Sex Offender Donald Gerald Changes Plea to Guilty - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Creepy details are revealed in the case against a high risk sex offender accused of breaking into homes and peeking into windows to watch children sleep.

Donald Gerald pleaded guilty today to 12 crimes that involve home intrusions between July and November of 2011.

Donnell Preskey has the story.

He admits to going into homes at night and watching children sleep from their windows but Donald Gerald gives no explanation for his creepy behavior...

Gerald pleaded guilty to twelve felonies, all dealing with entering homes and window peeping.

In some of the cases, residents saw Gerald in their home -- some of them parents, some of them young kids...

Assistant Burleigh County State's Attorney, Pam Nesvig says, "a girl woke up to see man inside home watching her while she was in bed. He was five feet away from her. She screamed and her mother says she was hysterical after that incident. However, it was dismissed as a nightmare until the information came out on the defendant."

Nesvig went through each charge, all with similar but different stories.

Like an attempted burglary where Gerald tried to get into a tent where several girls were sleeping.

Nesvig says, "one of the girls awoke at 5:30 a.m. and saw a man at the window, he left and returned with a flashlight and started to unzip the tent."

A majority of the cases happened in northwest Bismarck.

Gerald was targeting homes with kids, in particular, young girls.

"His young daughter woke up screaming, she saw man looking into her bedroom window," says Nesvig.

Nesvig says GPS coordinates show he was at that home 36 times.

Gerald was wearing a GPS monitoring bracelet at the time.

He is a high risk sex offender who was on probation for similar crimes from 2002.

The GPS tracking helped link Gerald to numerous "home intrusion" cases investigators were trying to solve.

But the first break in the case came when Gerald left his shoes at a home...

"Encountered a man when he was walking into home, saw him and ran out. The suspect was barefoot and his shoes were found in bushes outside the home."

DNA from his tennies linked Gerald to the case.

Nesvig says, "he denied any wrong doing stated he was only in the neighborhood getting exercise and looking at wildlife."

Nesvig wants Gerald be considered a habitual offender.

That title would allow Judge Reich to double the time Gerald could serve for the crimes.

Gerald will have a psychological and sex offender evaluation before being sentenced.