BOULDER, Colo.—A man released after serving seven years for the slayings of his adoptive mother and grandmother is back in jail for alleged violations of his probation and could be ordered to serve the rest of his 32-year sentence in prison.
John Engel, 23, was ordered released from prison in April and sent to a halfway house after a psychiatrist testified that Engel’s mental illness was being controlled with medication and he no longer posed a threat.
Court documents obtained by the Camera indicate that Engel violated several terms of his community-based sentence, including visiting a prohibited women’s corridor at a halfway house, and using the Internet to watch porn and e-mail two women whom he had developed relationships with, and that he met one of the women away from the facility.
He was jailed in October when he allowed the battery to run out in a GPS tracking device that he was required to wear while away from the halfway house.
Engel was being held Sunday without bond in Boulder County Jail. His next court date is April 14.
Engel pleaded guilty in 2001 to killing Mary Elizabeth Reinschmidt-Engel, and her mother, Catherine Reinschmidt with a hammer and knife in Longmont in 1999 when he was 14. His adoptive father, Tom Engel, was injured in the attack but he managed to overpower the boy.
Chief Probation Officer Greg Brown in a report obtained by the Camera said probation officers knew about Engel’s relationship with a woman but didn’t know he was meeting her outside of the facility. He told probation officers that he wrapped an unauthorized cell phone in plastic and hid it in a park near the halfway house.
Both Engel and the woman have denied intimate contact, but “the texts and e-mails, as well as his behavior, suggest it was a relationship he was willing to take significant risks to pursue,” Brown wrote.
Engel, quoted in the report said: “I really screwed up.”
Engel managed to get a job at a Boulder Chinese restaurant after being rejected for other positions, encountering “literal recoiling and downright disgust from prospective employers,” wrote Betsy deCastro, a treatment provider for the Colorado Sex Offender Management Board.
A probation official who asked a judge in December to give Engel a second chance changed his mind earlier this month after Engel reportedly violated a no-contact order while in jail.
Tom Engel told the Camera he had hoped his son would use the “unique opportunity” he was given to “prove himself, be a contributing member of the community, and spend the rest of his life making amends.”
“It hurts to hear that my son has, apparently, chosen a different way,” Engel told the Camera in an e-mail Friday.
A psychiatrist testified in April that Engel, as a child, had been incorrectly medicated with antidepressants for bipolar disorder and believed that killing his adoptive mother and grandmother would send himself to hell and release them to heaven.
As part of a plea agreement, he was sentenced to seven years in a juvenile prison for the slaying of his mother, and he began serving a 32-year prison sentence in 2006 for the slaying of his grandmother.
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Information from: Daily Camera,
