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Convicted child rapist who cut off ankle monitor caught

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By Shawn Nottingham

(CNN) — Fugitive Colorado sex offender, Eric Hartwell, who apparently cut off his ankle monitor and left a group home, has been apprehended in Norfolk, Virginia, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

A fugitive warrant was requested minutes after Hartwell, 51, walked away from “Independence House” in Denver a week ago.

Hartwell was convicted of raping a child in 1991 and of attempted indecent liberties in 1996, according to the Colorado sex offender registry.

He was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to serve a lifetime of supervised parole by a federal judge in Texas in March 2010 after he was found guilty of failing to register as a sex offender, according to a U.S. Justice Department news release.

Hartwell was placed in a halfway house in Washington state in March 2009 for failure to register as a sex offender, but after just a week there he cut off his leg monitor and fled to Texas, according to the Justice Department.

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