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Sex offender found guilty

By Kati Burns
The Times-Journal

Published December 14, 2006

A sex offender illegally living in Alabama and once married to a DeKalb County assistant district attorney, pleaded guilty Monday in Baldwin County Circuit Court for failing to register as a criminal sex offender.

Vernon Lee Rogers, also known as Julian Jay Roseony, 37, was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday.

Rogers was pulled over during a routine traffic stop in DeKalb County on Nov. 8, 2005. Authorities then discovered, after an insurance check, he was a fugitive wanted in Illinois for failure to register his change of address as a sex offender.

Rogers had been convicted in Illinois in 1987 of aggravated criminal sexual abuse while using a weapon, and inflicting bodily harm on a female under the age of 15 and had served four years in prison. He was listed on the Illinois sex offender Web site.

According to a press release from Attorney General Troy King, authorities also learned Rogers had unlawfully moved to Alabama and had married Tanya Diane Hallford, a former assistant district attorney for DeKalb and Baldwin counties. He had lived in Baldwin County with Hallford, who was at that time an assistant district attorney, before moving to Fort Payne.

Hallford came under scrutiny at one point after evidence suggested she had illegally helped her husband alter his name, which should not have been possible for a convicted felon, from Rogers to Roseony, in order to help him escape detection. She resigned from her position as a special prosecutor for the district attorney’s office in Baldwin County not long after she was arrested in Fort Payne and charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive and concealing the identity of a sex offender. According to DeKalb District Attorney Mike O’Dell, all charges against Hallford were dropped.

The couple married in 2004 and lived in Foley. Rogers allegedly had his name changed just three months after their marriage. They moved to Fort Payne to open up an Italian restaurant, Wiseguys, in the city’s downtown area.

Having already served 402 days since his arrest, Rogers would become eligible to serve the balance of his sentence on probation only if he complies with all requirements of state laws for community notification and offender registration, including particularly that he would have to be released to a suitable address that is not within 2,000 feet of a school or child-care facility.

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