ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, May 16, 1996                 TAG: 9605160174
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER 

FUGITIVE BACK IN FLA. FOR TRIAL HIS INFANT SON DIED IN FRANKLIN COUNTY

Six years after he went into hiding in Franklin County, Jerry Griffis has been returned to Florida for sentencing on charges of sexually abusing a young boy.

Griffis was convicted in his absence of sexual abuse after he skipped his 1990 trial in Gainesville, Fla. He was arrested in February after doctors at a Roanoke hospital became suspicious about circumstances related to his infant son's death and called police.

After police learned of Griffis' record through a national computer database, he was arrested and held without bond in Roanoke as Franklin County authorities investigated the death of his 5-month-old son.

Police said at the time that the death seemed suspicious, but no one has been charged.

Griffis, 26, had been scheduled to appear in Roanoke General District Court Wednesday on a fugitive warrant. But the charge was dismissed because Griffis was recently sent back to Florida, Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell said.

He will face a maximum sentence of more than four life terms in prison when he is sentenced on six counts of sexually abusing a 5-year-old boy.

After becoming a fugitive in 1990, Griffis moved to Franklin County to find work and start a family. On the morning of Feb. 11, his wife called 911 from the family's residence in Henry to report that their son was not breathing. Cordell Adam Griffis died later that day at Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital after his parents decided to remove him from life support.

Autopsy results did not determine an exact cause of death.

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