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When Lisa Clancy Nolla learned that Wesley Watson had sexually assaulted another person, she felt sick with outrage.
In 1980, Watson followed Lisa to her Wichita home and raped her when she was 14.
For years, she and the attorneys who prosecuted him warned the Kansas Parole Board not to let him out of prison or he would prey again. He had already sexually assaulted 13 girls and young women.
A prosecutor told the board that Watson was "as bad as I have ever seen."
A psychologist called Watson's risk level "extraordinary."
But the Parole Board approved his release. Within a year, he preyed again. His 14th victim.
Lisa, now 45, was so outraged after Watson's latest crime, she decided to speak out about her rape for the first time.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston, the prosecutor who sent Watson to prison for his crimes against Lisa, said of Watson's recent case and history: "I hope that this is a wake-up call on sexual offenders and how we view them."
Foulston contended that Watson has an instinct to rape and can't switch it off, no matter how much he has aged. It was wrong for the board to think he had changed, she said.
"It's like trying to make a goat think it's a chicken. It isn't going to work."
In December, Watson — a 55-year-old parolee with a 42-year history of sex crimes — targeted a woman outside a Walmart in Kansas City, Kan. He posed as a detective, told the woman he was arresting her for shoplifting, drove her to a Best Buy parking lot and sexually assaulted her.
It was the second time he had sexually assaulted someone while on parole. The first was Lisa. Before her, he had been convicted of the attempted rape of a 16-year-old. His sex-crime history in Wichita dates to 1969, when he was about 13.
Not every prison inmate with a sex-crime record fits the legal definition of a sexually violent predator who should be kept away from society in a state treatment program. A jury couldn't agree that Watson was such a predator. That's another reason he was back on the street again.
Meanwhile, every month, inmates convicted of multiple sex crimes become eligible for parole. In the next six months, 20 such inmates will be considered for release. Nine of the 20 inmates committed their crimes in Sedgwick County.
The Kansas offender registry lists about 225 people with two or more sex-crime convictions living in communities across the state.
The attack
In 1980, Lisa Clancy lived in the College Hill neighborhood near Douglas and Hillside and walked a few blocks to school.
Lisa was a happy kid, youngest of three, a B student in the eighth grade at Blessed Sacrament. She had lived in the same house since she was a toddler and felt safe.
It was Tuesday, April 1, 1980 — April Fool's Day — sunny, about 60 degrees, and Lisa walked home alone. She wore the school uniform: green plaid skirt, knee-high socks, white oxford shirt.
Her parents were at work. At her front door, Lisa heard a voice, turned and saw a man in his 20s on the sidewalk. When he asked to borrow the phone, Lisa hesitated, then let him in. In the kitchen, she handed him a phone book, and he pretended to look through it.
On the counter, Lisa noticed one of her mother's sharpened knives, with a blade about 7 inches long.
It's there if I need it, Lisa thought.
Suddenly, he moved next to her and asked for a kiss.
She picked up the knife. He backed away, then took the knife from her and came at her, thrusting the blade as she backed up.
Lisa expected to be stabbed and shut her eyes.
She felt a point at her neck, as he asked, "Can you feel it?"
She wasn't conscious of her screaming but obeyed his order to stop.
When he began to rape and sodomize her, Lisa told him she was 14, she was Catholic and asked him not to attack her.
She felt powerless. The attack lasted minutes, and he told her not to tell anybody. After he got up, she stayed on the floor, not sure whether he was gone.
The chase
Lisa's older sister, Pamela Clancy Ammar, then 21, usually got home around the same time Lisa did. But that day, Pam stayed late doing course work at a dental clinic. When Pam got home, the front door was open and the door to the kitchen was closed. It was always open.
Then a man opened the kitchen door and strode toward her, mumbling about the phone. As he passed Pam, he bolted, and in her white dental uniform, she ran after him.
In high school, Pam had been a gymnast. Just as he cleared the porch steps, she dived onto him and held on as he dragged her across the lawn. As her head turned, she saw her younger sister standing at the front door, crying. The man's foot knocked Pam in the face, and he broke free.
