Arizona parents ask children about man who passed himself off as 12-year-old

SURPRISE, Ariz. — Experts on child exploitation are all too familiar with sex offenders working as Scout leaders, coaches and teachers, but this was a new one — a boyish-looking man who posed as a 12-year-old and enrolled in school in what may have been a scheme to find kids to molest.

Now parents in this Phoenix suburb where 29-year-old Neil Havens Rodreick II attended a charter school for four months are asking their children if they had any contact with this "classmate."

And police are interviewing parents, students and teachers, and checking at least three other Arizona schools where Rodreick, a convicted sex offender from Oklahoma, also enrolled.

Rodreick — who is about 5 feet 6 and 120 pounds, and who shaved his body hair and used makeup in an attempt to cover his stubble — has been charged with forgery and fraud in the school-enrollment con, as well as assault against a girl. Investigators have refused to release details of that crime and will not say whether he met the girl through the school scam.

Officials also said Thursday that a search of the home where he was staying yielded a video of Rodreick engaging in sex acts with an unidentified child.

Using the name Casey Price, Rodreick attended the Imagine School from August to November as a seventh-grader before being thrown out for poor attendance. Investigators said he was caught when he attended school for a day last week in Chino Valley, about 90 miles from Phoenix.

On Jan. 9, Rodreick enrolled as Casey Price at YCFA Achieve Academy, a charter school in Prescott Valley, about 75 miles from Phoenix, said Amy Rezzonico, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Education. It was unclear whether he attended school there, and officials at the school declined to comment Thursday.

Rodreick also was enrolled at a charter school as a seventh-grader named Casey Rodreick for a few weeks in 2005 in Payson, about 65 miles from Phoenix.

Detective George Ratliff of the Gila County Sheriff's Office said there is no evidence any children at the Payson school were victimized.

Kenneth Lanning, who helped investigate child sex crimes as an agent with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit for 30 years, said he has never heard of an adult successfully pretending to be a child so young and enrolling in school.

Rodreick, who is in jail, declined a request for an interview.

In 1996, he was convicted in Oklahoma of lewdly propositioning a 6-year-old boy. He served about six years in prison.

Rhonda Cagle, a spokeswoman for the Imagine School, said no students have come forward to accuse Rodreick of molesting them.

"This individual stood out in our pickup line every day right with all of our other students. Parents walked by, students walk by, staff walked by," she said. "There was no questions or concerns by anybody that were ever raised with our administration team here in regards to this individual, so I would certainly say he blended in quite well."

The school did not realize it had been conned until Rodreick was arrested at the Chino Valley school.