School Worker Emails News Stations Confessing To Killing Of Pedophile He Found While Apartment Hunting

A public school worker has been arrested for homicide, one day after news stations received an anonymous email confessing to the murder of a convicted pedophile.

James Fairbanks, 43, was booked by Omaha Police on Tuesday, three days after the body of Mattieo Condoluci was found shot dead.

Investigators have yet to confirm if Fairbanks was the one who sent the email from "Stop Predators", which opened: "Dear Media, I am writing this email to let you know that I killed Matteio Condoluci."

According to KETV, one of the stations that received the email, the anonymous sender claimed they were looking for an apartment in the area, and came across Condoluci on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry.

The author claimed they saw Condoluci standing in his driveway pretending to wash his truck, while staring at a group of children playing in the street, saying it made him feel "sick to his stomach".

"Having had my own experience with these type of predators I knw the damage he would do to those kids," the email read. (sic)

"I've worked with kids for years who have been victimized and I couldnt in good conscience allow him to do it to anyone else while I had the means to stop him".

"I know in this messed up judicial system that means I will face far more severe punishment for stopping him then he did for raping KIDS. But I could no longer do nothing."

Omaha Scanner, a Facebook group which monitors crime in the area, posted screengrabs of Fairbanks' confession, which he also appeared to have posted to Facebook:

According to KETV, Condoluci was convicted in Sarpy County 13 years ago of sexual assault of a child.

He was sentenced to five years for raping a 13-year-old girl, but was released after 2.5 years for good behavior.

Fairbanks' ex-wife Kelly Tamayo told the KETV that he had called her to tell her he had killed Condoluci, and that he had sent the email.

"Jim called me to tell me what had happened and that he was turning himself in. He just wanted to make clear that I would, you know, take care of the kids," she said.

The news of the killing came as a shock to the whole family; while they divorced in 2016, she said he was a good co-parent and caring father; indeed court records show Fairbanks has no history of violent crime.

She said that while he never hinted at his intentions, his previous work with victims of child sex abuse may have influenced him.

"I could only say, I think he reflected on his experiences working with them as just bothersome and upsetting because they are repeat offenders. We know them to be people who repeatedly act out their intent or they act on their wishes that are to harm children, so I think that he had mixed feelings of great sadness for the victims and frustrations certainly with those kind of people," she said.

"He was just by nature somebody who wanted to look out for others and really protect the most vulnerable people."

Meanwhile, the mother of another of Condoluci's victims, Laura Smith, celebrated his death on Facebook and announced her support for Fairbanks, the Omaha World Herald reported.

She set up a Facebook group to warn mothers against Condoluci, who molested her 5-year-old son in 1994. He pleaded no contest to attempted lewd and lascivious assault, after he touched her son's penis and had the boy touch his, and was sentenced to four years probation.

Smith agreed to the plea deal at the time to avoid having her son testify.

On Tuesday she changed the name of the Facebook group to "Free James Fairbanks", pledging to raise money for his defense and fund his jail commissary.

"Flush that POS remains down the toilet and save the tax payers money,” she wrote the day after Condoluci's body was discovered. "Justice served!"

Smith's son died in May 2017 of a drug overdose, which his mother attributes to the sexual abuse.

"What happened happened!" she wrote on Tuesday. "I do not believe James was acting as a vigilante. I believe he had seen enough of the wreckage sexual abuse causes and may have felt helpless and snapped when he saw what he saw. He is as much a victim as my son and the other children."

Meanwhile, KETV tracked down Condoluci's son Joseph, who insisted he didn't deserve to die.

"I thought it was all a dream, I couldn't believe this happened," he said. "All these years he has lived here and all of sudden, out of the blue someone comes up and does something like that."

"He was just laying there, dead, The door was wide open, my dad was just laying there."

"The guy didn't know my dad. He didn't know anything about him all, he knew was stuff that he's seen online," Joseph added.

He claimed that after his father had been released from prison he became minister, adding that his past doesn't dictate who he was at the time of his death.

"It was hard to be around him, with the accusations and what he did he's a grown man," he said. "He should be accountable for the things he did, yes, but at the same time was this the right way for him to go? I don't believe so."

Fairbanks has worked as a paraprofessional with the Omaha School District since 2016; he has since been placed on administrative leave.

Got a story or a tip for us? Email TooFab editors at tips@toofab.com.