Then they silently wait until their intended victim is alone before they violently strike out, usually beyond the view or sound of anyone who could help save their newest victim. As I walked the streets of downtown San Diego this past Saturday, looking at the hundreds of missing person posters for Chelsea King, I feared for the fate that we now know has befallen her.

John Albert Gardner III, age 30, is one of 83,000 registered sex offenders in California (700,000 in USA) and a suspected sexual predator. He has been identified as the likely kidnapper, rapist and murderer of King, and is currently in jail where he had refused to cooperate with investigators in their attempts to locate the missing young woman. King went for an afternoon run in Rancho Bernardo Community Park, San Diego, on February 25thand had not been seen since. The park is located only minutes from a residence known to be associated Gardner. It was in a shallow grave in this park, near by a peaceful multi-acre lake where investigators located Chelsea’s remains on Tuesday.

Some sexual predators have a preconceived picture in their mind of their next victim, usually based upon sex, physical size, hair color, etc. For Gardner, should he be responsible for the death of King, his ideal victim may well have been someone exactly like the murdered young woman. A teenager girl who could be overwhelmed by an assault by a much older, and larger man fully intent on doing her harm.

Gardner, by some reports, has a history of taking advantage of young girls dating back to the early 1990’s. In March 2000, he was arrested for molesting a 13-year-old neighborhood girl, allegedly undressing her and hitting her over and over in the head before she ran to a neighbor’s home for help. Indicating that the assault on the young girl would probably haunt her for the rest of her life, the local DA still sought a six-year vs. an 11-30 year prison term for Gardner due, in part, to Gardner’s lack of prior convictions. Gardner received the reduced sentence even though a psychologist stated that Gardner refused to take responsibility for his actions, would likely reoffend upon release, and should, therefore, be given the maximum sentence allowed by law. This lesser sentence appeared to reflect almost a total disregard for an “expert opinion.” An opinion, if it had been followed, would have seen Gardner in prison today where he could not have gotten his hands on King, or, perhaps, 14-year-old Amber DuBois, or even 22-year-old Candice.

Amber DuBois, who lived in proximity to the park where King jogged and the house where Gardner’s parents resided, disappeared on February 13, 2009. She was on her way to school at the time, where she was an active member of the Future Farmers of America. Some thought Amber could have been a runaway, but this was also the day she was finally going to get to buy a new baby lamb, and she had Valentine Day gifts to give to friends, hardly the time for her to disappear of her own accord. DuBois, like King, had a cell phone but only had a second to use it the day she disappeared, then nothing. And while technology allowed police to eventually find King’s car and her cell phone, the “ping” from DuBois’ phone only gave police a location several miles in radius. Amber just disappeared, and although some suspects have surfaced in her case, over a year later she is still numbered among the almost 1,000,000 reported missing persons each year. In Amber’s case, though, she remains among the missing.

In the case of Chelsea King, investigators initially located her underpants and a shoe in the vicinity of local Lake Hodges. It was her underpants, believed to have been taken from her by her assailant that contained physical evidence critical to this investigation, DNA that has been positively linked to one local sex offender; John Gardner. Gardner has also positively been linked to the assault on Candice (whose last name has not been released), who visited San Diego from her home in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

On the morning of December 27, 2009, Candice set off alone for a run in Rancho Bernardo Community Park, the same park where King would be murdered some two months later. It was deep in that secluded park that Candice encountered the man she has now positively identified as Gardner, the man who violently threw her to the ground and demanded money. “Shut up” he shouted at his victim, who screamed he would have to kill her first, to which he allegedly responded, “that can be arranged!” As Gardner allegedly pulled her up and started brutally shaking her, she struck out at him, smashing her elbow into his face and nose. He loosened his grip long enough for Candice to break free and runto a nearby home where she called 911. While police suggest they have identified Gardner as Candice’s assailant, the means of identification, other than her photo ID of him, is unknown. What we do know is that one young woman is dead, a second missing and a third woman just barely escaped with her life because she was able to fight back. And should Gardner be the assailant in all three cases, there will likely be more victims yet to be accounted for. After all, a predator like Gardner just didn’t start offending in the past year or two, noting his aberrant history dates back at least a decade.

But if King and DuBois were both victims of Gardner, assaulted and murdered as police now know in one case and must suspect in the second, where would Gardner, the un-cooperating suspect, have disposed of the body of someone other than King? A profile of a predator with the background of Gardner would suggest that although he had a stalking, really a hunting ground for victims (the local park), he would not carry his victims far from where he attacked them. While some predators have a pre-determined body disposal site miles from where they first encounter their victims, in this case police and the FBI were correct in looking in and around Lake Hodges. The victims were on foot in the park, King’s car was nearby but not taken by her assailant, and should their believed common attacker have encountered all of his victims inside of the park, he would probably not have risked the chance of being seen carrying a girl out of the park and to a vehicle or a nearby residence. While there are potentially three crime scenes in such offenses, the point of initial confrontation, the place where the victim was assaulted, and the location where the victim’s body was disposed of, in this case all three crime scenes are likely very close to each other.

While no one wants to give up on DuBois, the assault on Candice and the murder of King suggests the brutality that Gardner would have used to overwhelm and overpower a young girl, especially someone without the years of self defense training that Candice had, training that in all likelihood saved her very life. To stand up against a human predator we need every weapon at our disposal, to include our mind, our body, and, if available, a little bit of technology. In the case of DuBois, her fate is yet unknown and while King did not survive her assumed attack and murder by Gardner, time will soon tell if this same man had anything to do with the disappearance of DuBois and, perhaps, yet other victims still waiting to be linked to him. Meanwhile families and friends of King who had hoped for the best, like in the case of Elizabeth Smart or Jaycee Lee Dugard, now openly grieve the loss of a young woman with so much to offer, so much unrealized potential for good. A predator that could have been in prison instead was out and about, stalking yet new victims. One more silent cry for a national one-strike law for all violent sexual predators, a law that could help save girls like Amber and Chelsea and the hundreds and thousands of other similar victims in our world.

For more information concerning personal and family safety and security, to obtain a free copy of our DVD “Protecting Children from Predators,” to find out the identity and location of sex offenders in your community, and to learn how to get our new iPhone and iPod application, “Silent Bodyguard,” that with just one-button allows you to send both a personal distress message to up to four people and transmits your exact GPS coordinates every 60 seconds, go to www.LiveSecure.org.