Eideard

A fugitive priest wanted in connection with child sex abuse allegations has been urged to turn himself in by one of the country’s top lawyers, who said his absence caused difficulties to a damning review of decades of paedophile activity at a top Catholic school.

Laurence Soper, the former abbot of Ealing Abbey – which has been the subject of an inquiry from Lord Carlile QC and an internal Vatican investigation following disclosures of alleged and proven abuse at neighbouring St Benedict’s – skipped bail last month and is thought to be living in an Italian monastery.

Carlile, who published his findings on Wednesday, said: “I would encourage Laurence Soper to surrender himself to the police…”What I hope is that everybody who has, and has had, contact with Laurence Soper should inveigh upon him very strongly to surrender himself to the British authorities.”

He added that an international arrest warrant was being issued.

Soper appeared in Carlile’s report as one of five clergy tried or wanted for questioning in relation to paedophile activity involving pupils…

The report said…”Primary fault lies with the abusers, in the abject failure of personal responsibility, in breach of their sacred vows … and in breach of all professional standards and of the criminal law.

“Secondary fault can be shared by the monastic community, in its lengthy and culpable failure to deal with what at times must have been evident behaviour placing children at risk; and what at all times was a failure to recognise the sinful temptations that might attract some with monastic vocations…”

There were no representatives from Ealing Abbey at the press conference.

I’m not quite certain how a public plea in the UK – to turn himself into the coppers – is going to convince a fugitive reputed to be hiding in a monastery in Italy to come home and do so. If he even hears about it.

And if he does, it seems likely the communication is coming from someone in the Catholic Church who already knows exactly where he is and should be telling the coppers where – so they might arrest him.

British police have appealed for information about the whereabouts of an escaped prisoner who has been telling the world via Facebook about his life as a fugitive.

Craig Lynch, 28, escaped Hollesley Bay open prison near Suffolk, eastern England, back in September, but has continued to update his Facebook status regularly — describing everything from his meals to who his next girlfriend will be…

In a…posting from earlier this week Lynch wrote “Is thinkin, which lucky girl will be my first of 2010!!.”

Police are trying to use clues left by Lynch on his Facebook to track down where the convicted burglar may be hiding…

“We have spoken to Facebook and we are trying to trace him from the information we have, but it’s one of those things that we’re also asking for help from members of the public,” Suffolk police spokesperson Anne-Marie Breach told CNN.

“Obviously we’re taking what he’s saying on Facebook with a pinch of salt because he’s now aware that people may be reading what he’s writing.”

Life on the lam apparently gets easier and easier. So much for snoops and database mining.

Interpol Poster

A man wanted in the Czech Republic for drug and fraud crimes has been arrested while working in the US – at a maximum security prison.

Michal Preclik, 32, had recently been promoted to the post of corporal, the Associated Press reports…

Nebraska officials said they carried out a full background check on Mr Preclik and the fact he was employed was “a concern”.

But Mr Preclik’s wife, Kari, told reporters her husband had been granted legal residency in the US after testifying in another case and that she could not understand why he had been arrested now.

They told him that his status was protected here, that whatever he had done in his past was eliminated

Mr Preclik is currently being held in another prison, where he is fighting possible deportation to the Czech Republic. The exact reason for his arrest has not been made public…

Officials said the state would be reviewing its employment policy and procedures.

Obviously, no one in Nebraska’s Correctional System is familiar with The Google.

A desperate federal fugitive who killed himself last week after a Broward County police chase left behind in a suburban Boca Raton home a deadly memento of his troubled life.

Friends mourning George Simonson, a 69-year-old man accused of trying to blow up his Pennsylvania home with timed explosives and gasoline, went Monday to the house he rented and found among his things a pipe bomb.

The friends, whose names were not made public, did not spot the bomb tucked away in Simonson’s belongings, which they planned to send to his family, until they had unwittingly carted it back to their home west of Boca Raton.

After realizing they were handling an explosive, they picked up the phone and, rather than dial 911, called an FBI agent they knew, the sources said.

The agent inspected the pipe bomb and then called local authorities. Palm Beach County firetrucks and the sheriff’s office bomb squad roared onto Black Olive Lane, in the gated Boca Isles West neighborhood near Yamato Road and U.S. 441, about 1:30 p.m.

Neighbors said they watched from a safe distance as a sheriff’s robot hoisted the bomb into an explosion-proof container.

The pipe bomb served as a last frightening reminder of Simonson, who was in the midst of an arson trial in Pike County, Pa., when he disappeared in November, leaving angry written screeds taped to the door of his attorney’s office…

On Wednesday, a Wilton Manors police officer ran the plates on a Mazda Miata on North Federal Highway and realized the driver was Simonson, who pulled over briefly before speeding off, according to a Broward County sheriff’s statement.

Police chased Simonson through six cities before he made a U-turn in Deerfield Beach and shot himself dead.

Five days later, his friends west of Boca Raton went to gather what he had left behind.

Surprise, surprise!

Police appealed today for help hunting a “dangerously radioactive” college principal wanted on child porn charges.

Seriously-ill Thomas Leopold, who had been given large doses of radiation for a thyroid condition, skipped bail shortly before his trial two weeks ago. He then drove on to a ferry heading for Rosslare in County Wexford, south-east Ireland.

The 42-year-old head of a tutorial college in Harrow, Middlesex, has not been seen since.

A judge at Southwark crown court, John Price, who issued a warrant for his arrest, accused him of “doing everything to make it as difficult as he can to let the trial go ahead.

“Please warn officers that when he is arrested he might be radio­active. This is not a joke.”

Cripes. So, this dude is a freak whose arrest may also endanger the arresting officers? Where’s that big vacuum cleaner in the sky we can use just to suck him off the face of the Earth?