Founder of Atlanta’s Dragon*Con was arrested Tuesday for violating conditions of his bond from previous child molestation charge. Edward Kramer was taken into custody after he was discovered alone in a motel room with a 14-year-old boy.
The Gwinnett County News of Atlanta reported Kramer, who launched the popular convention in 1987 but claims no association with it now, was arrested in Connecticut after Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter received a tip Tuesday from someone in Florida whose daughter was filming a movie in the town he was staying. “The woman alleged that Kramer was claiming to be the guardian of a 14-year-old boy who was acting in the film and that he was staying in a motel room with the boy, ‘which is exactly like the allegations in our case,’ Porter said.” He is not accused of molesting the boy, but child endangerment in this particular arrest.
Eleven years ago, Kramer was charged with multiple counts of child molestation and aggravated child molestation. The paper writes, “Three teenage boys asserted that he sexually abused them after dazzling them with action figures, sci-fi memorabilia and celebrity connections.” He had long claimed he was too ill to stand trial for the alleged crimes and was under house arrest for some time until a judge lifted that order in 2008. But accounts from several witnesses in Connecticut say he isn’t as ill as he’s appeared in the past. “The movie is being filmed in a campground, in a fairly rural area,” Porter said. “Mr. Kramer was hiking on the trails, didn’t require a cane, didn’t have his breathing apparatus and didn’t ride in his wheelchair.”
His defense attorney Edwin Marger made this statement to the paper: ”I am more than surprised, I am flabbergasted. As I told the judge today, I don’t know if this was a 14-year-old child or a 41-year-old midget, so until I speak to my client, I’m not taking anything for granted.” The paper says, “Conditions of his bond stipulated that he report his whereabouts on a weekly basis to the Gwinnett County district attorney’s office and that he have no unsupervised contact with anyone under age 16.”
In his latest report to the district attorney’s office,” writes the paper, “Kramer claimed to be staying in Brooklyn, N.Y., so that he could be near his mother in her ‘last days,’ Porter said. However, authorities have since learned that Kramer’s mother died in March.”
Kramer is currently being extradited back to Georgia.
UPDATE: Dragon*Con chairman Pat Henry has issued this statement via Facebook:
Edward Kramer resigned from the Dragon Con Convention in 2000 after legal issues. He has not had any role in Dragon Con planning or activities since that time.
Since 2000 the convention has been managed by three of the other founders. These men have been involved with the convention since the beginning. In that time the convention attendance has grown from less than 10,000 to over 46,000 this past Labor Day.
I’m sure the current convention runners and fans of the show find the connection to Kramer unfortunate but him being the founder of Dragon*Con is part of his persona and therefor part of the story.
September 14th, 2011 at 10:54 pm
I’m sorry, did the blog link redirect me to TMZ’s website? What does this story have to do with comic books or anything related to comic books? An individual that has had nothing to do with Dragon Con for almost as long as he was part of it is accused of a heinous crime and your headline reads “Dragon*Con founder arrested at motel with young boy”? Should your head line not read FORMER Dragon Con founder arrested at motel? I’m no journalism major, but apparently neither are you.
September 14th, 2011 at 11:38 pm
Um, no. He is the founder of the Con. A founder is not a temporary position. It could say “former chairman”, but not former founder. You are clearly not a journalism major.
September 15th, 2011 at 12:16 am
I know Ed. We met when I too was 15. Never laid a hand on me but I was not around him more than a couple of hours once. My friend Aaron Ford slept over at his house and we would joke how Ed appeared to be gay. Where are you Aaron? Did he molest you too?
September 15th, 2011 at 8:01 am
I thought he was still a minority owner of Dragon*Con?
September 15th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
So in your rush do defend yourself you completely missed my point. By your own rationale as long as this person is alive, and probably long afterwards, any piece of news related to him however horrid are worthy of reporting since he was a former founder of a convention whose remaining founders were tripping over themselves to get a statement out disassociating themselves from him?
September 15th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
NIL8, when celebrities or other notable people pass away or do something new, the news stories talk about what they were most known for (their famous movies, accomplishments, scandals etc.). Kramer being the founder of Dracon*Con will always be a part of his life. That’s part of being a public figure and facts about their lives are part of reporting about them. Sorry you see it differently.
September 15th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Ok, thanks Comics for screwing up the youth.
I know the Avengers took away Hulk’s “founder” status and gave it to Captain America. But that isn’t the way it works in real life. You are never a “former founder.”
September 16th, 2011 at 7:14 am
As distasteful as the story is, referring to him simply as “founder” is technically correct, although more correct would have been “co-founder.” You can’t be a “former co-founder.” You can be a “former co-chairman,” but if you were there at the beginning, you were there. A rank or an office, once held and then left behind, is former, but not an accomplishment. In his obit, John Adams could be referred to as a former President, but not as a former Founding Father.
