MEMPHIS, Tenn. — He committed sexual battery against an 84-year-old woman in a Florida nursing home. Now he’s wanted in Memphis after a woman says he stood outside her window and touched himself.
“I was cleaning up around the house, because I had company coming in town the next day,” that woman told WREG Investigators.
She didn’t want her identity known, but wanted her story told. It was June 24, around 11 p.m.
“I had children upstairs that were asleep,” she said. “I was walking by the window.”
It was the window where she had just taken her blinds down.
“I had someone coming the next day that was going to help me with the blind replacement, so the reason that I note this was that the window had just become open around like 3:30 or 4:00 that day,” she said.
On the other side of that window, she saw something that cannot be unseen.
“I had to kind of like stop and process it, that I was looking at someone outside my window,” she said. “Their pants were down. He was engaging in what I would describe as a sexual act.”
She said she was in shock.
“Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? Having to almost process that I was looking at someone face to face outside my window doing this. Then I screamed.”
He ran off. Police arrived minutes later to her home near downtown Memphis. She asked us not to give her address for safety reasons.
“I’m one of the only people who saw him face to face,” she said.
She learned others in her neighborhood only saw him on camera.
‘An unidentified individual repeatedly entering private property’
A neighbor shared her security footage and explained the same man was spotted four different times between December and January lurking outside her home and even looking into windows.
“After the third occurrence, the police were called. Upon arrival, officers conducted a brief search and dismissed the activity as likely a neighbor being dropped off and cutting through the property,” she said off-camera.
She submitted a request for directed patrol, but she said she never saw any increase in patrol activity.
“The situation escalated on the fourth occurrence when the suspect returned earlier in the evening,” she said. “This time, surveillance clearly captured the individual’s face and documented him looking through multiple windows for an extended period.”
She said she talked to neighbors who had lived in the area for years, and “a visual comparison revealed a match to a man previously arrested” for a similar situation in the same area.
‘I started to see all of that, and it was definitely the same person’
“It was definitely the same person,” said the woman who saw the man in her window in June.
Both women said while Memphis police responded to their initial calls, they both had to follow up with detectives to get a report filed and a warrant issued.
The woman who shared the footage said a warrant was issued in her case for Carl Allen on January 31 for stalking.
The woman who saw that man outside her window said police issued a warrant for indecent exposure June 30 for Artie Perkins.
Both men have the same address and birthday listed on the warrant.
According to court records we found, they’re the same person.
History of arrests date back to 1981
Court records state Artie Perkins entered an Alford plea in Florida in 1995 for entering a “nursing home through a window.” He “lifted an eighty-four-year-old resident’s night gown” and “did commit the crime of sexual battery against her.”
He is still on the Florida Sex Offender Registry and is listed as a sexual predator. It also states he moved to Memphis after serving time.
A Tennessee Bureau of Investigation background check shows Perkins also went by Carl Allen and many other names when he moved here.
It also lists 15 pages worth of arrests dating back to 1981. One of those arrests include an incident in Germantown.
In WREG’s archives, we discovered we spoke to Carol Smith in 2006 after she said she saw a man peeping into her apartment.
“I was right inside on the couch watching TV,” she said. “He very slowly got up and climbed over the railing.”
Germantown Police arrested Allen and said they connected him to another peeping tom incident in that same complex. They also said Allen had 33 aliases, four different social security numbers, seven birth dates and two Tennessee driver’s licenses.
WREG spoke to Allen after the arrest. He told our crews none of that was true.
“I’m looking you in the eyes and saying I didn’t do it,” he said.
Allen also denied secretly video taping women in university dorm rooms, despite pleading guilty the year before.
“If I was the kind of person people had to be afraid of, I don’t think I could safely walk the street myself,” Allen said.
In 2009, Allen made our headlines again.
“He goes by Carl Allen or Artie Perkins or even Carl Perkins. Police suspect he’s been peeping into homes on Mud Island where folks are relieved by his arrest,” our reporter said in the report.
The affidavit states MPD even got the chopper out to catch Allen. He was charged with violating the Sex Offender Registry act, but it was later thrown out.
Why he’s longer listed on TN’s Sex Offender Registry
A Tennessee law passed in 2004 started requiring sex offenders be divided into two categories: sexual offenders and violent sexual offenders.
Court records state it wasn’t until 2009, “an unidentified registering agency reclassified him as violent.” That means he was subject to quarterly reporting.
A grand jury indicted him two times for not obeying those quarterly reports. Allen argued against that new classification. It also wasn’t clear he was notified.
In 2012, a criminal court judge sided with him and claimed the Alford Plea he entered in Florida didn’t amount to being violent. Prosecutors didn’t appeal. Therefore, it became final thirty days after entry.
In 2014, Allen asked the TBI to remove him from the sex offender registry, since non-violent offenders can be cleared after 10 years.
TBI wouldn’t do it. They say they reviewed the Florida files and reclassified Allen again as violent.
Allen took his case all the way to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which ultimately took his side.
This 2020 opinion concluded in part, the law “provides very little guidance” when it comes to classifying someone convicted of sexual offenses in other jurisdictions or the entity responsible for making that determination.
It went on to state, “The State here filed neither a timely appeal nor any motion in the criminal court that would have tolled the time for filing an appeal, so the February 3, 2012 order became final thirty days after its entry.”
While the TBI argued that the criminal court exercised civil rather than criminal jurisdiction in 2012 when it determined Allen’s offender classification, the opinion called it “unconvincing” and it “lacks any legal or factual foundation.”
Allen has been wiped off the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry, despite still being listed on Florida’s.
The TBI didn’t say if others have used similar arguments to fight their status but did stress the law changed this year. It gives them the authority to now classify sex offenders.
In a statement, Memphis Police said, “Carl Allen and Artie Perkins are the same individual. Our Sex Crimes investigators are aware of this and have ensured that both active warrants are properly linked. This means that if officers encounter him, he will be charged accordingly for both.”
MPD went on to state, “Our Fugitive Team is actively working each day to locate individuals with outstanding warrants, with a particular focus on violent and sex-related offenses. I can confirm that locating Perkins/Allen is a current priority for them, and they are taking steps to bring him into custody. We encourage anyone with information on his whereabouts to contact CrimeStoppers at 901-528-CASH.”
WREG Investigators also saw some confusion with court records and cases listed under multiple names and birth dates. We alerted the criminal clerk’s office.
‘I’m definitely having trouble sleeping’
“It’s definitely taken like a mental and emotional toll,” said the woman who saw the man in her window. “I’m definitely having trouble sleeping. It’s not good. It’s not good at all.”
She’s worried he may strike again.
“Absolutely. He has a pattern,” she said. “I’m hoping for the best. I hope that this just sheds additional light. I would just say to get the cameras. Take an audit of your home and look at it through the eyes of somebody that is a predator and how they would be approaching that and you.”
Both women hope police put the pieces together and an arrest soon follows.
“Despite frequent outreach, there was a lack of consistent communication and updates rom law enforcement,” said the woman who shared the footage. “Eventually, a conversation with a sergeant in the Sex Offender Registry Unit confirmed that the individual had been released from the registry and that was a decision the sergeant himself found concerning. He verified that the warrant remained active and stated that the appropriate team would be notified to pursue enforcement.”
National Sex Offender Public Website
There is a National Sex Offender Public Website that lets you search the latest information for the identities and locations of known sex offenders. For more information: click here.
