Larry Pugh
Offender Name: Larry Max Pugh, Jr.
Custody Status: In Custody
Age: 45
Location: CHEROKEE COUNTY JAIL
Race: White
Offender ID: 18051113362144
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 10/18/1972
Aliases: Larry Pugh
Cherokee County, TX:
Former City of Jacksonville police officer and accused serial rapist Larry Pugh is back in town for the next few weeks doing a short stint in the county jail. According to the Daily Progress and reports from the district attorney himself, Pugh has completed his federal sentence and can quietly sit out Elmer Beckworth’s 2006 “assault with a deadly weapon” charge through August, courtesy of the Rusk, Texas jail.
Pugh's "assault" crime: trying to kidnap and murder a woman in a makeshift police van before she could testify in federal court about being raped at gunpoint in the Jacksonville City Cemetery. The deadly weapon: a belt around her neck and his service revolver. (Source: Daily Progress)
No mention of the $300,000 civil suit settlement the City of Jacksonville was facing from nine (9) different women who were also raped on the side of the road by Officer Pugh while he was on duty. (Source: US Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit) If Pugh were brought up on actual murder charges, then the Federal Courts, the FBI and the City of Jacksonville would be proven "deliberately indifferent" to the testimony of 25 to 30 witnesses. (Source: KLTV)
The public is supposed to believe the reprinted lie that Larry Pugh tracked down his rape victims by "open records via the Freedom of Information Act" after they filed complaints. The FOIA has denied these reports. In fact, he was told by investigators the names of those who came forward to testify. They were named in his indictment and went missing before his trial. (Source: The Pugh Connection, KLTV)
Jacksonville Police Officer Larry Pugh
Are the families of missing Jacksonville women going to have closure with the release of former J'ville Police Officer Larry Pugh from federal prison?
Not according to Elmer Beckworth, even though two missing Jacksonville women's remains have been identified as Pugh’s FBI complainants set to testify against him. Why the blasé attitude about a federally convicted rapist and the number one murder suspect? It’s simple: East Texas authorities want to protect the City of Jacksonville from more potential civil right suits and public scrutiny. Elmer Beckworth works with the same Jacksonville law firm that represents the City and County during Pugh's civil rights violation cases. They want his crimes buried the same way they discard his victims. They write them off as "prostitutes" and transient "drug addicts," while reminding us Cherokee County's halfway homes are whorehouses frequented by law enforcement.
Remember: these women went missing AFTER Pugh's indictment and before his trial.
According to the Jacksonville Police Department there is no connection between Pugh and MISSING FBI COMPLAINANT TERRI REYES, even though she is one of several named victims in Pugh's original sex assault indictment. They removed her name after she went "missing" as reported by KLTV to avoid "speculation," i.e. civil rights lawsuits against the city. The US District Court, along with every other incestuous agency in the region would rather bury civil rights violations than have the City of Jacksonville held responsible for their hiring practices. They would rather delete the names of the deceased in the Indictment than close the multiple homicide cases resulting in their cover up.
When Larry Pugh was indicted last February. One of his accusers was an unidentified woman with the initials T.R. Those are the same initials as Terri Reyes, an Athens woman who went missing last May and whose body was found in the Angelina National Forest in September.
The original indictment against Pugh says he sexually assaulted T.R., depriving her of her constiutional right to liberty and bodily integrity, but in the subsequent indictments, issued after Reyes went missing, T.R. is never mentioned.
The Nacogdoches attorney in a recent civil lawsuit against Pugh told us by phone he would have called Terri Reyes as a witness in the trial, but she disappeared before he had a chance. (Source: The Pugh Connection: KLTV 7 Investigates)
If they wanted to charge him for the disappearance of federal witnesses, then they would.
If they wanted to exonerate him, they could do that to.
What Larry Pugh did in 2005 only scratches the surface of the sexual misconduct going on by Cherokee County, TX law enforcement. We have a district attorney’s office that uses the wives and in-laws of investigators to blackmail political rivals and contaminate jury pools. We have a Sheriff Department that has engaged in illegal wiretapping for decades, with the blessing of federal and DEA agents. A rapist cop is another lowlife they own. Be on the lookout when he moves back in next door to the local brothel shelter.
Pugh has remained a suspect in several missing women’s homicides, even though authorities have tried to keep the cases closed. (Source: KTBS) These possible homicide cases remain 'unsolved' solely because they were witnesses against Pugh.
