Crime & Safety

Peanut Butter Bandit Returns to Prison

Officials are citing "technical" parole violations.

This article was reported and written by Chris Dehnel.

The man living in Tolland on parole with a violent past who became known as the "Peanut Butter Bandit" is back behind bars.

Frederick Merrill was returned to prison - at Hartford Correctional Center - on Monday, a Department of Corrections official said on Friday. 

Merrill had been on parole and living at his sister's home at 528 Merrow Rd.

A Department of Corrections official said he was returned to prison for "numerous technical violations" of his parole conditions. She did not elaborate. State police said they were unaware of an arrest involving Merrill. 

Merrill, 66, moved to Tolland in February. 

He is a man with a violent criminal history and one who escaped from prison on several occasions. He was released from the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institute in Suffield on Oct. 5, 2012 and was residing at The Eddy Center in Middletown, a residential treatment facility, before moving to the Tolland home.

Over the course of his criminal career, Merrill committed several violent sexual assaults, kidnapping, assaults on police officers and burglaries in Tolland, South Windsor and Enfield, according to the DOC. For the first two decades, from 1967 to 1987, Merrill escaped from Connecticut and Canadian prisons, only to be captured again and charged with additional offenses according to the DOC and the Hartford Courant.

In one infamous incident, Merrill escaped prison after his mother smuggled a handgun into the jail in a jar of peanut butter, according to the Hartford Courant, thus earning him the nickname the "Peanut Butter Bandit."

Since his re-imprisonment in 2003, when he was sentenced to 20-years for crimes related to a first-degree sexual assault in South Windsor and two burglaries in Enfield in 1987, Merrill has not escaped from the MacDougall-Walker Correctional, where he was being held.

While living in Tolland, Merrill was monitored by a specialized unit of the parole division that is specifically trained to manage sexual offenders, officials said.

Merrill was required to check-in with his parole officers once a week, register as a sexual offender and was under GPS surveillance 24/7, officials said at the time of the move.

Merrill was also subject to additional requirements, such as:
  • Electronic monitoring
  • No contact with victims or family members of victims
  • No consumption of alcoholic beverages, random toxicology screenings
  • Behavioral management for the treatment of problem sexual behavior

Officials said in July that it would also be unlikely for Merrill to be allowed to live at a residence with young women or children.

A corrections official did not know what the future would hold for Merrill and whether a hearing would be scheduled. 


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