By Christine Dempsey
The Hartford Courant
TOLLAND — A career criminal dubbed the “Peanut Butter Bandit” is back in jail, this time because of a parole violation, a state prison official said Wednesday.
Frederick Merrill, 66, was taken into custody Aug. 26 and remanded to prison because he used the Internet, said Karen Martucci, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction. One of the conditions of his release is that he not use a computer, she said.
He was in custody without bail at the Hartford Correctional Center. A parole hearing will be scheduled, Martucci said.
Merrill has been living with his sister at 528 Merrow Road in Tolland since February, when he left a Middletown halfway house. He was released from prison in October after getting approval from the board of pardons and parole the previous June.
When he appeared before the board in June 2012, Merrill said he was sickly and didn’t think he had more than a few years left. He has shunts in his heart, Crohn’s disease, diabetes and hepatitis C, he said.
Merrill’s criminal career spanned 40 years and began shortly after his high school graduation. On Christmas Day 1967, he escaped custody for the first time by placing a dummy on his bed at the state prison farm in Enfield.
He climbed a fence and fled to his mother’s house in Tolland, where state police were waiting. He was shot when he tried to slash one of the troopers — and has a scar on his abdomen from the bullet wound, according to his state sex offender profile. He also has a tattoo of the word “Mom” with a heart on his left shoulder.
While incarcerated in 1968, Merrill’s mother, Gladys, brought him a container of peanut butter that contained a small gun, money and a handcuff key — hence the nickname “Peanut Butter Bandit.” On his way to court he drew the gun on guards, handcuffed them and commandeered a vehicle, but was stopped at a police roadblock.
A month after being released from prison in 1987, Merrill was arrested and charged with breaking into a South Windsor home and beating and raping a woman. While awaiting trial, he escaped by scaling a prison wall by using hooks made from bedsprings.
He fled to Canada, where he was arrested in 1988 and charged with raping a 15-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty but escaped a Toronto jail by sliding down a 60-foot drainpipe. He was caught and began serving a 12-year sentence in Canada in 1989.
Merrill returned to Connecticut in 2002 and pleaded guilty to the South Windsor rape and escape.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and became eligible for parole after serving 50 percent of his sentence because his conviction predated a 1996 change requiring violent offenders to serve 85 percent of their terms.