Reprinted from the Tyler Paper dated June 20, 2014 “Remains identified as 2006 missing person: Woman was possible witness against former J'Ville officer”
The remains of a woman who disappeared eight years ago after making outcries of sexual abuse against a former Jacksonville police officer have been found, officials reported on Friday. Skeletal remains of Shunte M. Coleman, who was last seen July 3, 2006, were found on March 12 by a forester in a thickly wooded area in San Augustine County, east of the "T" intersection of Farm-to-Market Road 1196 and County Road 347, officials said Friday in a news release. In 2007, Alvin Boykin talked to the Tyler Morning Telegraph about the day his friend, Ms. Coleman, left his Jacksonville home on foot. He said then that his home was an ad hoc shelter, offered to anyone needing a place to stay.
Shunte M. Coleman
Ms. Coleman, a mother of two, had freely come and gone from his residence — but so had a handful of other women needing a boost. So when Ms. Coleman said she was leaving for a while, Boykin watched her go. She didn't come back. Neither did another frequenter, Terri Renee Troublefield Reyes, who disappeared around the same time as Ms. Coleman. The 38-year-old Athens woman was last seen alive on May 21, 2006, and was found dead and unclothed in Angelina National Forest in fall 2006.
Terri Reyes
The women knew each other from Boykin's home, and both were pinpointed as potential witnesses to testify against former Jacksonville police officer Larry Pugh. In 2006, Pugh was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the sexual assault of women while on duty and retaliating against a woman for reporting the crime. Ms. Coleman and Ms. Reyes both went missing while Pugh was out of jail on bond — between February 2006 and August 2006. In 2007, Pugh pleaded guilty to perjury for lying about sexually assaulting women while on duty. The next year, he was sentenced to 18 months for perjury. He was sued in two additional lawsuits by eight women claiming they also were sexually assaulted by him while he was an officer.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Pugh, 41, is incarcerated in Marianna, Florida, in a medium-security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp. His release date is listed as May 13, 2018. Shortly after Ms. Reyes' remains were identified through DNA testing in 2007, attorney Curtis Stuckey told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that he might have used Ms. Reyes as a witness in the civil trial, but he never had an opportunity to talk to her because she disappeared. "She had made an outcry" to law enforcement, like several other women, he said. Stuckey represented a 43-year-old Jacksonville woman who was raped and retaliated against by Pugh in a civil lawsuit against the former officer. Stuckey said he also would have been interested in talking to Ms. Coleman as a possible witness against Pugh if she had not disappeared.
San Augustine Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Gary Cunningham said Friday that at this point, law enforcement cannot connect Pugh to Ms. Coleman's disappearance and death, but officials are not ruling out any potential suspects. He said an active investigation is being continued by the San Augustine County Sheriff's Office, the Texas Rangers and the FBI. The San Augustine County Sheriff's Office, with assistance from the Angelina County Sheriff's Office, the Texas Rangers and the FBI, recovered the remains, which were examined by a forensic anthropologist at Sam Houston State University and then delivered to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, where DNA extracted from the remains were entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), officials said.
On Thursday, the San Augustine County Sheriff's Office and the Jacksonville Police Department were notified that the remains belonged to Ms. Coleman. The woman who won the civil lawsuit against Pugh in 2007 testified in federal court that she was walking one night in March 2005 when Pugh offered her a courtesy ride in his police car. Instead of taking her where she wanted to go, he took her to a dark, empty trailer house. "He raped me," she said crying. "I was too scared to do anything." She said Pugh drove her back to the neighborhood and dropped her off. In August 2006, after Pugh had been indicted on federal charges, the woman was again walking at night when a man in a van who was wearing sunglasses approached and offered her a ride. She said she recognized Pugh's voice and declined. As she walked away, Pugh got out of the vehicle and took his belt off. The two struggled and the victim tried to fight him, but he put his belt around her neck, she said. Pugh began dragging her toward his van and "by the grace of God," the belt snapped and she escaped. The woman admitted she had a criminal record and was fighting a crack addiction, she said. Pugh pleaded guilty to the charges but denied ever having sex with her or any of the other women.
Joe Evans, an investigator for the Cherokee County District Attorney's Office, testified at the time that the plaintiff was the first of many women who made outcries claiming they were sexually assaulted by Pugh. Evans said he talked to 25 to 30 witnesses, including women who claimed they had been raped by Pugh and people they had told, including ministers and police officers, who substantiated their claims. He said the witnesses were from Athens, Tyler and other areas. Evans said Pugh preyed on vulnerable women who lived on the street and had drug or legal problems. One-third of them had pending charges, one-third of them were on parole or probation and one-third of them had no criminal charges, he said.
