A convicted sex offender who studied philosophy at Tufts eight years ago was added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list last week.
Jon Savarino Schillaci is wanted on charges of sexually assaulting a five-year-old boy and possessing child pornography. U.S. authorities last knew of his whereabouts seven years ago, when he was in Baja, Mexico. A $100,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to his capture.
Schillaci, 35, studied as "a non-degree student in a graduate special student program at Tufts for a brief time in the fall of 1999," Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler said in an e-mail.
Before enrolling at Tufts, he had spent 10 years in jail for sexually assaulting two 11-year-old boys in Texas, according to FBI Boston Division special agent and media spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz.
While studying at Tufts, Schillaci resided in the home of a Deerfield, N.H. couple that had befriended him during his years in prison. After Schillaci had lived with the couple for seven weeks, their five-year-old son told them that Schillaci had molested him.
Schillaci fled the area after he was indicted for sexual assault in November 1999, and has not been heard from by Tufts personnel since.
Thurler emphasized that Tufts' contact with Schillaci was limited and brief.
"He enrolled in one course but stopped attending class after about six weeks," she said. "The university has had no contact with him since that time."
Philosophy Professor Daniel Dennett, who taught Schillaci during the fugitive's time at Tufts, echoed this sentiment in an e-mail to the Daily.
When asked about his recollection of Schillaci, Dennett responded, "I don't have anything to say ... He spent about a month at Tufts and then disappeared."
While in jail during the 1990s, Schillaci earned two master's degrees. He also had a poem published in a University of New Hampshire magazine during his sentence. It was this poem that first moved the couple, whose son Schillaci allegedly victimized later, to get in touch with the inmate.
The couple built a friendship with him over the next seven years and became convinced that he had rehabilitated himself while in jail. After finishing his prison sentence, he went to live with the family. Schillaci was about to start working as a children's piano teacher when the couple's son informed them that he had been abused.
Schillaci was added to the 10 Most Wanted list last Friday following the capture of another pedophile in May who was on the list.
By reserving at least one spot on the list for a sexual predator, the FBI is honoring the goals of a Justice Department initiative called the Project Safe Childhood Program, according to the Boston Globe.
The procedure by which Schillaci was chosen to be on the list involves a long selection process at FBI headquarters.
"Any of the [FBI's] 56 field divisions has the opportunity to submit fugitives and then the criminal investigation division will look at a couple things - if the person has continued to commit [crimes], if national publicity is going to help find the fugitive," Marcinkiewicz said. "The decision is made down at headquarters."
The Boston Division, which serves Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine, suggested Schillaci as a candidate for the list, she said.
Schillaci, who was born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas by adoptive parents, is the first fugitive from New Hampshire to make the 10 Most Wanted list. He speaks Spanish, French and German, in addition to English, according to the Globe.
The news of Schillaci's entry onto the list makes him the second sex offender to have made news in the Tufts community of late. The other, former Office of Residential Life and Learning employee Kenneth Hall, was convicted this summer for giving a cell phone to a 12-year-old girl so she could send him nude pictures of herself.
