US sex offender poses as school boy

A convicted sex offender (29) shaved his body hair and covered his stubble with make-up to pose as a 12-year-old boy and go to…

A convicted sex offender (29) shaved his body hair and covered his stubble with make-up to pose as a 12-year-old boy and go to school in the United States.

Authorities claim Neil Havens Rodreick II - who is five feet, eight inches in height, and weighs eight and a half stone - adopted the name Casey Price and spent four months at the Imagine School in Phoenix, Arizona, last year before he was thrown out for poor attendance.

He allegedly pretended to be a youth for nearly two years, even convincing two men who had been looking for boys on the internet that he was a minor and getting them to pretend to be his relatives.

Authorities claim that after leading Lonnie Stiffler (61) and Robert Snow (43) to believe he was a youth, he talked them into taking him to live with them in Arizona, according to the New York Times.

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Stiffler reportedly posed as his grandfather and Snow as his uncle. Both are said to have regularly had sex with him, and investigators believe another man who was living in the house, a Brian Nellis (34) who Rodreick met in prison, aided him in the ruse.

Neighbours in the suburb where they lived said "Casey" built the occasional skateboard ramp and did wheelies on his bike down the streets.

At school he was seen as a shy, average student who handed in his homework but did not stay for activities after classes ended.

He was caught earlier this month when he went to a school in Chino Valley, Arizona, for a day, and teachers got suspicious. Investigators said he also went to lessons in another town in the state, Payson, for a few weeks in 2005.

Parents, pupils and teachers at all the schools are being interviewed, but so far no youngsters have accused Rodreick of molesting them.

He spent seven years in prison after being being convicted in 1996 of lewdly propositioning a six-year-old boy in Oklahoma.

Rodreick is also accused of assault against a girl, although investigators have refused to release details of the allegation and will not say whether he met her through the school scam.