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Months before Steven M. Manson was charged with raping his young stepdaughter and threatening two people with a shotgun, an Illinois resident who had lived across the street from the Manson family for years emailed Marion County Sheriff Gregg Alexander directly to warn him about the convicted sex offender living on Marion County Road 8054.
The warning went largely unheeded. The sheriff has not responded to the Observer’s request for comment directly.
The September 2025 email to Alexander described in detail the criminal history of the Manson family, including Steven M. Manson’s prior conviction for aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl in McHenry County, Illinois, that had resulted in a 20-year prison sentence. His father, Steven L. Manson, received the same sentence after threatening a sheriff’s detective who investigated his son’s case.
Both were released roughly 10 years early.
The Illinois resident told Alexander she had known the family since Steven M. Manson was approximately 8 years old. She provided links to documentation, court records and video evidence compiled over what she described as approximately five years of tracking the family’s behavior across multiple states.
She asked the sheriff to check on people in the Yellville area who were being terrorized by the Mansons.
“If the Mansons find out they’re not being held accountable, you will learn a whole new level of ‘WOW,'” she wrote.
Less than three weeks later, on Oct. 13, 2025, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office filed the first charge against Manson: failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements.
On Nov. 20, 2025, according to court records, Manson raped a minor female victim. On Dec. 3, he allegedly threatened the same victim and an adult female with a shotgun. He was charged Dec. 5 with rape, sexual assault, two counts of kidnapping, possession of a firearm by certain persons, and terroristic threatening. Bond was set at a combined $350,000.
He posted bond and walked out of jail.
On March 7, 2026, Manson was charged again. This time with rape, incest and sexual assault after a victim reported being assaulted at the same MC Road 8054 residence. His stepdaughter, Dezarae Manson, 19, and his father, Steven L. Manson, 56, were charged as co-defendants. Bond was set at $500,000.
Manson remains in the Marion County Detention Center.
A follow-up warning
The Illinois resident did not stop with the September email to the sheriff.
On Dec. 22, 2025, she sent a detailed follow-up to Lt. Cassie Foster who had taken over the case. That email arrived 17 days after Manson was charged with raping a child, kidnapping and threatening two people with a shotgun, and just two weeks after he posted $350,000 bond and was released with an ankle monitor.
The email laid out a pattern the resident said she had watched unfold for years: Manson’s use of address changes to manipulate the court system, his repeated failure to comply with court-ordered evaluations and substance abuse treatment, and his history of fleeing jurisdictions to avoid accountability.
She detailed how Manson’s attorney had filed a motion in an Illinois felony case in August 2023 requesting the court allow him to relocate to 761 MC 8054, Yellville, Arkansas, while the case was pending. Court records confirm that filing.
The resident told the deputy the move was part of a strategy. By claiming to live in Arkansas, Manson could attend Illinois court hearings by video rather than in person, eliminating any need to stop committing crimes in order to appear in court.
She also warned that Manson had been grooming his stepdaughter since the girl was 15 years old, when he was prohibited from being around her. She said neither Manson nor the girl’s mother complied with the restriction.
Court records now show that stepdaughter, Dezarae Manson, was charged alongside Steven M. Manson in the March 2026 case involving rape, sexual assault and coercion. The incest charge against Manson specifically alleges sexual intercourse with a person he knew to be his stepchild.
A pattern across state lines
The Illinois resident’s warnings drew from years of firsthand observation and public records spanning at least eight Illinois counties, two Wisconsin counties, a Missouri case and the Arkansas charges.
In McHenry County, Illinois, alone, Manson’s court history stretches back to 2006 with underage alcohol violations. By 2007, he faced an aggravated DUI felony. By 2010, he was charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a 13-year-old victim. A separate criminal sexual assault charge involving a 24-year-old woman was dropped as part of a plea deal.
In January 2012, he pleaded guilty to four counts and was sentenced to 20 years: one year for aggravated DUI, seven years each for two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, and five years for residential burglary, all consecutive.
Court records show that in multiple Illinois cases, Manson requested fitness evaluations that delayed proceedings, sometimes for months. In every documented instance, the court ultimately found him fit to stand trial.
The resident’s compilation also flagged a 2022 theft conviction in McHenry County in which the plea agreement required alcohol treatment, drug addiction treatment and medical or mental health treatment. She said Manson had completed none of it.
In Greene County, Missouri, Manson faces six counts of animal abuse and neglect stemming from a May 2025 incident in which approximately 130 animals were seized. He failed to appear for that case.
In McHenry County, a separate felony case from August 2023 charged him with failure to report an accident involving injury, leaving the scene and driving on a suspended license. He stopped appearing in that case as well.
Victims form a network
The scope of Manson’s alleged offenses across multiple states has led to an unusual development. Victims and concerned residents in several jurisdictions have formed a communication network to share information and track the family’s movements, according to the Illinois resident.
The resident told the sheriff’s office that people across multiple cities who had been targeted by the Mansons had organized a group text channel to keep each other safe.
She described retaliation she personally experienced: attempted poisoning of her dogs captured on her home security cameras, property damage, mail tampering that drew the involvement of the local postmaster, and an incident in which she said Manson sent his German shepherd to attack her disabled father in her driveway.
She provided photographs and security camera footage from the Illinois property showing animal living conditions she described as deplorable, including chickens in cages without food, water or shelter, a pig staked to a post, and loose pigs roaming the road.
The resident also included screenshots of a Facebook page called “Harrison Homestead” operated under the name Amber Manson, advertising live animals for sale at a Big Lots parking lot in Harrison, Arkansas. A commenter on a separate post by Dezarae Kennedy warned other buyers not to purchase birds from the family, saying the animals were sick, kept in poor conditions and often stolen.
The sheriff responds
The Observer contacted Sheriff Alexander on Thursday, March 26, to request comment on the case and the warnings his office received. Alexander did not respond to the Observer directly but issued a public statement on the Marion County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page on Saturday.
Alexander said the incidents reported involved an open, ongoing criminal investigation that had led to the execution of multiple search warrants and the arrest of suspects on numerous felony charges. He noted the felony arrests resulted in bonds set by judges totaling approximately $875,000.
“Marion County Sheriff’s Deputies have done a good job and will continue to pursue all leads related to the investigation,” Alexander wrote.
Alexander said he supported the Constitution and the First Amendment but added that his office would not take part in any activity that could compromise the integrity of the investigation.
“As with any investigation, there is a process and it is important to work through that process to obtain justice for all victims,” Alexander wrote.
The sheriff’s statement did not address whether his office received or acted on the September 2025 warning from the Illinois resident. It also did not address the December 2025 follow-up email sent to a deputy in his office.
Marion County Deputy Chief Mark Hollingsworth, who is currently a candidate running for Baxter County Sheriff, issued a separate public statement referencing the Observer’s coverage. Without naming the paper or the Manson case directly, Hollingsworth said the incidents were part of an active criminal investigation he could not comment on.
He did, however, affirm his support for press coverage of the matter.
“I support and firmly believe in the importance of a free and independent press, and that the press has every right to look into the actions of various agencies, departments, and/or individuals involved in these cases,” Hollingsworth wrote. “We may not always like what is printed, but we need it and have to have it for our democracy to work.”
Manson’s bond revocation hearing is set for Tuesday, March 31, in Marion County Circuit Court. Prosecutors have asked the court to hold him without bond across all five pending Marion County cases.
If convicted of the most serious charges as a habitual offender, the only available sentence under Arkansas law is life without parole.