He ran into the side of an exterminator's truck, with a bug figurine on top, rolling along Douglas. He bounced off the truck, sprinted between buildings, scaled a fence at a Taco Tico and drew the attention of Virgil Amend, who had an office next door.
Amend, seeing Pam in her grass-stained uniform chasing the man, asked: "What did he do?"
"He raped my sister," Pam blurted.
Amend followed the man a few blocks, and the man got into a car and drove off.
Amend wrote the license tag number in the dirt.
That afternoon, Mark Haydon, a 24-year-old police officer, was dispatched to the Clancy home. As Haydon pulled up, he saw a young woman with grass stains on her white uniform. At first, he thought she was the victim.
In the house, the officer tried to stay focused, but people were crying and holding one another. As he gathered information, he struggled to hold back tears.
Police compiled a description of the attacker. That night, Haydon showed a mug-shot lineup to Pam and Lisa. Separately, each sister picked the same mug — Watson's.
The license tag led police to Wesley Earl Watson, who worked at an aircraft plant. That evening, Haydon and another officer approached Watson at his job, and Haydon quickly handcuffed him.
The prosecution
Another person responding to Lisa's attack was Nola Tedesco — who later would become Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston. In 1980, she was a 30-year-old assistant prosecutor.
To the prosecutor, Lisa looked like a little Swiss miss, with her blond hair in braids, her sweet face. But the child's eyes were swollen from crying.
Tedesco was determined to have the trial completed that summer — before Lisa entered high school, so Lisa could be through with it.
At Watson's trial, Lisa put her hands to the sides of her face — like blinders — to avoid seeing Watson.
Part of Watson's defense was that he had an alibi, but the defense hadn't produced the alibi witness. Tedesco decided to take action: At the end of one trial day, she went to find the so-called alibi witness, because that one witness could make the difference.
It was turning to dusk as she went door to door in a tough neighborhood, her high heels clicking on the pavement. When she found the man she was seeking, she told him that Watson was claiming him as an alibi. The man said Watson was lying.
The next day, the man testified he wasn't with Watson, and the jury later brought back a guilty verdict.
The impact
After the attack, Lisa saw herself as a different person. She stuffed her emotions.
In high school, she went on dates but chose not to have a boyfriend. In college, she had friends but hid what had happened to her.
Through high school and college, she suffered panic attacks. Toward the end of college, she decided to see a therapist, who told her that her anxiety traced back to that April Fool's Day in 1980.
Therapy helped her to relax. Still, it would take decades for her to become comfortable having a relationship. From age 22 to 39, when she married Carlos Nolla, a Wichita attorney and former congressional candidate, she lived alone.
On their first date, she told Carlos what had happened to her. She wanted him to know.
The fight
The two sisters thought Watson would never leave prison.
Because he was a habitual offender, his sentence for raping and sodomizing Lisa was 90 years to life, later amended to 60 years to life.
But in 1995, Lisa and Pam learned that Watson had become eligible for parole. In the 15 years since the attack, the sisters had not talked with each other about it.
Lisa had gotten a bachelor's degree in psychology and started out as a part-time counselor at a halfway house for ex-convicts in Colorado, eventually becoming the facility director before returning to Wichita in 2000.
Pam, who had become a lawyer, went to Topeka to speak to the board about Watson. The panel takes comment from victims, and one by one, they walk up to a table where board members sit and recount the crimes. The victims relive what happened.
When it was Pam's turn, she leaned toward the board members and talked in a hushed voice.
Again in 1998 and for many years until 2007, the board would reconsider whether Watson should be released. And each time, the sisters would plead their case.
In a 2004 letter to the board, Lisa wrote that although Watson appeared to have no major behavior problems in prison, "when you look at his behavior while in the community it is a different story. This man seeks out, follows and attacks his prey. ... He only does well in prison because there are no children or young women to violate, but the minute he is released he is out on the prowl again.
"I am here today to save the future victim of Wesley Watson."
