The 46-year-old man from New York who stands accused of abducting a 9-year-old girl while she was riding her bicycle in Moreau Lake State Park has a limited history of minor criminal charges and was residing in a camper situated behind his mother’s double-wide trailer.
Craig Nelson Ross Jr. had previously pleaded guilty to charges related to drunken driving back in 1999, which required him to provide fingerprint samples.
This history of convictions from over two decades ago played a crucial role in his arrest in connection with the abduction of Charlotte Sena, as authorities were able to match his prints from the ransom note left in the victim’s parents’ mailbox.
However, Ross’s criminal record had been relatively minor until this recent incident. In 1999, he was arrested for a DWI case and received a conditional discharge the following October, along with a 90-day driver’s license suspension.
In 2017, he faced a misdemeanor charge for criminal obstruction of breathing, details of which remain unclear.
A year earlier, he was arrested for a misdemeanor charge of aggravated harassment, but information about the specifics of this case was not readily available, and it may have been sealed or dismissed.
A neighbor who had known Ross’s mother described her as an unfriendly individual, recalling an incident from their childhood when Ross needed assistance with a cut finger, but his mother merely handed him a Band-Aid without welcoming him inside.
“I told him we should go to your mom for a Band-Aid,” he said. “She wouldn’t let him in, and he took this big boulder and smashed it against the door and kept smashing it.”
Ross eventually became a recluse, and his neighbor saw him infrequently in recent years, noticing that he had covered a camper window with a tarp.
Apart from these minor charges and a few legal cases, there were no additional felony records associated with Ross.
Investigators were observed gathering evidence from his camper, parked behind his mother’s trailer in Ballston Spa, not far from the location of the abduction.
“Within the camper, they located the suspect,” Hochul said during a Monday. “After some resistance, the suspect was taken into custody, and immediately the little girl was found in a cabinet, covered. She was rescued.”