The problem is that, without qualifiers, readers could infer that Ed is still connected with Dragon*Con, which he isn’t and hasn’t been for quite some time. Considering the incendiary nature of the original charges and the implications of the new ones, and the fact that D*Con has lots of kids attending, I think it behooved Newsarama to make explicit that he was no longer attached to the convention. Newsarama did not. That may be why Pat Henry felt the need to make that explicit on his Facebook page.
September 16th, 2011 at 7:22 am
And yes, I know that Newsarama was simply reporting what the local news service reported. Here’s the thing: one doesn’t expect accuracy or detail from “outside” journalists. All they’ve been doing is saying “Dragon*Con” and “child molester” together as many times as possible. If you’re going to cover the story from the POV of a comic book site, then one might have hoped for a bit more due diligence when it came to the comics-related aspects. That’s my take on it, in any event.
September 16th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Everybody understands the reason for running the story is Ed Kramer’s history with Dragon*Con — genre news sites don’t cover crime news that has no genre connection. But some commenters here evidently think a genre news site has a duty to shield Dragon*Con’s current management in its own post about this public news story.
Nowhere in this story is it said or suggested that Dragon*Con’s current management has any connection with the story, or that what occurred is attributable to the convention in any way. Really, to say something gratuitous in their behalf under the circumstances would be a case of “protesting too much.”
Consider too — when an NFL football player is reported having been arrested on a DUI, for example, nobody except maybe a butt-kissing local columnist needs to add that “the team owner, GM and coach didn’t buy the guy drinks and hand him the keys to the car.”
September 16th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
The fact that Dragon*Con released a statement about Kramer’s arrest is news. It is news that was appropriately added to this article.
September 17th, 2011 at 9:45 am
Wheelchair? Breathing apparatus? Action figures and sci-fi memorabilia? How is that dude hooking up with teenagers?
September 18th, 2011 at 3:41 am
“Consider too — when an NFL football player is reported having been arrested on a DUI, for example, nobody except maybe a butt-kissing local columnist needs to add that “the team owner, GM and coach didn’t buy the guy drinks and hand him the keys to the car.””
Actually you’ve just made my point for me. The latter part of your statement is pretty much irrelevant, since columnists write opinion pieces. News reporters, however, write news articles, and when a news article is written about an NFL football player arrested in a DUI, you will typically see either quotes from the team he plays for, or an NFL publicist. At the VERY least, there will be a “Management had no comment” line.
Some of the local Atlanta papers seem to enjoy insinuating that Dragon*Con is not someplace you can comfortably bring your children by repeatedly allowing readers to infer that pedophiles stalk the convention. It would have been nice if a comics-related website had taken the additional extra step and contacted D*Con for a comment–a courtesy that mainline news sources provide for those same drunk football players, but never for a comics convention–especially since Dragon*Con is the fourth word in the article.
PAD
September 26th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
When people get their knickers in a bigger wad over the fact Dragoncon is mentioned in regard to a legitimate news story than the information that Kramer supposedly used the convention to locate & groom children in order to sexually assault, it is more suggestive of a problem with the readers’ priorities than the reporter’s.
October 22nd, 2011 at 10:28 am
I think Ed’s being arrested for being in the presents of a young boy is really funny. What a stupid Idiot!!! I feel really bad for the young boy. I hope Ed did nothing to him. I have known deep down that Ed was exaggerating his conditions. He knows what he did to my children and other children. It is very un-christian of me, but I was glad that he was suffering, since he was doing everything in his power not stand trial. Despite of him, these children are now men. They have not forgotten and neither have I. He has done great damage to our family. We have worked hard to overcome and have. We want him to stand trial, be found guilty and be put where he can hurt no other child again. I had a lot of hate inside of me for what he had done. Through my faith in Jesus Christ, I do not hate, any longer. Hating was only hurting me, but I DO want this monster to get what he deserves.
October 22nd, 2011 at 10:37 am
He was not on a Breathing apparatus, cane, or wheelchair, back then. He was caving, camping, hiking, even though he was fat as a whale. He almost got stuck crawling through a hole in the cave, on his back. Oh, Did you know, he also claims to have a bad spine. Yeah, right. He is a very good manipulator. He fooled a lot of people. He still has a lot of educated, smart, well meaning people fooled. Ed is not dumb, I’ll give him that. But that is all I will give him. He’s not worth the dirt under my feet.
January 29th, 2013 at 6:20 pm
So, I am amazed no one has pointed out that his ‘breathing apparatus’ is just his sleeping CPAP that he drug out for a photo opportunity. My husband has that exact mask. It’s certainly not something you wear just out and about. I can’t help but think ‘breathing apparatus’ is just more bullshit.