Missing Sex Offender Found in Canton 

North Country Residents React

A convicted sex offender from Oklahoma was arrested in Canton last week, 13 years after he faked his own abduction. The man, Anthony Lennon, was apprehended by U.S. Marshals deputies in the local Price Chopper parking lot after their office received an anonymous tip. Although Lennon was operating under the alias of Justin Phillips and had obtained a New York State ID and a false birth certificate, police were able to identify and detain him after scanning his fingerprints. 

Lennon worked the front desk of the Canton Holiday Inn Express and had been enrolled as an engineering student at SUNY Canton since 2024. However, law enforcement is still unsure how long he has been living in the North Country. 

In 2008, Lennon was convicted of five counts of possession of child abuse pornography in Moore, Oklahoma, and later charged with eight more counts in 2012. In March of 2012, shortly after the second round of charges, Lennon staged an elaborate robbery and abduction scene at the hotel where he worked at the time, and promptly disappeared. Although the U.S. Marshals Service concluded during their investigation that the scene was suspicious and Lennon himself had emptied his bank accounts before going on the run, it still took them more than a decade to find him. “Many, many individual deputy U.S. Marshals worked on this case for various sitings, various leads, made trips to Nevada, Texas, Tennessee chasing leads on him,” Johnny Kuhlman, U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Oklahoma, told Channel 7 News in Watertown on Monday. 

Although the impacts of Lennon’s presence in St. Lawrence County are still unknown, Canton Mayor Michael Dalton commented on the case on Channel 7 News, saying, “People have had contact with him in our community. There’s no doubt he’s been here for whatever length of time. There are people in our community at times that are questionable, and that’s what good police work does: find these things.” 

As of Tuesday, Lennon was in custody in Syracuse, NY, and law enforcement authorities are seeking to return him to Oklahoma to face his charges. In the meantime, they are encouraging anyone who knows Lennon or believes they may be a victim of him to reach out to Deputy Kuhlman or the New York State Police, who are leading the local investigation.