DANVILLE — After nearly 19 years on the run, international fugitive and convicted sex offender Dennis G. Catron is behind bars in Vermilion County.

According to police records, Catron, 60, was booked at the Danville Public Safety Building at 6:50 p.m. Monday.

Catron will have a hearing in Vermilion County Circuit Court, said Capt. Rod Kaag, chief investigator of the Vermilion County sheriff's office. But the hearing had not been scheduled early Tuesday morning.

Catron, the former Hoopeston resident and Ludlow school superintendent, was arrested on a fugitive-from-justice warrant outside of his condominium in Bangkok, Thailand, on June 29, about 19 years after he fled the United States to avoid prosecution on charges that he sexually abused a 13-year-old boy in 1991.

Catron, who was convicted on sex abuse charges in Vermilion County and sentenced to prison in absentia in 1994, was deported from Thailand and escorted by authorities to Los Angeles on July 7. After waiving extradition, Catron was released into the custody of a prisoner transport service on July 20 that brought him to Vermilion County.

Catron was arrested in June 1991 at his Hoopeston home after a Ludlow boy's father and stepmother filed a complaint with Hoopeston police, who then went to Catron's home and found the boy there. Catron was charged with sexually abusing the boy during six months in 1991.

The next month, he was charged in Champaign County with molesting two Ludlow boys, including the same 13-year-old victim in the Vermilion County case. He later was acquitted on the charges involving the other victim.

About five months after his arrest, Catron was free on bond on charges in both counties when he failed to appear for his trial on the sex abuse charges in Vermilion County. He also failed to appear for a later court date in Champaign County. Then in July 1992, Catron turned himself in to Vermilion County authorities.

That August, a plea agreement that would have kept Catron behind bars fell apart, allowing Catron to post bond again — $20,000 on his pending charges in both counties. A month later, he failed to appear for a Champaign County court hearing.

In May 1994, Catron was found guilty of the Vermilion County sex abuse charges in absentia and was sentenced to prison that August. Authorities believe he had been in Thailand since he vanished in 1992.