Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the kidnapping of Jimmy Ryce, the 9-year-old boy who was kidnapped and murdered in Miami-Dade.
Juan Carlos Chavez kidnapped Jimmy one block from his home in Redland on Sept. 11, 1995, ordering him at gunpoint into his truck. He drove him to his trailer, where he sexually battered him and held him captive for more than three and a half hours before he shot and killed the boy when he tried to escape.
Two days after the murder, Chavez dismembered the boy's body, filled three planters with his remains and sealed the planters with concrete. Jimmy's remains were found three months later near the home of Chavez, who confessed to the killing.
Jimmy's parents, Don and Claudine Ryce, turned the tragedy's pain into a push for stronger U.S. laws regarding confinement of sexual predators and improved police procedures in missing child cases. Their foundation provided hundreds of free canines to law enforcement agencies to aid in searches for children.
Jimmy's parents were fixtures on television in the weeks after he disappeared, and for years, the couple worked tirelessly to raise awareness about sexual predators and to pass laws to make children safer. Claudine Ryce died in 2009.
The case horrified the state and led to the passage of the Jimmy Ryce Act, which allows authorities to commit dangerous sexual predators to mental institutions once they have completed their prison terms. The law would not have stopped Chavez, however, as he had no previous record for sex crimes.
Chavez was convicted of first-degree murder, sexual battery on a person less than 12 years old and armed kidnapping in 1998. He was executed in February of last year.
