California state officials have freed a sex offender considered “dangerous” from a mental hospital where he spent more than 20 years there in confinement.

Cary Jay Smith, 59 years old, was released from the Coalinga State Hospital this month after being in state custody since 1999. Smith was originally placed in state custody after his wife provided evidence of her husband’s intentions to sexually abuse a seven-year-old boy in their Costa Mesa neighborhood.

During hearings every six years, Smith has said that he goes by the name “Mr. RTK,” which stands for “Mr. Rape, Torture, Kill” and has claimed to have murdered three boys and sexually abused 200 others. Smith has said he fantasizes about raping and killing boys.

“Smith, an unstable individual, has openly made threats to rape and murder children and has stated that he would re-offend upon his release,” Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Michelle Steel said in a statement.

“The fact that he is being released back into our community is unconscionable,” Steel said. “We must take this threat to our community very seriously and ensure that everyone in Orange County is aware of this individual’s grave threat to our children.”

In 2002, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office planned to prosecute Smith on 20 felony counts of child sexual abuse. The case was dropped due to the statute of limitations. In 1985, Smith pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor sexual offense involving a child.

Smith has not had to register as a sex offender since 2005. The convicted sex offender is now reported to be traveling to San Diego County after stopping in the Corona and Lake Elsinore areas of California.

Most recently, California officials said they are ready to release about 8,000 more inmates from state prisons in order to abide by social distancing standards. Already, about 10,000 inmates have been released from law enforcement custody in the state.

In the most famous case thus far, inmates in Los Angeles were recorded on prison surveillance attempting to spread the coronavirus between each other by drinking from the same water bottles and sniffing face masks. The inmates, the sheriff said at the time, believed that they would be released if the coronavirus spread throughout the prison.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.