Back to school ....

Sex offender accused of trying to pass as 'royal' student

Some at Stillwater, Minnesota Area High School had their doubts from the beginning. Joshua Gardner was able to get inside the school on multiple occasions -- that is, until some student journalists uncovered his past.

At first, his interest in the school didn't seem terribly strange. He called himself a prospective student.

"He was pretty quiet," sophomore Frank Carlson said. "But he seemed to talk with a little bit of an accent."

Caspian, as the visitor called himself, came to the school three times, according to a police report.

"I ended up hearing he was a duke from England (who) was visiting America," sophomore Reid Gilbertson said.

The visitor told students his full name was Caspian James Crichton IV, and his royal title was the "5th Duke of Cleveland."

"I just thought he was kind of goofy and they didn't really like him that much, I guess," Carlson said.

Gilbertson said some people thought the visitor was "kind of a snob."

At the school newspaper, they thought, if Caspian's story were true, it certainly would make an interesting feature.

But their research led them to a Web site called the "Earl of Scooby," where the "duke" said his heritage was British and his goal for the year was "to not make the front page of any paper."

Then the young journalists found the visitor's picture on another Web site: Florida's registry of sex offenders.

The 17-year-old duke turned out to be 22-year-old Joshua Gardner, of Austin, Minnesota.

He was convicted of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in Winona County in 2003. He was found guilty of coercing his young girlfriend to have sex with him in 2001.

***Nice try dude.