The Twisted Course of an Alleged Pedophile

April 15, 2010 — -- The report that 7-year-old Somer Thompson's body had been discovered in a landfill shook the town of Orange Park, Fla., to the core.

The little girl had disappeared walking home from school two days earlier. Police quickly came to believe that the killer lived in the seemingly typical suburban neighborhood.

It would take five months, more than 4,000 leads and several blind alleys before police would hone in on someone who had been brought to their attention even before Somer had disappeared.

Click HERE for resources for parents to help protect kids from sex offenders.

Twenty-four year-old Jarred Harrell, who lived just a few houses from where Somer was last seen, is now charged with first-degree murder in her death. A month earlier, Harrell had been arrested and charged with dozens of counts of possessing and producing child pornography and molesting a different young girl. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Click HERE for a map of registered sex offenders near the school Somer Thompson attended.

Click HERE for photos from the Somer Thompson case.

"You would look at this guy and you'd say ... big, gentle giant," a family friend, Rod Buchannan, told ABC News. "Wouldn't hurt a flea. He was very polite, very nice, you know."

But after his arrest, Harrell's family background began to unfold, and soon a different picture emerged.

Twenty-one years ago, Harrell's mother, Annis Dailey, made headlines of her own when she fell under the spell of her much older employer, Joe Newman, a married man, self-professed inventor and "messenger of God."

Among the messages he claimed to have received from God was an order to marry Annis -- and her 8-year-old daughter as well.