TEXARKANA, Texas–A man who was convicted of kidnapping a 12-year-old Texarkana girl in 1994 and taking her across state lines where he and a co-defendant sexually assaulted her is facing a new charge of failing to register as a sex offender.
Timothy Earl Norris, 57, was sentenced to more than 26 years in prison by a federal judge after a jury found him and co-defendant Robert Carroll Osborne guilty of kidnapping and use of a firearm during a kidnapping. The men had convinced the girl, who was related to one of them by marriage, to get into their car under false pretenses and then showed her a firearm when she asked to go home, according to a U.S. Fifth Circuit opinion issued in 1995 upholding the convictions.
The girl was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Norris and Osborne in Texas and Arkansas. After the men wrecked their car in Arkansas, a police officer took the girl into protective custody and Norris and Osborne were arrested.
According to Texas sex offender registry records, Norris has been deemed an absconder, meaning he had not renewed his registration as required. Records show Norris last registered in Dallas County in June of 2021 and that his status was changed in February 2024.
Norris was released from federal prison on the kidnapping charge in 2017 and began serving a five-year term of supervised release. In August of 2018, his supervised release was revoked for marijuana and alcohol use during the term of supervision, failing to participate in a sex offender treatment program, and being unsuccessfully discharged from a residential reentry center after absconding supervision.
He was subsequently sentenced to five months imprisonment, followed by a four-year term of supervised release.
In 2019, the government moved to revoke Norris’ supervised release a second time for failing to abstain from alcohol and failing to complete treatment programs. He was sentenced in December 2019 to an additional five months in prison with another four-year term of supervised release to follow his incarceration.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Texas have filed to revoke Norris’ supervised release again and he was arrested Sept. 24, court records show. A final hearing on the government’s motion to return Norris to prison for violating his supervised release is scheduled for later this month.
Norris has also been charged in an indictment issued Wednesday with failing to register as a sex offender from July 2022 until his arrest last month. If convicted, Norris faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
