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On May 22, 2025, Circuit Judge Johnnie A. Copeland signed an order removing John Laubenstein from the Arkansas Sex Offender Registry. Laubenstein had been convicted in 1984 in San Joaquin County, California, on two counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14 and one count of oral copulation with a victim under 14 where the age difference exceeded 10 years.
He received two years in county jail and five years of suspended sentencing.
Laubenstein’s attorney, Patrick J. Benca of Lion Legal Services in North Little Rock, filed the petition on Jan. 21, 2025, under Ark. Code Ann. § 12-12-919, which allows a court to terminate a sex offender’s registration obligation after 15 years. The petition claimed Laubenstein had faithfully registered, committed no further offenses and was a “valued member of his community.”
The 14th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney’s office did not oppose the petition. The prosecutor did not request a reassessment, which the statute specifically allows if the offender has not been assessed in the past five years. The order Judge Copeland signed was drafted by Laubenstein’s own attorney.
The case drew no public attention at the time. It has since drawn outrage.
Across the district, a different story
While Laubenstein was petitioning for removal from the registry, another registered sex offender in Marion County was racking up criminal charges across three states.
Steven M. Manson Jr., 35, of Yellville, is a Level II sex offender convicted in McHenry County, Illinois, of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl. That conviction carried a lifetime registration requirement as part of his sentence. He now faces five Marion County criminal cases filed between October 2025 and March 2026, including two counts of rape, one involving a child under 14. He also faces kidnapping, incest, sexual assault, firearms and terroristic threatening charges. His stepdaughter, Dezarae Kennedy, is charged as a co-defendant in the March 2026 case, accused of helping Manson rape a young woman. If convicted as a habitual offender on the most serious counts, the only available sentence is life without parole.
But Manson’s problems with the sex offender registry in Marion County did not begin with his arrest. They were documented months earlier, in emails sent directly to law enforcement and to the 14th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney’s office.
The emails to the prosecutor’s office
Court records and correspondence obtained by the Observer show that an Illinois resident who lived near the Manson family for years contacted officials in multiple states about Manson’s behavior. The Observer is not identifying the resident because the Manson family has a documented history of harassing and retaliating against people who report their conduct. The resident holds a court order of protection against Manson. The resident sent emails to the McHenry County State’s Attorney, the Greene County, Missouri, prosecutor, the Arkansas Attorney General’s office, the Illinois State Police sex offender unit, the ACLU and the Marion County Prosecuting Attorney’s office.
On June 30, 2025, the resident emailed officials across three states warning that Manson had been arrested in Springfield, Missouri, two days after appearing in a wheelchair at a McHenry County, Illinois, court hearing where he claimed to be too sick and disabled to participate in his trials. Springfield police had found approximately 130 farm animals in poor condition in his vehicle. He was charged with two counts of animal abuse and four counts of animal neglect in Greene County, Missouri, Case No. 2531-CR02060. Bond was set at $10,000.
In the same email, the resident raised the alarm that Manson did not appear on the Arkansas Sex Offender Registry despite his lifetime registration requirement. She wrote that the McHenry County Prosecutor’s office had ensured lifetime registration as part of his sentence for the sexual abuse of a child.
“Somehow he doesn’t appear on their Child Sex Offender Registry in AR and Illinois just shows him as ‘out of state’ despite blatant non-compliance,” she wrote.
She also alleged Manson was forcing a minor child in his household to trespass on a neighbor’s property to tamper with security cameras and was attempting to transfer his Riverton, Illinois, property into the child’s name. The Observer has obtained video footage showing a child trespassing on a neighbor’s property near the Manson residence and tampering with a security camera system. The Observer is not identifying the child. Sangamon County property records reviewed by the Observer confirm the parcel at 520 E. Blackburn St. in Riverton is listed under Manson’s name with a notation that the parcel has “pending owners.”
On Oct. 21, 2025, the resident emailed the Marion County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, the McHenry County State’s Attorney, the Greene County prosecutor and others to report that Manson had been arrested in Marion County on Oct. 13 for failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements, a Class C felony. She listed his pending court dates in three states and noted he had been found guilty of disorderly conduct in Arkansas and of a loose pigs nuisance charge in Marion County.
“ISN’T HE VIOLATING HIS PROBATION AND SUPERVISION?” she wrote. She said he claimed to be unfit for trial in Illinois while crossing state lines to commit new offenses.
The probable cause affidavit in that case, filed by Lt. Cassie Foster of the Marion County Sheriff’s Department, stated that during a Sept. 3, 2025, home visit at Manson’s residence on Marion County Road 8054, Foster found multiple vehicles that had not been registered with the Arkansas Sex Offender Registry as required by law. Bond on the felony charge was set at $500.
A victim’s name in open court filings
On Jan. 13, 2026, the resident emailed Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Russo directly about Case No. 45CR-25-103 to flag a problem with affidavits filed in the case that day. She wrote that Dezarae Kennedy’s affidavit named the minor victim of an alleged rape and firearms threat by her full first name in paragraphs 27, 35, 36 and 37.
“The victim is supposed to be protected (as a minor and as a victim of a sexual assault),” she wrote. “I’m not an attorney and I know better than that.”
The affidavit excerpts obtained by the Observer confirm the minor’s first name appears unredacted in the context of both a rape allegation and an accusation that Manson pointed a shotgun at the child.
The resident followed up on Jan. 14 with a photo and video showing Manson Jr. and Kennedy placing hand-painted signs in front of the Manson family’s Illinois property that read “WILL NEVER SEE MY GIRLS AGAIN,” a message directed at Kennedy’s family. She followed up again on Jan. 19 and Jan. 20. A docket screenshot included with the Jan. 20 email shows the affidavits were still publicly accessible on the court’s online system a full week after she first alerted the prosecutor’s office. The affidavits had been filed as exhibits by defense attorney Eugene P. Clifford on a case that involved sex offender registration violations, not the rape case itself.
In the Jan. 19 email, the resident also reported that Steven L. Manson Sr., a co-defendant in a separate Marion County case, had texted the minor victim on her new cell phone while the child was at school. The resident wrote that the elder Manson told the child he loved and missed her and instructed her to call him if anyone ever hurt her, then provided his phone number. Manson Sr. is charged with terroristic threatening, conspiracy and coercion in connection with the March 2026 case.
Two cases, one district
The Laubenstein and Manson matters were handled within the same judicial district during the same period. In Laubenstein’s case, the prosecuting attorney’s office did not challenge a convicted child sex offender’s removal from the registry. In Manson’s case, the same office was receiving direct warnings from out of state about a convicted child sex offender who was not complying with registration requirements, was accumulating criminal charges in three states and was living in a household with children.
Laubenstein’s petition was filed Jan. 21, 2025. Judge Copeland signed the removal order on May 22, 2025. The order states the prosecuting attorney did not request a reassessment.
Three months later, Lt. Foster conducted the home visit that would lead to Manson’s felony registration charge. Four months after that, Manson was charged with raping a child under 14. Three months after that, he and his stepdaughter were charged with raping a young woman at his residence. Witnesses who spoke to the Observer said Manson had been grooming the stepdaughter since she was 15 years old.
Sheriff Gregg Alexander responded to the Observer’s earlier reporting on the Manson cases with a Facebook statement in which he said he was saddened by the coverage and praised his deputies’ work. He did not address what his office did with the warnings it received.
Marion County residents who have contacted the Observer about both cases describe a system that appears more willing to help sex offenders than to hold them accountable.
