HOUSTON -- A convicted murderer who has vowed to seek revenge and kill law officers in the Houston area is out of jail and may be heading back to Houston, authorities say.
Anthony Michael Knoppa, 41, was released from prison Friday after serving 15 years of his 50-year sentence for killing a Brazoria County woman.
Authorities think Knoppa will return to Houston, where his family and friends are, and said they are worried about the threats he has made in the past.
Jimmy Jones of the Brazoria County sheriff's office said he is concerned about Knoppa since the murderer has threatened to kill several lawmen and recently turned down offers of parole.
After his murder conviction in 1972, Knoppa threatened to kill Jones and Jay Evans, an investigator with the Harris County sheriff's office.
'I took him seriously (in his threats), and I still do,' Jones told the Houston Post.
'It (his release) worries me,' said Evans, now an investigator with the Harris County Medical Examiner's office.
In 1971, Knoppa was investigated in connection with the deaths of six women in Montgomery, Harris and Brazoria counties, but he was only convicted in one of the deaths.
Knoppa was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1972 in the death of Linda Faye Sutherlin, 22, of Brazoria County. Sutherland was found dead with 72 bullet wounds in her back, shoulders and legs.
Harry Andrew Lanham was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the same killing, and he was also investigated in the other five incidents as an accomplice.
But the five cases othher against Knoppa crumbled in 1972 when Lanham lunged for an officer's gun in the Harris County Jail. The officer shot Lanham to death, eliminating the key witness against Knoppa, authorities said.
Knoppa was convicted in a rape before the Brazoria County killing. Testimony in the trial indicated he took a young woman to an auto salvage yard and raped her repeatedly. Knoppa pleaded guilty to a lesser offense in the case because the woman was too terrified to testify against him.
