'Peanut Butter Bandit' Charged with Child Porn Possession

A Tolland man with a violent criminal history and known as the "Peanut Butter Bandit" faces child pornography charges after what Connecticut State Police are calling an "arrest warrant sweep" that included 18 arrests statewide.

Frederick Merrill, 67, of Merrow Road was charged with first-degree possession of child pornography, fifth-degree larceny, and violation of state sex offender registration law. His bond was initially set at $125,000.

Merrill appeared Thursday in state Superior Court in Rockville, where his bond was lowered to $99,000. He is scheduled for a second court appearance on April 25.

He had been arrested last August during a sex offender compliance check and has been in jail ever since. 

It is unclear what connection, if any, the other 17 arrests had to do with Merrill's charges.

According to a Hartford Courant report, citing an arrest warrant, Merrill had on a laptop 357 still images of child pornography, including images of children between the ages of 3 and 12 years old engaged in various sexual activity. 

The Courant reported that, according to police: Search terms in the computer's web browsers included "rape," various terms related to child pornography; a 27-inch machete and a 5-inch long hunting knife were also hidden in the camper Merrill was living in on his sister's property; the laptop itself had been stolen in March 2013 from a 21-year-old UConn student in Mansfield.

Merrill, who escaped from prison on several occasions, moved into his sister’s house at 528 Merrow Rd. 

Over the course of his criminal career (as Tolland Patch previously reported), Merrill committed several violent sexual assaults, kidnapping, assaults on police officers and burglaries in Tolland, South Windsor and Enfield, according to the state Department of Corrections. 

For the first two decades, from 1967-87, Merrill escaped from Connecticut and Canadian prisons, only to be captured again and charged with additional offenses according to the DOC and the Hartford Courant.

In one infamous incident, Merrill 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 "Peanut Butter Bandit" nickname.

On Thursday, March 27, detectives from the Connecticut State Police Computer Crimes Unit, assisted by members of the State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations and Sex Offenders Unit, conducted an arrest warrant sweep across the state. 

"After several lengthy and thorough investigations, 18 people from across the state were arrested," state police said in a press release. The State Police Computer Crimes Investigations Unit is also the command for Connecticut’s Internet Crimes Against Children’s Task Force.

Between his release from the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institute in Suffield on Oct. 5, 2012 and moving to Merrow Road, Merrill had been living at The Eddy Center in Middletown, a residential treatment facility.