In 2007, when the board again considered Watson, prosecutor Marc Bennett provided a report on Wichita police files describing sexual assaults of 13 girls and women from 1969 to 1980 in which Watson was arrested.
Bennett wrote that in most of the cases, even though Watson admitted guilt, the victims chose not to pursue charges with the promise that Watson was "seeking professional help." If those cases had been prosecuted, he said, others, including Lisa, might not have become victims.
Bennett concluded: "This man is as bad as I have ever seen in my 12 years as a prosecutor. I implore you, do not let him out."
The board had turned down Watson seven times. But in 2007, it approved his release.
Foulston felt the board failed to heed the argument that someone with a long history of violent sex crimes can't switch off the instinct, no matter how long they have been in prison or how much they have aged.
The board members who gave final approval to Watson's parole were Paul Feleciano, the former chairman, now retired, and Robert Sanders and Patricia Biggs, who remain on the board.
They defend their decision, saying they relied on information they had at the time. By law, the board had seven factors to consider: Watson's crimes, his criminal history, programs he participated in while in prison, disciplinary reports, mental health reports, comments and prison capacity.
Biggs said Watson had at least these things in his favor: He completed programs aimed at reducing his risk; he had favorable reports and prognoses; "he had very positive comments from the prison staff"; and he had mentors and strong support from family and associates.
Earlier this year, Gov. Sam Brownback signed an order to abolish the board and have its functions performed by the Department of Corrections — the same agency that gave Watson favorable marks.
One argument against eliminating the Parole Board is that it serves as an independent check because corrections officials might be inclined to release inmates because of prison crowding.
But if the board was supposed to be a check on Watson, the sisters say, it failed.
Another chance
Even after the Parole Board decided to grant Watson parole, prosecutors worked to prevent his release by trying to have him committed to a state treatment program as a sexually violent predator. While the process played out, Watson stayed behind bars.
Prosecutors and Watson's lawyers argued the sexual predator case to a Sedgwick County jury in November 2009. Among the evidence was an evaluation by psychologists who found that Watson had drawn pleasure from victims' suffering. Still, they didn't see him posing a risk partly because he was so much older than when he entered prison.
A different psychologist contended for the prosecution that although Watson was in his 50s, he still fit the definition of sexually violent predator. That psychologist called Watson's criminal history and risk level "extraordinary."
On the witness stand, Watson told Bennett his first sexual offense occurred when he was 13, in 1969. His first victim: a 10-year-old girl from his neighborhood.
Bennett brought up a 1973 attack at Wichita State University. The victim: a 12-year-old girl taking piano lessons. And another attack in 1975. The victim: a 19-year-old woman leaving a WSU dorm.
Watson admitted he found it sexually arousing to attack young women.
When it was Lisa's turn to testify, she was determined to stay composed. Although 29 years had passed since Watson attacked her, when she had to recall that day, she felt like she was 14 again.
To get through the testimony without breaking down, she became robotic.
The jury couldn't agree on whether Watson was a predator, so Watson was set to be released around January 2010.
After the proceeding, Bennett would remember what one juror said: "I ain't the same guy I was 30 years ago." To Bennett, it meant some jurors decided Watson had changed for the better.
Some resolution
Watson was assigned to parole supervision in Wyandotte County and had to wear a GPS monitor. He was wearing a monitor when he assaulted the woman in Kansas City, Kan., within a year of being released on parole.
In February, under a plea agreement, Watson pleaded guilty to attempted rape, kidnapping and aggravated sexual battery for the store parking lot attack.
He now faces 18 to 28 years for those crimes. The sentence likely will be served after his remaining sentence for the crimes against Lisa.
Jerome Gorman, the Wyandotte County district attorney, said after the hearing that Watson should have never been paroled.
For Lisa, Watson's guilty plea provides some resolution. It means Watson will probably die in prison.
The problem, Lisa said, is it took another victim to send him back to prison.
"Once you're a repeat offender, I think you should stay the entire time" in prison, she said.
Watson's sentencing has been set for April 1 — April Fool's Day — the same date that he altered Lisa's life 31 years ago.
The timing, Lisa said, is poetic justice.
