By Kevin Fagan
San Francisco Chronicle
November 18, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/18/BAS3146FBF.DTL
A former Catholic priest convicted of sex crimes in Arizona was arrested Sunday as he left a church service in San Francisco, ending a two-year manhunt.
Wilputte Alanson "Lan" Sherwood, 63, allegedly violated his probation in the Phoenix area in 2005 by disappearing without telling officials where he was going. The U.S. Marshals service tracked him to San Francisco this fall, said a spokesman for the agency.
"We got a tip that he was hanging out in the Castro, and indications that he was still religious, so we started checking churches in the area," said Chris Hanson, deputy marshal in the San Francisco office.
Sunday morning, as Sherwood left the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church on Diamond Street, the tip paid off. Marshals arrested Sherwood without incident on the sidewalk, Hanson said.
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Sherwood is in custody awaiting extradition.
The ex-priest served time in an Arizona prison from 1993 to 2003 after being convicted of crimes including sexual conduct with a minor. Investigators said that while he was a priest during the 1980s and '90s in the Phoenix suburbs of Chandler and Buckeye, he kept a diary of 1,840 sexual encounters with men and boys, rating each partner on a scale of 1 to 10.
Hanson said investigators have no indication that Sherwood committed any crime in San Francisco, but he asked anyone with information about his time in the city to call the marshals office at (415) 436-7660.
E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.
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