Mother Who Beat Sex Offender: 'I'd Do It Again'

Feb. 28, 2009— -- Was Tammy Gibson protecting her young daughter or just beating up a neighbor, unprovoked?

Either way, she will now spend three months behind bars for taking a baseball bat to a sex offender last summer who was talking with her daughter.

Gibson said she has no remorse for the June 19 assault but pleaded no contest Friday to assault charges. She could have received as much as eight months in jail, but the judge sentenced her to three.

"No, I'd do it again if not better," she told ABC News Seattle affiliate KOMO-TV. "I don't care if it hurts me, I don't regret it. It got him away from my kids and all the other kids in the neighborhood."

According to police documents, Level-3 sex offender William A. Baldwin had moved into his uncle's home in Tacoma in early June. Following his move, county deputies distributed flyers around the neighborhood to alert residents of his presence.

On June 19, Gibson went to the house in the trailer park and asked for Baldwin.

When Baldwin stepped outside, she claimed she was going to kill him because Baldwin had molested her children. Gibson then proceeded to hit Baldwin repeatedly with her bat, the document said, leaving him with an injured arm.

"I kept swingin' and swingin', and swingin'," Gibson told investigators.

Contrary to what she had said to Baldwin, Gibson later told investigators Baldwin had not molested her children. But she did say that she recognized Baldwin from the flyer as the man who had chatted up her then-10-year-old daughter during the previous summer. Baldwin is the memorable height of 7 feet, 3 inches tall.

"For him to be right there, in front of my house and talking to my child -- made me crazy," she told KOMO.

"And I told him I thought he was a piece of crap and I smacked him," she added. "I just didn't stop hitting him. I just told him that 'if it were up to me, I'd kill ya."'

"I was scared. I was frightened. I didn't know what the hell to do," Baldwin previously told KOMO of being assaulted by the unexpected visitor.

The daughter she was protecting was in tears during the sentencing on Friday.

"He tried to give me fireworks and I wouldn't take it," the girl, Renee Maria Perez, said of Baldwin.

Gibson's other daughter, Rachael Porter, added, "I think it's crap; that she was protecting her kids like she should have been. They locked her up for way too long."

Gibson said she hoped that the attention created by her case would lead to a change in the laws regarding released sex offenders.

"I would hope that me doing this and going to jail would change something, change some kind of law, change something where people like him can't be standing around little kids you know what I mean?" Gibson said in her interview with KOMO-TV. "It's not right, it's not fair to the kids at all."

Wrong or right, her tactics did work to keep Baldwin away from her children. According to court records, the man has since moved out from Tacoma to Seattle.