Rashid Aidun last saw the promising engineering student he knew as Justin Phillips a week ago in the material science class he teaches at a college campus in New York’s North Country.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary for the student, who had a short list of other schools he hoped to transfer to that included Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Aidun, who was his advisor.
The next day, authorities announced the student's real name is Anthony Michael Lennon and he'd been captured after more than a decade on the run. Lennon, 44, was accused of staging a bloody abduction scene at an Oklahoma hotel in 2012 and disappearing after he was charged with child pornography, federal authorities said.
Lennon, who had previously pleaded guilty to child pornography charges after a friend found 50 gigabytes of child sex abuse images on his computer, was added to Oklahoma’s “Ten Most Wanted List” in July.
“It’s an unbelievable situation,” said Aidun, an associate professor in the school of engineering technology at the State University of New York’s Canton campus.
“Everyone is in shock,” he said.
It isn’t clear if Lennon has a lawyer to speak on his behalf about the 2012 allegations. Gabrielle DiBella, a federal public defender, said that she represents "a man alleged to be Anthony Lennon," who is charged with failing to register as a sex offender in New York.
"I have no comment on the matter other than that he is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence just like anyone else in this country who is charged with a crime," DiBella said.
A woman who answered the phone at a number listed under his mother’s name declined to comment.
Lennon is in custody in Syracuse and has a hearing scheduled for Nov. 19 in which authorities have to prove his identity, said Johnny L. Kuhlman, U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Oklahoma. He noted that authorities identified him in part through fingerprints.
When Lennon was arrested Oct. 30 at a grocery store in Canton, a town of nearly 7,000 near the Canadian border, he had a state-issued identification card with the name Justin Phillips, Kulhman said. New York State Police are investigating how he was able to obtain the card, he said.
The arrest came after years of failed efforts to locate Lennon, Kulhman said. Tips had taken investigators to Nevada and Tennessee, he said, but ultimately led to dead-ends.
“This was one more of those leads that obviously turned out successful for us,” he said.
Investigators have many questions about what he’s been doing for 13 years, he added. “We’d love to eventually talk to him and get those answers. But of course, that’s up to him — whether or not he ever chooses to disclose that.”
Among the things he appears to have done is enroll in the engineering science program at the SUNY campus in the fall of 2024, the school said in a statement. He lived off-campus.
Aidun said Lennon never disclosed anything about his past, and the professor said he never asked about it.
“That’s not my job to ask personal questions,” he said. “I only gave him academic advice.”
In addition to the criminal allegations, Aidun said he was also unaware of Lennon’s apparent academic background. When he vanished in 2012, Kuhlman said, authorities learned that he had a master’s degree in computer science and was working toward obtaining a doctorate.
It isn’t clear where he obtained the degree or was attending school, Kuhlman said.
The University of Oklahoma confirmed that a man named Anthony Michael Lennon was last enrolled in the school in the fall of 2008 but not did not provide additional details.
Aidun described Lennon as a “very good student” who earned all A's. He was in his third semester of a four-semester transfer program and wanted to move to Clarkson, a nearby private university, or M.I.T., Aidun said.
Aidun said he saw nothing in the student’s conduct to make him think that he was anything but a “good active student” who helped others. Aidun said he learned of Lennon’s arrest on Monday from other students in the program.
“For the first couple of minutes I didn’t know how to react,” he said. “It was shocking.”
In a statement, the university said that Lennon was suspended on Oct. 31 and barred from returning to campus. He was known to the university only as Justin Phillips and none of the school’s records indicated a prior identity, according to the statement.
