Some at Stillwater, Minnesota Area High School had their doubts from the beginning.
Joshua Gardner was able to get inside the school on multiple occasions -- that is, until some student journalists uncovered his past.
At first, his interest in the school didn't seem terribly strange. He called himself a prospective student.
?He was pretty quiet,? sophomore Frank Carlson said. ?But he seemed to talk with a little bit of an accent.?
Caspian, as the visitor called himself, came to the school three times, according to a police report.
?I ended up hearing he was a duke from England (who) was visiting America,? sophomore Reid Gilbertson said.
The visitor told students his full name was Caspian James Crichton IV, and his royal title was the ?5th Duke of Cleveland.?
?I just thought he was kind of goofy and they didn't really like him that much, I guess,? Carlson said.
Gilbertson said some people thought the visitor was ?kind of a snob.?
At the school newspaper, they thought, if Caspian's story were true, it certainly would make an interesting feature.
But their research led them to a Web site called the ?Earl of Scooby,? where the ?duke? said his heritage was British and his goal for the year was ?to not make the front page of any paper.?
Then the young journalists found the visitor?s picture on another Web site: Florida's registry of sex offenders.
The 17-year-old duke turned out to be 22-year-old Joshua Gardner, of Austin, Minnesota.
He was convicted of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in Winona County in 2003. He was found guilty of coercing his young girlfriend to have sex with him in 2001.
At the high school, Principal Chris Lennox said there is no indication Gardner assaulted or seriously bothered anyone.
But Gardner was booked Monday at the Mower county jail on charges he violated probation. Specifically, he is said to have failed to register all of his changes of address; and he?s accused of failing to follow limitations placed on his Internet access, not getting counseling and having unsupervised contact with minors.
Still, Reid Gilbertson said, ?I didn't hear anything bad about him, aside from just his attitude.?
Gardner apparently had been living with another student -- someone whose name is not being released, because the student is a minor.
As of Wednesday night, Gardner had not formally been charged with anything.
But his probation officer is recommending that he go to prison for 21 months, which is the sentence that was stayed after his conviction back in 2003.
By Scott Goldberg, KARE 11 News
(Copyright 2006 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
