A convicted child rapist charged in three Missouri counties for having sex with the same underage victim in different locales waived his right to a preliminary hearing in Platte County Circuit Court last week.
Lonnie Stokes
Lonnie Stokes, 45, remains in custody at the Platte County Detention Center and faces a June 18 hearing on one felony count of statutory rape for allegedly having intercourse with a 10-year-old victim in 2010. He pleaded guilty to the same crime in Johnson County back in 2011 and received a sentence of 22 years in prison, and he faces six counts of statutory sodomy in Lafayette County, filed in 2012.
The charges in Platte County were also filed in 2011.
According to court documents, Stokes lived in Knob Noster, Mo. at the time of the crimes admitted to having sex with the victim first at her family’s residence in Concordia, Mo. and later at his home. He also admitted to having sex with her at Bristol Manor residential care facility in Weston, Mo. — where the victim was living with her mother and brother prior to the start of school that fall.
Stokes and the girl’s mother were dating at the time.
The victim’s mother reported the abuse to the Weston Police Department in late September of 2010, and a child advocate interview with the victim in November confirmed the allegations. According to a probable cause statement, the victim’s mother went to enroll her son in boy scouts on an unspecified day in 2010, leaving the victim alone with Stokes at Bristol Manor.
Stokes allegedly told the girl not wear underwear under her dress earlier in the day and took her into a storeroom to have sex after her mother left with her brother. He later admitted that he looked out a window in the room to assure they wouldn’t be caught in the act.
On Dec. 27, 2010, the Johnson County (Mo.) Sheriff’s Department along with detectives from the Platte County Sheriff’s Office and the Western Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force executed a search warrant on Stokes residence in Knob Noster and found him in his bedroom with a loaded rifle pointed at himself.
A struggle ensued, but he was unharmed and taken into custody.
At first, Stokes claimed in an interview he only described to the victim in graphic detail how to have sex and once found her in bed naked with a sex toy. He changed his story the next day in a separate interview without an attorney present and admitted to the various sexual encounters from the previous year.