Jessica Morris has worked at the Virginia Inn Motel in Lawrence for a year but never knew a convicted sex offender was living there in a room only about 150 feet away.

“It doesn’t bother me as long as he doesn’t bother me,” the 21-year-old Kansas University junior from St. Francis said about Warnie Allen Butler, 27, who was convicted of attempted aggravated indecent liberties with a child.

Others might not be so blase about neighbors who have histories of sex crimes.

Kansas is trying to make it easier for those people to find out if they live or work near a registered offender.

Wednesday, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation announced the addition of an interactive map to the registered offender list on its Web site. The feature allows Web surfers to call up a map of any city or county in Kansas, and the map marks with a red dot where each offender is reported to be living.

“It’s easier sometimes to gather visual information,” KBI spokesman Kyle Smith said. “There are a number of ways people can take advantage of this.”

For example, Kansans can check to see if they have an offender living in their neighborhood or they can see if an offender lives near a school or along a route their children take to school, Smith said.

The registered offender list was opened to the public via the Internet in 1999. Though many of the listed offenders are convicted sex criminals, Kansas law also requires those convicted of some other crimes, such as murder or manslaughter, to be registered as well.

Wally Ballou, project manager for the Access Kansas Web site, displays a new Internet database of state sex offenders. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday unveiled the site, which displays maps of cities and counties designating where registered sex offenders live.

Visitors to the Web site can search the offender list by name, city, county or ZIP code. They also can find out if someone who is supposed to be registered has absconded.

More than 2,600 offenders are listed, Smith said; 42 of them claim Douglas County addresses.

Each offender’s photograph, along with information such as name, crime for which they were convicted, address and a date the last time the address was verified, is shown.

Letters requesting that offenders return verification of their address are sent every 90 days to those on the list, Smith said. It is up to local law enforcement agencies to check on those who do not respond. There are 36 offenders statewide listed as absconders, but another 300 are still in the process of being verified.

The map system was designed and developed by the Data Access Support Center of the Kansas Geological Survey at Kansas University. The state of Kansas’ Geographical Information Policy Board and the Kansas Information Technology Office sponsor the center.

Morris said she would check the offender list and the map locator to see if she was living near a convict “especially if I had children.”

¢ 6News video: KBI announces online sex offender database¢Find details of registered offenders by name, city, county, ZIP code¢For details about the Kansas Offender Registration Act, go to

So would Kacia Beugelsdijk. The 22-year-old Lawrence woman only recently learned she was living a few doors away from Ray Charles Atkins, 31, 1032 Tenn., who was convicted of attempted aggravated sexual battery. Beugelsdijk said she found out when someone told her.

Beugelsdijk said she thought checking the offender list and maps was a good idea. But finding out that an offender lived in a certain neighborhood wouldn’t be a determining factor in whether she would live there, she said.

“I would want it for my own knowledge and if I had children,” she said. “I feel pretty safe in Lawrence, and I would hope the neighbors would help protect each other.”

Jessica Morris, a Kansas University junior from St. Francis, works the counter at the Virginia Inn, 2907 W. Sixth St. Morris said that she was not concerned about a registered sex offender who is currently living at the motel.