TodayFormer SU professor will serve at least 12 years
Print
Share
Email to a friend
Add This
Article RatingImages
Former Shippensburg University professor Richard Gibbs is shown at his sentencing hearing Wednesday. Gibbs was sentenced to 12 years at least for molesting a family member when he was a resident of Bainbridge Township, Ohio from 1987 to 1989. (The News Herald)
Former Shippensburg University journalism professor Richard Wesley Gibbs -- once the subject of an "America's Most Wanted" manhunt -- will serve at least 12 years in an Ohio prison for molesting a family member while a resident of Bainbridge Township, Ohio from 1987-1989.
Gibbs, now 66, shackled and dressed in prison stripes, appeared for sentencing Wednesday before Geauga County Common Pleas Judge David Fuhry in Chardon, Ohio.
Fuhry pronounced a 12-year to 30-year sentence, calling Gibbs' crimes "reprehensible and heinous." Gibbs had entered a guilty plea to 6-of-10 gross sexual imposition counts in Ohio in February after first pleading not guilty to the charges.
He faced maximum penalties of 10 years for each of the third-degree felony counts.
Gibbs' court-appointed attorney, Robert Umholtz, described Gibbs as an intelligent man with a great deal of remorse and understanding of the pain he has caused.
Umholtz said the Mormon church bears some of the blame for Gibbs' string of sexual molestations, saying the church helped cover-up Gibbs' crimes, leading him not to seek treatment for his emotional problems.
Judge Fuhry expressed a different judgement.
He called Gibbs "a threat to the community who is unable to control his deviant sexual desires." Fuhry he said he was not convinced of Gibbs' remorse or empathy for his victims.
Gibbs -- who did time in 1988 for molesting a teenage boy during a church trip from Ohio to Warren County, Pennsylvania -- still faces similar charges in California, North Carolina and in Cumberland County where he is accused of 14 counts of sexual abuse of children taht are linked to pronographic images found on compuetsr at his Southampton Township home and SU office in April 2006.
Gibbs --who taught at Su from 1991-2006 -- abruptly retired from his SU teaching post and fled Pennsylvania on the day a search warrant was served.
He was located and arrested in North Carolina in June, but a county judge there let the fugitive slip through his fingers by setting a bail amount of $25,000. Gibbs posted bail and disappeared
With U.S. Marshals on his trail and the popular "America's Most Wanted" television show trumpeting Gibbs' taste for warm climates and nudist lifestyles, Gibbs was located three months later in October.
Local police in Panama arrested him in an island resort off the coast of Panama, where he was working under an assumed name -- Wesley Alonzo -- at the Big Bamboo Bar and Grill. He was returned to Miami and subsequently to Ohio just before Christmas.
----The News Herald contributed to this story
