Idaho executed Richard Leavitt in 2012 after Blackfoot killing. His two sons have a history of rape convictions.

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — An Idaho man whose father was executed in 2012 — the most recent prisoner put to death by the state — will spend up to 50 years in prison for grooming and sexually assaulting a high school girl, his third time behind bars for a sex crime.

Travis Leavitt, 40, of Challis, won’t be eligible for parole until at least the end of 2043 after Judge Darren Simpson of Idaho’s 7th Judicial District sentenced him to no less than 25 years. Simpson also granted Leavitt six years of credit for time served, which included awaiting a new trial on his felony rape charge after a successful appeal of an earlier conviction.

Leavitt is the son of Richard Leavitt, who was executed by lethal injection in June 2012 after more than 25 years on Idaho’s death row. He was convicted and given the death penalty for the fatal stabbing and sexual mutilation of Danette Elg, 31, at her home in Blackfoot in July 1984 — three and a half months before Travis Leavitt was born.

At a prior sentencing hearing, Travis Leavitt and his attorney attributed his unlawful behavior to his difficult upbringing without his father, the Challis Messenger reported. His mother and grandmother backed his claims in testimony at the hearing about the harm his father’s murder conviction had on his childhood.

Growing up with that stigma sent him down a path toward incarceration, Leavitt said.

“I know I have issues,” he told the judge. “I know in my past I have made mistakes. I own those mistakes.”

Travis Leavitt was already a registered sex offender in Idaho when he went to trial in his latest case. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to felony rape of a girl under 18 years old, when he was 20, in Twin Falls County. Leavitt was married at the time, and his wife — who was not the victim — filed for divorce, according to state court records.

Before that, Leavitt was found guilty in 2000, at age 16, of a “crime of violence and of a sexual nature” against a child that would have been a felony if he had been adult, court records showed. He was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under 16 years old and sentenced to up to a year in a state juvenile corrections facility.

Studies have repeatedly shown the adverse effects a parent’s incarceration has on their kids, which can lead to intergenerational criminal outcomes. One published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2005 found that male children suffered “profound psychosocial difficulties” even as late as 32 years old during a parent’s time in prison.

“Parental imprisonment appears to affect children over and above separation experiences and associated risks,” the study found. Those impacts increasingly result in delinquent behaviors, such as committing crimes, which create a heightened chance of the child’s own incarceration.

Leavitt had another son who also spent a significant chunk of his life in prison for rape and is a registered sex offender.

Travis Leavitt served a 12-year prison sentence for his 2006 conviction after violating his probation, court records showed, and was incarcerated at age 27 when his father was executed. He was released from prison in September 2018, an Idaho Department of Correction spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman.

In June 2019, Leavitt, then 34, was working on a ranch in Challis when he was arrested on suspicion of raping a 17-year-old girl. A jury convicted Leavitt for the felony of being three or more years older than the teenage victim, and Custer County Prosecutor Justin Oleson pushed for a punishment that approached the sentencing maximum of life in prison, the Messenger reported.

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“He is a danger, he is a reoffender,” Oleson told the judge at sentencing. “He is a high, high risk.”

Leavitt was handed up to a 25-year prison sentence, but appealed, arguing that Oleson presented impermissible evidence about his past convictions, which the prosecutor first notified the court and defense about the day before trial. The judge in the case allowed witnesses to speak to that evidence at trial, but also permitted the defense’s “standing objection.”

The Idaho Court of Appeals took up the case and in April 2022 vacated Leavitt’s conviction, sending it back to district court for a new trial. The Idaho Attorney General’s Office asked that the state Supreme Court review the decision, which it affirmed in March 2023, with Justice Gregory Moeller writing the unanimous opinion.

Attorney Tyler Dodge, Leavitt’s public defender for his new trial, did not respond to requests for comment from the Statesman.

Oleson again handled the prosecution of Leavitt, earning another rape conviction after a four-day jury trial in October. Olseon was unavailable this week for comment.

Simpson sentenced Leavitt earlier this month, and also assessed him $11,545 in fees, including $2,660 in restitution for the victim. If he serves out just his minimum sentence, Travis Leavitt will have been in prison more than a decade longer than his father, who was executed at age 53 for a murder he denied committing.

Older son also imprisoned

This was not the first time that a son of Richard Leavitt’s was convicted of rape.

When he was 19, Timothy Leavitt, of Blackfoot, pleaded guilty in 2000 to raping a 16-year-old girl, court records showed. He was made to register as a sex offender and served six months of a 10-year prison sentence, with the remainder suspended in favor of probation. About two weeks before he turned 22, Leavitt faced a new round of felony sexual assault charges, the allegations arising from crimes committed against two other 16-year-old girls.

