Crime & Safety
Peanut Butter Bandit Scheduled to Move to Tolland on Thursday
The process is very controlled, officials said.
It was all quiet at midday on Thursday at the Merrow Road house scheduled to become the home of the infamous Peanut Butter Bandit.
Frederick Merrill, 66, a man with a violent criminal history - and one who escaped from prison on several occasions - is slated to move into his sister’s house at 528 Merrow Rd. on Thursday. He is on parole.
Since his release from the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institute in Suffield on Oct. 5, Merrill has been living at a residential treatment facility in Middletown called The Eddy Center.
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Executive Director of the Board of Paroles John DeFeo has said Merrill will be required to check-in with his parole officers once a week, register as a sex offender, and will be under GPS surveillance around the clock.
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DeFeo has said that it would also be unlikey for Merrill to be allowed to live at a residence with young women or children.
DeFeo said on Thursday that in addition to standard parole requirements he had already mentioned, Merrill might be subject to additional requirements if those in the field decide to petition the board and bring the case before the board to add those conditions.
"At this point they haven't asked us to add any conditions … it doesn't mean they won’t, it just means that they haven't just yet," DeFeo said.
As for why he was able to be released in Tolland, he said it is standard procedure for a parolee to propose an address, and have it followed up by an investigation by field officials. "If they find the address to be acceptable, the parolee will move to the proposed address," he said.
The house on Merrow Road is a modest one-story dwelling, set back a distance from the road.
In response to the news of Merrill's move, residents posted an unfavorable reaction on the Tolland Patch Facebook page.
Even in Ellington and Somers, residents were less than pleased. "Disgusted," "what is this world coming to?," and "not happy" were a few of the things that were written on the Ellington-Somers Patch Facebook page.
"Thinking back to before he was arrested, this is not a good thing," one reader wrote.
Merrill once 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.
The process is controlled. Merrill was to report to the Troop C State Police barracks before heading to the house.
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