An upstate New York convicted killer and rapist was busted early for skipping parole a second time — after spending nearly a week on the run before cops even knew about it, officials said
Edward Kindt, 40, who became a symbol of the Empire State’s soft-on-crime justice system when he was paroled last year in the gruesome 1999 slaying of 39-year-old mom Penny Brown on Mother’s Day, was picked up shortly before 2 a.m. Wednesday in the same upstate town where he killed the helpless victim.
Furious Albany lawmakers said they were enraged that the local sheriff wasn’t told he was on the lam.
“We are outraged that our community was put at risk by the Division of Parole’s failure to notify authorities in Cattaraugus County that Edward Kindt had escaped until six long days had passed,” state Sen. George Borrello said in a scathing press release Wednesday.
“The pro-criminal policies of the [Gov Kathy] Hochul administration adn the Democratic majorities continue to put New Yorkers at risk,” Borrello, an upstate Republican, said in a statement.
State Assemblyman Joseph Giglio called the parole fiasco “completely unacceptable” and “further proof that granting killers like Kindt parole doesn’t work.”
Hochul’s office and the Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Post on Wednesday.
Kindt, a member of the Seneca tribe, was just 15 when he accosted Brown, a nurse, on Mother’s Day in 1999 as she jogged in upstate Salamanca — then raped her and strangled her to death.
He was convicted and sentenced to nine years to life in prison — at that time the maximum sentence alowed by law for a defendant 16 or younger.
He served 24 years until March 2023, when he was released from the Elmira Correctional Facility. State parole officials had made the controversial decision to release him from state prison despite outcries from Brown’s family and victims rights advocates.
It didn’t take him long to violate parole, and he was picked up in November and locked up at the Dutchess County Jail until Dec. 15, when he was released back into transitional housing.
But he fled the home and missed a parole meeting on Tuesday and was picked up early Wednesday morning in Salamanca — despite being banned by the Seneca Nation there, WIVB-TV reported.
