Deputy arrests disbarred lawyer a decade after taking report in child-abuse case
A decade ago, a Missouri sheriff’s deputy took a report in a child-abuse case.
The suspect, attorney Laura Ann Sipes, was convicted of misdemeanor assault in the beating of her two sons, but disappeared before sentencing in the Lincoln County case, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (reg. req.).
Monday night, as deputy Shawn Bell was in the area on patrol, he noticed a car at the seemingly vacant home where Sipes used to live. “I thought ‘What are the chances that it could be her?’” said Bell, who took the initial report in the child-abuse case a few months after he started work for the sheriff’s department in 2004.
The man at the wheel of the vehicle, as Bell eventually learned, was Sipes’ husband. However, he told Bell he didn’t know whether Sipes still had any connection to the property and was just doing maintenance work there. A female passenger stared straight ahead and said she didn’t have any identification, the newspaper reports.
She gave Bell a fake social security number, he says, and that convinced him she was, in fact, Sipes. After he arrested her, her identity was confirmed.
Bell got a commendation for remembering the case and arresting Sipes, a decade after taking the report, the Post-Dispatch says. The 49-year-old, who was disbarred in 2007, had remarried and was living under an assumed name, according to police, and had inherited a substantial sum from her parents.
“It was one of the first child-abuse cases I worked,” Bell told the newspaper. “With me having two boys of my own, it just kind of hit home.”
Sipes is now being held in lieu of $2,000 bail. When she is sentenced she could get as much as one year in jail on each of the two misdemeanor assault convictions.
Update: Sipes was never charged with fleeing the jurisdiction. Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney Michael Wood told the ABA Journal that it was unclear from a judge’s order whether she was sentenced to only a $500 fine, or a fine along with a 14-day jail term. In any event, Wood considered the sentence served because of time Sipes had already spent in jail.
Story updated on Dec. 17, 2019, to report on sentencing.