Timothy Leavitt was charged in 2002 with 18 counts of rape and two counts of sexual battery of a 16-year-old minor. In an agreement with prosecutors that dismissed 15 of the felony charges, he pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and one count of felony sexual battery. Prosecuting the case was Darren Simpson, who was a Bingham County deputy prosecutor before he became a judge.

Leavitt’s sentence from his first rape conviction was reimposed and allowed to run concurrently with a new 20-year minimum sentence in the second case, court records showed. He argued that it was an excessive sentence and appealed, but the Idaho Court of Appeals denied a reduction of his prison term.

Timothy Leavitt was eventually paroled, EastIdahoNews reported. He satisfied his sentence in October 2022, according to the state prison system. As of last month, he was listed as compliant with the state’s sex offender registry. A message on a phone number listed for Timothy Leavitt went unreturned.

From February 2003 to April 2004, both Timothy Leavitt and his father, who was housed on Idaho death row, were incarcerated at the state’s maximum security prison south of Boise, the state prisons spokesperson said. Richard Leavitt was arrested and charged with Elg’s murder when Timothy was 4 years old.

While imprisoned, the two spoke about Richard’s eventual execution date, Timothy told The Associated Press in 2012.

“For me, it’s more of a relief,” he said. “I’m glad dad’s not going to be in prison anymore.”

Prosecutor: ‘No doubt in my mind’

Brent Reinke led the Idaho Department of Correction from 2007 to 2014 as its director. He told the Statesman in an interview earlier this year that he supports the death penalty and has no regrets about his role in overseeing Richard Leavitt’s execution.

“There’s no question that it’s a very difficult situation,” Reinke said by phone. “But when you look at the laws of the state of Idaho, that’s what you’re there to carry out.”

In 2018, then-Gov. Butch Otter said the decision to allow two executions, including Leavitt’s, to proceed during his tenure was the most difficult of the Republican’s time as Idaho’s lead executive, according to previous Statesman reporting. Death row prisoner Paul Rhoades was put to death in November 2011, seven months before Leavitt.

Under an active death warrant three weeks ahead of his execution, Leavitt submitted to a polygraph test arranged by his attorney with a Boise State psychology professor who was considered a national expert on the practice. Leavitt was found to be truthful in his continued denials about killing Elg, but under Idaho criminal law, polygraphs are not admissible in court without consent from the opposing attorneys.

Leavitt requested that none of his family watch his execution, according to Boise’s NBC affiliate, KTVB. In a phone interview in the days leading up to his death, he told the ABC affiliate, KIVI, that he had given up on any chance of a reprieve.

“I’ve made my peace with God, I’m ready to die if that’s what it takes,” Leavitt said. “I don’t want to, because I’ve got kids and family, but if that’s where it’s going to be, that’s where” it’s going to be.

Leavitt declined a chance at any final words before he was executed, the TV stations reported, though he died still claiming he was innocent. Timothy Leavitt said in the days before the execution that he believed his father wasn’t responsible for Elg’s death.

“I’m my dad’s kid,” he told the AP, halfway into his prison sentence. “I know I’m not capable of murdering someone. There’s no way I could take someone’s life, so I don’t think there’s any way he could either.”

Elg was an employee at the Idaho National Laboratory and acquainted with Richard Leavitt, who lived in the same neighborhood, according to prior Statesman reporting. Police didn’t discover her mutilated body in the bedroom of her Blackfoot home until four days after her death. She suffered 15 stab wounds, and her reproductive organs had been removed from her body.

“It was the ugliest crime scene I’ve ever seen,” the late former U.S. Attorney for Idaho and Bingham County Prosecutor Tom Moss, who prosecuted Leavitt, told KTVB in 2012.

A day before she was killed, Elg called 911 to report that a prowler had tried to enter her home that night. She told police that she suspected it was Leavitt.

At the crime scene, Leavitt’s blood was found in Elg’s bedroom, which he tried to explain away as a nosebleed he had while in her home days before her death, the AP reported. He also had visited the hospital to have a cut on his hand stitched not long after her killing.

Leavitt’s ex-wife testified at his trial that she once witnessed him use a knife to mutilate a deer he shot while hunting. He told her that he wanted to see how the doe’s reproductive organs worked, the Post Register in Idaho Falls reported.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he is guilty and the judge felt the evidence was convincing enough,” Moss told the Post Register in the days leading up to Leavitt’s execution.

Idaho hasn’t put a prisoner to death since that date, now more than 12 years ago. Prison officials attempted a lethal injection in February, but failed in the efforts to do so.

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