Six years after his conviction for enticing, sexually abusing and unlawfully imprisoning two Madison girls in 2009, a former Athens attorney has been released from state prison.

Records show John Hamilton McLain V, 56, was released from the prison system Feb. 11 after completing his full sentence. McLain, who is now living in Huntsville, will remain on supervised probation for 14 years and has already registered as a convicted sex offender with the state, which will require him to periodically report his whereabouts.

The crime

On the evening of July 3, 2008, the two girls — ages 12 and 13 — left one of the girl’s home without permission to walk to Madison Square Mall in Huntsville to see a movie. The girls, who said they did not realize it would take more than two hours to walk to the mall, were on U.S. 72 when a well-groomed man in a silver sports car stopped and offered to give them a lift to the mall. After discovering the theater had already closed for the night, the man drove them around Huntsville and, at one point, produced a handgun he said he kept in his car for protection.

He drove them to Monte Sano Mountain, where the girls said he asked them to show him the swimsuits they had on under their shirts. They said he traced the ring connecting the cups of one of the girl’s swimsuit with his finger.

They said he drove them to his house in Athens, kept them overnight, touched the breast of one girl, invited the two to join him in the shower and to sleep in his bed, then walked nude in front of them and proceeded to masturbate next to them on the couch before he went to bed and the girls went to sleep on the couch.

Amber alert

Meanwhile, a statewide Amber Alert had been issued for the missing girls and law-enforcement officers, family and friends were desperately searching for them.

The following afternoon on July 4, the man returned the girls to the theater, as they had requested, gave them $20 and warned them not to go with strangers. The girls watched and horror movie and left. A friend of the family spotted them. Initially, the girls told their parents they had spent the night at a car lot on University Drive. Later, they told their parents what had actually transpired and an investigation began.

Officials began searching for the man who picked them up. The girls did not know him by name but they remembered he told them one of his six cars had a vanity plate that read: “ZOOOMM.” With that, the Limestone Sheriff’s Department tracked the car to McLain. With the help of Limestone County Sheriff’s Lt. Guy Simmons, the girls were able to pinpoint the house where they stayed overnight. It was McLain’s home in Athens. From there, Athens Police Department took over the investigation.

During a four-day trial in Huntsville in February 2009, prosecutors Don Valeska and Tina Coker with the Alabama Attorney General’s Office compared McLain to a wolf in a silver sports car and to a sexual predator.

McLain’s attorneys — Dan Totten of Athens and Marc Sandlin of Madison — said McLain was not a sexual predator trolling for victims as prosecutors had suggested. They said he was trying to get the two girls off the street for the night and that he was trying to help them. The attorneys said the two girls had told McLain they did not want to go home and that they were too afraid to tell the truth. One girl testified her phone battery was dead so she could not call home and the other girl testified she was too scared to call in part because McLain had a gun.

Sentence

McLain was convicted on two counts of enticing a child to enter a vehicle, two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of second-degree unlawful imprisonment. Two counts of second-degree kidnapping were dropped.

Before bestowing his sentence, Madison County Circuit Judge James Smith told McLain he was “wired differently than others” and that no child was safe with him on the streets. He ordered McLain to serve six years in prison and 14 years on supervised probation on the charges.

McLain, who had once had a law office on Washington Street, was disbarred following his conviction.