LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Just off the Interstate 65 exit ramp at 1st and Jefferson streets in downtown Louisville, a concrete wall with bushes on top sits directly across from a closed police substation. On a hot summer day in August 2023, police said that wall provided cover as Travis Hall raped a woman in broad daylight while traffic poured into the heart of the city.
"I'm thinking about murdering people. I'm thinking about murdering everybody in here," Hall shouted during his arraignment in Louisville's jail as a judge asked whether he understood the rape and sexual assault charges he faced. "I am the Texas chainsaw massacre."
The judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
Hall suffers from mental illness, according to court records obtained by WDRB News. He's been arrested dozens of times in Louisville, and, many times, is accused of accosting women. In fact, since 2020, Hall has been cited for groping, flashing, slapping, chasing and shouting at at least five different women within a few blocks of where police said the rape occurred downtown.
In January 2021, Kaitlyn Purdon was one of those women. She said Hall followed her to her car and blocked her from closing the door.
"He grabbed me from the back of my head and he kissed me," Purdon said in an interview with WDRB News. "From that moment, I realized he was pulling down his pants and I kicked him with my left foot which was closest to him. And I think he tripped because his pants were down."
Travis Hall was arrested on Friday, Aug. 25, 2023, accused of raping a woman who was walking in downtown Louisville. (Mugshot source: Louisville Metro Corrections)
Purdon got away, but the experience with Hall and the fact that she continued to see him on the streets prompted the young professional to move out of downtown Louisville.
"I feel for (the woman police said Hall raped), and that was the reason why I wanted to speak," Purdon said. "It definitely didn't have to happen."
Hall stands as an example of how homeless people suffering from serious mental illness can bounce from courts to hospitals to the streets to the jail in Louisville and the danger that cycle can pose.
Court records show he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges connected to four different cases in a hearing in Jefferson District Court in December 2022. Judge Stephanie Pearce Burke signed that order following the diagnosis of a state psychiatrist. She declined to comment on Hall or any pending cases. She did, however, address holes in the system in an interview with WDRB News as a member of the Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health.
"It's no secret we have a crisis on several fronts in our state dealing with people who are in crisis because of their serious mental illness," she said. "We know we have an issue in our correctional facilities. We know we have issues on the streets. We know we have lack of resources for individuals. And it all seems to culminate in the courts."
A mentally incompetent court order with the tag "not likely to regain" competency in the foreseeable future basically wipes away criminal proceedings. It halts the prosecution of pending criminal cases, but that lack of competency does not guarantee psychiatric treatment.
In Kentucky, those deemed incompetent to aid in their defense are then sent to a hospital for another evaluation to determine if they're a danger to themselves or the public. If they're stable at that moment or won't benefit from treatment, by law, doctors can release them.
"Unfortunately, it seems that most of our solutions are temporary solutions," Burke said. "(They're) outpatient options, short-term options. We don't have a lot of long-term options. And, unfortunately, when you have a serious mental illness, it's forever."
Burke admitted that seriously mentally ill defendants are sometimes found incompetent, sent to emergency psychiatric care and back out on the streets in hours or days picking up new charges.
For Hall, it took six months. After being found incompetent in December 2022, he was arrested in June 2023 and charged with harassment and criminal trespassing, accused of screaming at a woman and chasing her into the downtown Louisville office building where she worked near 1st and Main streets. Two blocks away and two months later, he was back on the street and charged with rape.
"It's anger with the system," Purdon said. "It seems like there's a loophole. He is going to court and being told he's mentally incompetent, but yet, he is able to commit these crimes against women."
Hall is not an isolated case. WDRB has reported on the "loophole" for years, the one allowing mentally ill defendants to avoid both prosecution and treatment. The Kentucky legislature tried to close it in 2019 with a revision to KRS Chapter 202c, better known as the Cane Madden law.
Like Hall, Madden had a long criminal rap sheet before he was charged with the beating and rape of an 8-year-old girl in 2019. He was found incompetent to stand trail. After WDRB's extensive reporting, the legislature amended the statute on the last day of the session in 2021.
"This bill would close the crack it would get people the help they need," then-Sen. Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, said in a legislative hearing fighting to pass it.
The new law created a pathway for mandated, indefinite hospitalization when a defendant is ruled incompetent to stand trial. But it didn't apply to Hall, because his misdemeanor charges prior to rape weren't serious enough to rise to the Madden level of involuntary commitment. It's only for high-level felonies.
While Burke said the majority of seriously mentally ill adults are much more likely to be victimized than to be a perpetrator of violence, she also doesn't think the state should wait until they become dangerous to intervene.
It's why the Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health is working to revise mental health legislation again to include new parameters that will allow hospitalizations of those who have a documented history of serious mental illness and are shown to be in a state of "psychiatric deterioration."
"We know exactly who they are," Burke said. "We have to be able to hospitalize those individuals when necessary. And by doing that, you will avoid them becoming a danger. It's not rocket science."
Public defenders representing Hall didn't reply to requests for comment in this story. He remains in jail on the rape charge pending a new competency evaluation. The case is due back in court for review in January 2024.
"I definitely think mentally ill people and the system that is helping them deserve more resources," Purdon said. "But I don't think that when you're being told that someone is mentally incompetent that you wait to see what they do until you decide to lock them up."
Travis Hall suffers from mental illness, according to court records obtained by WDRB News.
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