Fearful Mom Attacks 7-Foot Sex Offender

June 21, 2008— -- Standing 7 feet 3 inches tall and registered as his state's highest-risk type of sex offender, William Baldwin is tough to miss in his Pierce County, Wash., neighborhood.

Wielding a bat, Tammy Lee Gibson, 40, Baldwin's neighbor, found the man and beat him so badly that he needed to go to the hospital before officers arrested him again for failing to register as a Level 3 sex offender at a new address.

He sat Friday in the Pierce County Jail on $20,000 bond -- the same jail where Gibson was being held on $15,000 bond.

Gibson faces felony assault and harassment charges tied to the beating, which occurred shortly after Pierce County sheriff's officers distributed fliers notifying residents that Baldwin, 24, had moved into the neighborhood.

Gibson originally told police that Baldwin had molested her daughter but later pulled back the accusation, claiming instead that she had seen Baldwin talking to her 10-year-old daughter last July 4. The flier from the sheriff's office, she said, made her snap.

"If I had to do it again, I would do it again," Gibson said in a jailhouse interview with Seattle news channel KIRO. "The picture in my head of him talking to my daughter in front of my house scared me."

Gibson said that she wanted Baldwin to know that no children were going to fall victim to him in their neighborhood as long as she lived there. She would have killed him if she could, she said.

"I was thinking he would never hurt any child again," she told KIRO. "I guess I never got that far."

Gibson admitted in the interview that Baldwin had never touched her 10-year-old daughter. The thought alone, however, "made me crazy," she said. She also claimed Baldwin had given her daughter fireworks in the past.

Baldwin was booked on Tuesday for failing to register as a sex offender after deputies interviewed neighbors in the area who said that he had been living in the area for several months. It was not until recently that he had completed the paperwork required to register at his new home.

Baldwin is a registered Level 3 sex offender in Washington state, originally convicted of first-degree child molestation for an incident in which he forced a 5-year-old girl to touch his penis during a game of hide-and-seek. While on parole for that incident, Baldwin lured another 5-year-old neighbor into a backyard doghouse and touched her vagina. The convictions define Baldwin as having a high risk of re-offending.