"SCHOOL TEACHER SEXUALLY CANNIBALIZES THEN MURDERS STUDENT"

Poughkeepsie Journal

Fentress Again Seeks Release from Mental Facility

By Larry Fisher-Hertz

Former Poughkeepsie school teacher Albert Fentress, who cannibalized and killed a teenager 25 years ago, is making another bid to be freed from a mental institution.

Fentress, 63, will seek his release from the Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center in Orange County at a hearing April 5 before state Supreme Court Judge James Catterson in Riverhead, Suffolk County. Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer are opposing Fentress' application.

''Albert Fentress was and still is mentally ill and a danger to the community,'' Grady said Thursday. ''We will make every effort to ensure his continued confinement in a secure facility.''

Senior Assistant District Attorney Edward McLoughlin, who will represent Dutchess County at next month's hearing, said he was confident Fentress would remain confined.

''We will produce evidence that will substantially prove Mr. Fentress should remain in a secure facility because he is still mentally ill,'' McLoughlin said.

Fentress was a history teacher at Poughkeepsie Middle School when he lured Paul Masters, 18, into the basement of his City of Poughkeepsie home on Aug. 20, 1979. Fentress sexually mutilated Masters, ate some of the body parts and shot him.

Fentress has been in mental hospitals since 1980, when he was judged legally insane when he committed the crime.

Fentress lived for many years at Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Suffolk County and had off-campus privileges at the unfenced facility. But in September 2002, two former Poughkeepsie residents testified Fentress had molested them when they were students at the middle school in spring and summer 1979 -- just before he killed Masters.

Moved to secure site

After hearing the men's testimony, Catterson ruled that since Fentress had never divulged those crimes to his therapists, he was dangerously mentally ill and belonged at a more secure facility. He was then moved to Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center in Goshen.

Next month's hearing will mark the fourth time in the last seven years attorneys from Mental Hygiene Legal Services have sought court approval to have Fentress released. A jury voted in Fentress' favor in 1999, but an appellate court upheld the presiding judge's decision to overrule the jury's verdict, keeping Fentress confined.

Fentress' attorney, Kim Darrow, declined Thursday to comment on the upcoming hearing.

If Catterson rules against Fentress following the hearing, Fentress has the right to another jury trial.

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