A man who once served as a juvenile officer with the Wood County Sheriff’s Dept. and was convicted of child sex crimes has been ordered to a mental health facility after serving 20 years in prison.

Daniel Mark Gagliardo, now 57, began serving a 60-year sentence in 2000, five years after he was tried in Smith County on 10 counts.

He had been a police officer in Whitehouse from 1989-1991 and was once named officer of the year through the Texas War on Drugs.

Some of the assaults had occurred prior to his service in Whitehouse.

He came to Wood County in 1991. After his indictments in 1994 he was reassigned as a dispatcher and then resigned. He was living in Corpus Christi at the time of his trial.

Gagliardo had been paroled from the Texas prison system with the stipulation that he serve at least nine months in a sex offender treatment program before his release.

He was brought back to Smith County for the commitment hearing after the state filed a petition for treatment and supervision. Gagliardo will be reevaluated every two years.

After his conviction on 10 total counts in 1995, Gagliardo did not appear for his sentencing the following day.

He was eventually found in San Fransisco in 2000 and brought back to Texas to begin his sentence, which was handed down in his absence.

He was once featured on “America’s Most Wanted.”

Louie Gohmert, now a United States congressman, was the district judge who presided in the cases.

No charges were ever filed in Wood County.