Man charged with child sex crime had alligator in his Jasper Co. home, police say
A police investigation into a Jasper County man led to his arrest on several child sex crime charges — and the discovery of an illegally kept alligator in his home, according to sheriff’s deputies.
James Allen Beckett, 64, of Ridgeland, was charged Thursday with five counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and two counts of first-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said.
As police executed a search warrant on Beckett’s home on Thursday, they “discovered an alligator that was being kept illegally,” according to a sheriff’s office press release. Deputies contacted the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and a wildlife officer helped to safely remove the alligator, which was about 2 feet long, DNR spokesperson Cheyenne Twilley said. Bennett, who had allegedly picked up the animal from the side of the road, was charged by DNR with unlawful possession of an alligator and unlawfully feeding, enticing or molesting an alligator, both misdemeanors.
The alligator was safely released back into the wild at one of DNR’s nature preserves, Twilley said.
Beckett was denied bond at a Friday morning hearing and remained in custody at the Jasper County Detention Center, court records show.
Child sex crime allegations
According to the South Carolina statutes he was charged under, Beckett is accused of sexually abusing a child under 11 years old, or a victim under 16 if the suspect had been previously convicted of a sex crime. He is also accused of coercing a minor “to appear in a state of sexually explicit nudity” for child sexual abuse material or another purpose, according to state statutes.
Additional charges against Beckett are pending, including charges related to the alligator that could potentially be brought forward by wildlife officers, the sheriff’s office said. Keeping an alligator as a pet is illegal, according to the DNR, which strictly regulates permits allowing the apex predators to be kept in captivity for breeding and other commercial uses.
Beckett did not appear in a Friday morning search of the state’s sex offender registry, which includes residents previously convicted of sex crimes. A search of online court records in Pennsylvania, where he lived before registering a Ridgeland address around 1998, public records show, did not reveal any past convictions under his name.
Christian Felt, a spokesperson for the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office, declined to release additional details about the sex crime investigation Friday morning, including when the alleged sexual assault occurred and what else deputies found in the search of Beckett’s home.
Beckett’s home is located off S.C. 462 (Coosaw Scenic Drive) outside Ridgeland’s northeastern town limits, according to a public records search.
Dozens of snakes seized in Ridgeland
This was not Jasper County police’s first encounter with improperly housed reptiles in recent months.
In November, deputies seized 52 snakes being kept in compact storage bins in a Ridgeland workplace, saying the animals had been part of an abandoned breeding operation. Officials said the snakes ranged from 3 to 8 feet and did not have proper ventilation inside the small boxes, some of which held up to six of the reptiles.
Police initially planned to arrest the snakes’ owner for alleged animal abandonment, but the suspect avoided the charge by attending court and forfeiting custody of the animals, according to Felt.
In a later update, Jasper County police said the snakes would not be put up for adoption but would be “safely housed at a designated sanctuary.”
