Robert Crater

A man found panhandling along a highway in Athens has been arrested for violating the state’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

Athens police on Tuesday arrested 54-year-old Robert Boyd Crater, whose aliases include Robert Crader and Robert Carter. He remained in the Limestone County Jail Thursday.

Police Chief Floyd Johnson said officers noticed Crater panhandling on U.S. 72 at Interstate 65 and stopped to investigate. Crater told the officers he was just passing through town. After determining Crater had been staying at the Country Hearth Inn in Athens, they went to the motel and learned Crater had stayed there 34 times in 2015. They also determined he had registered as a convicted sex offender in 2006 in Missouri.

Because Crater was a convicted sex offender who had been in the area an extended time without notifying authorities, he violated the state’s SORNA, the chief said.

Information on the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender website — https://www.nsopw.gov/en-US/Search/Results — shows Crater was charged in September 1982 in Benton, Missouri, with sexually assaulting a woman who was age 16 or 17 at the time. Crader was 21 at the time. He was convicted on the charge in 1983.