Edward E. Kramer

Edward E. Kramer (born March 20, 1961) is an American who has worked as a clinical and educational consultant, edited several science fiction, fantasy, and horror works, was co-founder and former part-owner of the Dragon*Con media convention and is a convicted child sex offender. He lives in Duluth, Georgiaand is former program director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Council on Alcohol and Drugs. Before pleading guilty to three counts of child molestation, Kramer was the subject of a long-running legal battle.

Kramer was born in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology from Emory College and a Master of Public Health in health administration and planning from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University School of Medicine.

Editing

Kramer is the editor of the anthologies Dark Love and Grails (Roc Books); The Sandman: Book of Dreams by Neil Gaiman (HarperPrism); The Crow, by James O'Barr (Random House); Free Space (Tor Books); Forbidden Acts (Avon Books); Elric: Tales of the White Wolf and Pawn of Chaos: Tales of the Eternal Champion (based on the works and characters of Michael Moorcock); Dante's Disciples, Tombs, and the Dark Destiny trilogy (White Wolf); and Strange Attraction: Turns of the Midnight Carnival Wheel (Bereshith Publishing). He has also worked for over a decade as a music critic and photojournalist.

Dragon Con and other events

In 1987, he co-founded Dragon*Con, a for-profit convention dedicated to science fiction, fantasy, comics, gaming, and the popular arts. He has not been involved with Dragon Con planning or activities since 2000; but still owned 34% of the business until Kramer's relationship with the convention was ended in July 2013 in a cash-out merger.

He has also chaired the 1990 Atlanta Origins convention, the 1992 Georgia World Fantasy Convention, and the Nebula Awards Weekend, and both the Atlanta World Horror Convention, and the North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC) in 1995. In 1999, he chaired the Atlanta World Horror Convention.

Kramer was arrested on August 25, 2000 following an anonymous tip, and charged with molesting three teenage boys. The ensuing investigation revealed that Kramer had previously been accused of molestation in 1997 before the alleged victim recanted.

Kramer's first attempt to serve his pre-trial detention in house arrest lasted only a week due to a reported visit by a teenage boy. After Kramer suffered a spinal injury in jail, Judge Debra Turner allowed him to go back to house arrest in January 2001. This lasted until 2008 when his travel ban was lifted.

In September 2011, Kramer was arrested after Connecticut police found him in a motel room, unsupervised, with a 14-year-old boy despite being banned from contacting anyone under 18. The felony "risk of injury to a child" was added to the list of charges for which Kramer was to stand trial.

In September 2012, Kramer was being held at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum security facility in Suffield, Connecticut, before his extradition to Georgia in January 2013. On April 26, 2013, he was denied the chance to post bail, as the presiding judge concluded based on past behavior that he was likely to break the conditions of his bond.

Ed Kramer had the most delayed trial in the history of Georgia. In 2007, Congressman Bob Barr said, "There is an overwhelming sense of injustice that pervades all of what has happened to Petitioner Appellant Edward Kramer." Protests to "Free Ed" gained the support of science fiction writers Harlan Ellison, Anne McCaffrey, Robert J Sawyer and J. Neil Schulman. Conversely, Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said in September 2010 that Kramer had "done nothing but delay and blame everyone else but himself", agreeing with an assessment that the Georgia Court of Appeals gave in September 2007: "The record strongly indicates that Kramer either sought or knowingly acquiesced in the great majority of the delay and did not want a speedy trial." Kramer and his lawyers disputed this, stating that he had serious health issues that prevented him from sitting through a long trial.

On December 2, 2013 Kramer, in a plea bargaining deal, pleaded guilty by way of an Alford plea to one charge for each of the three victims, just before his trial was scheduled to start.

In 2014, Kramer sought to reverse the 2013 plea, with his lawyer claiming Kramer was forced into the plea bargain through prosecutorial misconduct. The Georgia State Attorney’s Office ordered the recusal of both the district attorney and the Gwinnett District Attorney’s Office from the case. All Gwinnett County Judges voluntarily recused themselves as well. In 2015, actions were filed against the State of Connecticut and Milford, Connecticut.