sypnier, the oldest registered sex offender and parolee in New York State, is unrepentant.
"Those children crawled into bed with me because they were frightened, but there was never any sexual hanky-panky," Sypnier said of the two Town of Tonawanda sisters he was accused of molesting in 1999 while he was baby-sitting them.
He says he loves children and hopes to clear his name so that he can start up a relationship with several great-grandchildren he has never met.
Sypnier contends that he is the victim of a colossal miscarriage of justice, but authorities say he remains a threat to society and will be closely monitored once he leaves a Bailey Avenue halfway house.
Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III says he has no sympathy for Sypnier, who portrayed himself as a loving grandfather to children he met.
"Mr. Sypnier is the personification of evil and should be removed from civilized society permanently, until the day he dies," Sedita said. "He is an unrepentant child molester who has been doing this or trying to do this for 60 years. He can't be cured. He's not sick. He's evil. He's not old. He's evil."
Sedita's predecessor, Frank J. Clark, said Sypnier remains "manipulative and pathological," even as a centenarian.
"It's just that guile that allowed him to succeed for as many years as he did. His daughter had come forward and said that he had molested her when she was growing up," Clark said.
"He remains a threat'
As long as Sypnier "can walk and talk, he remains a threat," Clark said.
The Rev. Terry King, who runs Saving Grace halfway house in the 1900 block of Bailey Avenue, reluctantly allowed Sypnier to stay there temporarily.
"As a father, I would not want my child anywhere near him," King said.
New York does have a civil confinement law that allows the state to confine a sex offender who has completed his sentence if he has an abnormality that makes him likely to commit more sex crimes. But Sypnier was ruled ineligible for lifetime civil confinement, state officials told The Buffalo News.
King met Sypnier in 2007 when he was first released from prison, after serving an eight-year sentence on his plea deal conviction involving the two sisters.
Sypnier, King said, was stubborn and rebellious in maintaining he was innocent, despite confessing to authorities. He moved out of Grace House after he found an apartment in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.
By July 30, 2008, Sypnier was back in prison for violating parole with his refusal to attend sex-offender counseling classes.
And though he is now complying with parole mandates, Sypnier still insists he should not have to attend classes.
"I shouldn't have to go to school; that's for young people," he said during an interview at the halfway house.
King says he did not want to provide Sypnier with a room this time around, and only did so because he would have been sent to the Buffalo City Mission, where he would have been unsupervised for several hours a day.
On parole until May 2012
"It was for the good of the community that we allowed him to come here temporarily while he is placed into independent living," King said. "We didn't want him wandering around unsupervised. There are strict guidelines here."
By the end of the month, Sypnier says, he will have a furnished apartment somewhere on the East Side. King says Sypnier's release could happen within a week.
State parole officials say they will closely monitor Sypnier, who remains under their jurisdiction until May 16, 2012. "He's someone you truly don't want wandering around Buffalo. Not just Buffalo — anywhere," King said.
Sypnier, a retired telephone company worker, says he now plans to hire an attorney to get him off supervision by parole officers. He contends that parole was never mentioned in the second plea deal he accepted in 2004, after winning an appeal on his 2000 plea-deal conviction to multiple charges of sex crimes committed against the sisters, who were 4 and 7 years old.
He won the appeal on the grounds that he was "confused" at the time he accepted the plea deal. But rather than go to trial after his legal victory, Sypnier chose to plead guilty to one count of attempted sodomy.
The Town of Tonawanda case is not the first time he has been punished for molesting children. In 1994, he completed a one-year jail sentence for sexually abusing a minor, and in 1987, he served three years on probation for a sex-abuse conviction.
At 5-feet-5 and 145 pounds, with wisps of white hair and blue eyes, the bespectacled Sypnier brushes aside all of the criminal complaints against him from over the years.
"They were all single mothers with children and wanted my money," he said. "They were blackmailing me, threatening me with jail if I didn't give them money."
Required to register
What about the molestation complaint from one of his three daughters?
"I worked two jobs when I was raising my family and never had time to screw around with children," said Sypnier, who with his late wife raised five children on Royal Avenue in Riverside.
If he succeeds in getting out of parole, Sypnier says, he would no longer be under the mandate barring him from contact with children, and he then could attempt to see his five great-grandchildren.
"I'll tell them I never harmed any children," he said, adding that if his legal plans to end parole fail, he will be done with parole in two years anyway. "I'll be free in 2012."
Living on monthly Social Security and pension checks, he will not be entirely free of the law whenever his parole ends.
"After 2012, we will no longer be supervising him," said Heather R. Groll, spokeswoman for the state's Division of Parole, "but he will still be required to register as a sex offender, and his address will be publicly available online 24 hours a day."
A 100-year-old sex offender, convicted of molesting children, has been released from prison.
But authorities say don't let his age fool you.
"He's an unrepentant child sexual abuser," said Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita.
This is Theodore Sypnier 10 years ago when he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing four children in the Town of Tonawanda. Now he's 100-years-old, out of jail on post-release supervision, and is still a big threat according to District Attorney Frank Sedita.
Sedita said, "I want him away from society as long as possible. It doesn't matter to me that he's 100-years-old. He's evil. He's a pedophile. Pedophiles are the worst."
It's not unusual for a prosecutor to say things like that about someone on parole, but wait until you hear what the minister in charge of this Halfway House that he's been staying at has to say about him.
"He's been here for just several weeks," said Reverend Terry King of Saving Grace Ministries.
At the Grace House on Bailey near Walden, Saving Grace Ministries director Reverend Terry King says he wouldn't leave Sypnier alone with children.
When News 4 asked if King thought Sypnier was reformed, King said, "No. In fact, he's more bent on not following the rules of society and authority, and admitting his past criminal activity."
Lance Vance has kids and lives near Grace House.
"I wouldn't think [he's a threat], I mean he can barely walk," said Vance.
But according to King, Sypnier can still walk for miles, and live on his own, and he remains defiant in counseling sessions.
Theodore Sypnier will have to register his new address with the State. You can find the addresses of sex offenders on the Department of Justice website .
