Anthony Lennon, one of Oklahoma’s Ten Most Wanted, was arrested in New York after staging his own kidnapping 13 years ago, the US Marshals Service West Oklahoma confirmed earlier this week.
Lennon, a convicted sex offender, staged his abduction in 2012 to avoid facing a second criminal case, according to officials.
The now-44-year-old was convicted in a 2008 case after he was found guilty on five counts of possession of child pornography. The images were discovered after Lennon’s friend used his computer and discovered 50 gigabytes of child sex abuse images.
Lennon entered a guilty plea in 2010 and was allowed out on a suspended sentence when eight new charges of possession of child pornography led to an arrest warrant being issued in March 2012.
A federal complaint, unsealed on Monday, also showed Lennon failed to register as a sex offender.
The disappearance of Anthony Lennon
Shortly after the warrant was issued for his arrest, Lennon’s employer told police that he had disappeared on the night of March 11, 2012.
"Detectives noticed a pool of blood, Lennon's shoe, shirt buttons, bloody shoe prints, and money missing from the hotel money drawer," the complaint said. "After examining the crime scene, interviewing family members, friends, and individuals in the community, it was determined that the circumstances were suspicious."
The US Marshals Office described the hotel as "an elaborate and bloody abduction and robbery scene."
Further investigation found that the scene had been staged and that Lennon had emptied his bank accounts the day before he disappeared.
Locating convicted sex offender Anthony Lennon
Police struggled to locate Lennon, despite finding some activity discovered on his Amazon account in 2020, and someone reporting seeing him at a convention in Dallas. However, officers recently found that he had been living under the name “Justin Phillips,” which he used to attend university, using a falsely obtained state ID and birth certificate.
"He first enrolled in SUNY Canton’s engineering science program in the fall of 2024 and lived off campus," a spokesperson for the State University of New York said in a statement to NBC News.
"The student was only known to the college as Justin Phillips, and none of our records indicate that he had a prior identity."
Lennon allegedly made multiple attempts to obtain a passport under his alias, according to the police complaints.
Despite the documents he obtained, Lennon was located after his fingerprints confirmed his identity, police said.
Oklahoma Attorney General Genter Drummond thanks law enforcement for locating and apprehending this child predator."
"He evaded justice for far too long but will now face the consequences of his actions," Drummond said.