As part of its intensified #ShieldKids campaign to protect children from foreign sex offenders, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) announced the arrest of an American fugitive wanted for heinous child abuse and sexual crimes in the United States.
The suspect, Young Tom Talmadge, 69, was apprehended on April 23 by operatives of the BI’s Fugitive Search Unit (FSU) headed by Rendel Ryan Sy at his residence in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite after receiving information about his crimes from the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Talmadge is the subject of a warrant of arrest issued on March 20, 2025, by the 13th Judicial Circuit Court of Hillsborough County, Florida, for the crimes of Sexual Battery on a Victim Less Than 12 Years Old by an Adult, Lewd and Lascivious Acts on a Child, and Kidnapping to Commit a Felony on a Child.
The charges are connected to a 1989 case involving the abduction and rape of a 7-year-old girl in Tampa, Florida. The suspect remained unidentified for decades, until a recent breakthrough by U.S. law enforcement using genealogical research and preserved DNA evidence led them to Talmadge.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) confirmed a match between Talmadge and the DNA evidence from the 1989 case.
BI-FSU Chief Rendel Ryan Sy reported that Talmadge is also the subject of a deportation case for undesirability, for being a fugitive from justice.
Talmadge was brought to the BI Warden Facility in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City, where he will remain in custody pending deportation proceedings.
