JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri's director of corrections got a sympathetic ear Wednesday from legislators looking into why his department didn't offer sex-offender treatment to an admitted sexual sadist years before he allegedly raped and murdered a Chesterfield woman.

In a 47-minute hearing before the Joint Committee on Corrections, director Larry Crawford described his department as overworked, underfunded and using "extremely antiquated" computers to manage massive caseloads. He provided photos of parole files piled high on desks and boxes overflowing into an employee break room.

The common response: We feel your pain. This is not your fault.

A Post-Dispatch investigation revealed March 21 that the Department of Corrections repeatedly missed chances to get sex-offender treatment for Brian Walters, a convicted burglar, years before he was accused of the killing.

The newspaper found that Walters confessed during counseling in 2003 — and a day later to his parole officer — that he had committed a sexual assault in 1999 and fantasized about raping and killing sexual partners.

The parole officer asked the state Board of Probation and Parole to make Walters get sex-offender treatment and to monitor him more closely. But the board, which is part of the Department of Corrections, never offered or required the treatment, even after Walters was returned to prison for committing another burglary.

Ten days after Walters' second release from prison, prosecutors say, he raped and stabbed Nancy Miller, 59, a retired Post-Dispatch editor and columnist.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Mark Bruns, R-Jefferson City, scheduled the hearing after the Post-Dispatch story, calling the circumstances "totally unacceptable." Because there was time for only a brief airing of ideas among the 11 legislators present, Bruns said he planned to schedule another.

Crawford told the committee that Walters had participated in several programs in prison, ranging from drug-abuse education to cooking classes. But because he was not a convicted sex offender, he had not been required to complete Missouri's months-long prison-based sex-offender program, he said.

He said the department was studying whether it can require other types of offenders to take the treatment.

Corrections officials have told the Post-Dispatch that prison officials still could have offered the treatment to Walters while in prison or could have required he get it outside of prison, as the parole officer had recommended in 2003. At Wednesday's hearing, Crawford did not specifically address why corrections officials did not do either, and no one on the oversight committee asked why.

Instead, legislators on the committee repeatedly praised Crawford, who served eight years in the House before taking over the prison system in 2005. Although each committee member called Miller's murder a tragedy, some chafed at any suggestion that the state had failed.

"I don't even know why we had this today except to shed light on the need for money" for Corrections, said Sen. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington.

Corrections officials have said their sex-offender treatment program halves the chances of offenders committing new sex crimes. But Rep. Van Kelly, R-Norwood, said he doesn't think treatment would help "animals like this."

"I hate that this happened, but I think you guys did the best that you could," he said. "I hope that this doesn't happen again, but … the government can't be all things to all people."

Added Rep. Danielle Moore, R-Fulton: "I feel almost guilty that we are not putting more resources into the department to take care of that overload."

Sen. Harry Kennedy, D-St. Louis, asked Crawford to consider requiring certain high-risk offenders to enter treatment right after prison "so the public has some protection." But his idea got scant discussion.

Afterward, Kennedy said that he was frustrated and that, "I don't see where we came to any solutions."

jkohler@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8337