CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- More than 13,000 people convicted of everything, from murder to rape to sex crimes against children, are at large, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety Records.
The director of North Carolina Community Corrections, the agency in charge of supervising those missing probationers and parolees, said the state does not know where the people are located.
"It doesn't make me feel good," Director Tracy Lee said about the number. "I think that as an agency we are doing everything we can to reach the individuals that will allow us to reach them. Yes, the number is high, higher than I would like, and it is something that we are focused on and we have been focusing on for a while but we're dealing with human behavior."
"There's only so much we can control," Lee added.
Clee Allen Ellis is one of the people who is a fugitive, according to state records. Ellis is out on parole for a murder he committed in 2000 in Catawba County, according to NCDPS. Records show he remains one of eight North Carolina murderers now off the grid.
Ellis joins more than 13,000 others under community supervision who the state now labels absconders. The group includes more than 2,000 people convicted of DWI, more than 1,000 people convicted of assault, dozens of child abusers and a handful of rapists, according to state records.
A longtime victim's advocate said the high number of absconders is a public safety concern. Andy Kahan is Director of Victims' Services for Crime Stoppers in Houston. That's the same city where, just weeks ago, police said a parolee cut off his tracking monitor then went on a violent crime spree, killing three people.
Police caught him after a frantic pursuit as they said he made plans for his next victim.
"The community needs to be protected more, so when someone vanishes they need to be notified. Just like someone when they break out of prison, you get an alert," Kahan said. "If you're already vanishing, if you're already not where you're supposed to be, you're sending out signals galore that you're not going to abide by the rules and conditions.
"What on Earth makes you think that you're going to abide by the rules of society?" Kahan added.
Director Lee said the state's working with local and federal law enforcement to find North Carolina's absconders.
"We're trying to do everything that we can do to catch these individuals and [make sure] they're put back into custody," he said. "We're actively trying to capture these absconders."
He also said the state works on the front end to try and convince probationers and parolees to follow the rules, so they make better decisions in the future.
"We try to actively engage the offender and make sure that they understand that we have their best interest at heart," he said. "If we can show the offender how this program can help them then hopefully they'll hang in there and allow us to guide them down the appropriate path."
Here is a list of all 13,000 fugitives. If you know where these people are, don't approach them. Instead, call 911.
More than 10,000 of the absconders are considered by prosecutors as non-extraditable, which means if they're arrested in another state, they won't bring them back to North Carolina to face their parole and probation violations.