NEW ORLEANS — Neighbors in the Lower Ninth Ward want a repeat sex offender out of their neighborhood after learning about his history from a WWL Louisiana investigation with our partners at the Guardian.
The few in the area who signed up for email alerts from Offender Watch learned on August 21 that Stanley Carl Burkhardt had moved into half a shotgun double on St. Maurice Avenue.
But until WWL and the Guardian showed up to confront Burkhardt, most of his new neighbors had no idea he was a former New Orleans Police child abuse detective who has been in and out of prison on child molestation and pornography charges six times since 1987.
One of those is Bill Crockett. He and his wife moved from Memphis, Tenn., to help their daughter Carrie, a schoolteacher, raise her 11-year-old daughter. They built a beautiful new home just two blocks from Carrie.
Now, Crocket finds himself just two houses down from where Burkhardt moved in.
Crockett said their stretch of St. Maurice is “loaded with children everywhere,” ranging in age from 3 to 14. It’s no place for a serial child molester, he said, especially one who was found to prey on both boys and girls between 9 and 13.
“If somebody commits a crime or whatever and pays their debt to society, I'm OK with that. Let them start over,” Crockett said. “But that's not the case here. This has gone on for years and years and happened six times. And I have no doubt it's going to happen again.”
Burkhardt left the NOPD in 1987 when he was convicted of federal child porn charges. He got out in 1992 and was immediately arrested again, pleading guilty in 1994 to aggravated crime against nature for molesting his ex-wife’s 9-year-old niece. But a Louisiana state court gave him credit for time served on the federal charge and he was out again.
In 1998, Burkhardt was caught accepting child pornography in a sting operation by a U.S. postal inspector. When the feds searched his home, they found a 12-year-old boy inside, but no charges related to the boy were ever filed against him.
In 2006, Burkhardt violated the terms of his release and accessed porn while staying at a halfway house. In 2011, a federal judge declared him “sexually dangerous” and committed him to a federal prison treatment center in North Carolina.
He was released in 2015 but violated his parole again in 2019 by using a secret cell phone and unauthorized accounts to download and comment online about hundreds of images of young boys.
In 2021, U.S. District Judge James Dever III rejected Burkhardt’s request for parole, writing bluntly: “Burkhardt has repeatedly failed on supervised release and probation and has never successfully completed either.”
Dever ordered Burkhardt to stay in the federal prison treatment center in Butner, N.C., for more treatment. But Dever took a different tack in March 2024, granting Burkhardt a sixth release to a halfway house in New Orleans. The U.S. Probation Office then granted Burkhardt supervised release on an ankle monitor earlier this month, and Burkhardt reported his new address at 728 St. Maurice St. last month.
“I thought he made a good decision in '21,” Crockett said of Judge Dever. “And then when he reversed himself, I thought he was an idiot – a total idiot or didn't care. I don't know which it was.”
Dever did not respond to a message seeking comment.
One of the few people in the area who knew Burkhardt had moved in was the owner of a daycare and preschool down the street. She didn’t want to be named, but she said she signed up for email alerts last year so she could more easily comply with Education Department requirements to post sex offender notices at the school.
Anyone can sign up for notices based on where they live or for specific offenders by registering for alerts at offenderwatch.com.
The owner of the daycare said she gets notices from time to time, but the one about Burkhardt stood out.
“It’s alarming because of how many chances he’s been given,” she said. “Any area he goes in will have children, but here there’s the school and a public bus stop so heavily used by kids in this area and you have to pass his house to get to the bus stop.”
The New Orleans Police Department said Burkhardt registered his new address in the Offender Watch database, and that’s why those who signed up for email alerts were informed about him before any postcards had been mailed to the rest of the neighborhood. NOPD said Burkhardt has an appointment to register with the department in person within the allotted 21 days of his release and will be required to send out postcards at that time.
He is wearing an ankle monitor and must check in with his federal probation officer on a set basis. He is subject to unannounced home visits from federal probation officers and the NOPD’s Sex Offender Registration Unit, NOPD said.
But Dever eased the terms of his release last month, eliminating his curfew and the need for him to file weekly reports on his movement.
NOPD also said Burkhardt’s house is not within 1,000 feet of a school or playground, a key restriction for sex offenders under state law. The daycare center is three blocks away and appears to be slightly more than 1,000 feet away.
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