Selected Clip

A GPS ankle monitor was supposed to keep her killer away. Why did the system fail?

Jan. 25, 2024

GREENVILLE — Before authorities said he killed both his longtime partner and his mother, a man facing domestic violence charges was released from jail with an ankle monitor.

The conditions were specific: no contact with his partner and GPS "exclusionary" boundaries surrounding her home.

Yet, the Greenville County Sheriff's Office said Gary Pratt Whitten was at the woman's home for several hours before they received a call from Sentinel Offender Services, the private company that monitors the county's ankle monitors and has steadily been taking over running the system from the county in recent years.

Why weren't they alerted? The answer is unclear.

By the time deputies did get a call from Sentinel — which declined a Post and Courier request to comment — it was to say the man had taken off the device.

Thirty seconds later, a house fire was called in, which turned out to be a cover-up.

When the fire department arrived to extinguish what seemed like a typical fire, investigators discovered two women dead inside the home.

Over a few short hours Jan. 17, authorities said they discovered the fire was started by the 36-year-old Whitten. Whitten was trying to mask the killing of his partner, 55-year-old Anissa Henderson, and his mother, 56-year-old Kelli Whitten.

Deputies with the Greenville and Spartanburg county sheriff's offices, joined by local police, tracked down Whitten to a house in Landrum, a small town near the North Carolina border. After coming outside with a gun, deputies say they opened fire, and Whitten died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Henderson's home surrounded by GPS boundaries

Whitten's ankle monitor was found outside of Henderson's Greenville home near Paris Mountain State Park. He took off the device moments before leaving the scene in a stolen pickup truck, authorities said.

A month earlier, Whitten was charged with domestic violence and other gun charges after deputies said he pointed a gun at Henderson and threatened to kill her.

They had lived together in an intimate relationship for 10 years, arrest warrants show.

Whitten was released on bond on Jan. 12, and the night of Jan. 16, he went to Henderson's house, which was surrounded by GPS-defined boundaries intended to notify authorities if Whitten came near, according to the Greenville County Sheriff's Office.

A week after the killings, the front door of Henderson's house was displaced and loose on the hinges with scuff marks surrounding the handles. The sheriff's office did not say whether Henderson was under duress when Whitten came to her home the night before her death, citing the ongoing investigation.

It's unclear why Sentinel didn't contact deputies when Whitten entered the exclusionary zones.

Sentinel declined several requests for comment, citing the "active ongoing investigation."

On Sentinel's website, the company said that their highly accurate technology provides around-the-clock tracking of offenders' locations through its national monitoring center.

"Based on a predetermined protocol with the agency, officers are notified when a violation has occurred," Sentinel says on its website.

Lt. Ryan Flood with the Greenville sheriff's office said the bond court and the jail oversee ankle monitors. Deputies are only sent out to do a welfare check if Sentinel calls them and asks, Flood said.

Chief Magistrate Letonya Simmons said that while the bond court issues the order for monitoring as a condition of a person's bond, they do not get involved in any way with the process. Instead, the county jail takes the order and works with Sentinel to get monitoring set up, Simmons said.

Greenville County spokesman Bob Mihalic declined a Post and Courier request to explain what kind of protocol the county has with Sentinel for when to call deputies.

Months after bond reform law, Greenville and Spartanburg sheriffs ask for more

In June, South Carolina lawmakers passed bond reform to regulate the growing private ankle monitoring industry and clamp down on repeat offenders committing crimes while out on bail.

The State Law Enforcement Division was given regulatory authority over the industry, responsible for enforcing a mandate that all monitoring companies seek SLED certification and that they report bond violations to authorities.

SLED implemented standards based off the law and began to take applications for companies to become certified in November. Among other things, companies are required at all times to be able to verify someone's location, according to the standards.

Approved companies must also "immediately notify local law enforcement" and make "reasonable attempts" to notify the victim if exclusion zones are violated, standards show.

However, the county's most recent contract with Sentinel was struck in 2020, before the bond reform law was passed.

"The monitoring company should notify law enforcement if someone violates a condition of bond," state Rep. Jason Elliott, R-Greenville, told The Post and Courier. "If that's not in the agreement, it should be."

Elliott said he is open to revisiting the bond reform law if it was not specific enough on when monitoring companies should inform law enforcement.

"There must be safeguards in place that alert the victim and law enforcement," Elliott said.

The California company has handled all electronic house-arrest monitoring and inmate supervision services for the county for more than 10 years, according to the contract.

The Greenville County Detention Center used to be fully involved with the monitoring of those released on bond, but it has been gradually handing over the reins to Sentinel in recent months, Simmons said.

By February, the private company is expected to have complete control over the process.

Speaking at the scene in Landrum the day of the shootings, WYFF4 reported that Greenville Sheriff Hobart Lewis blamed the outcome on the current state of the bond system in South Carolina.

"This guy should not be out here. He's a menace to the public," Lewis said, according to WYFF4. "He's just murdered two people, could've murdered more people all because our system is in the situation it's in."

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright called on lawmakers to make changes to how monitoring works in the state.

"Not only the victims could possibly be alive, but our deputies wouldn't have to be going through this mess they're going through," Wright said, according to WYFF4.