FARGO - Police records show Joseph Edward Duncan III, a registered sex offender charged with kidnapping two Idaho children, got help and friendship from a former doctor here.

Authorities believe Duncan, 42, left the area shortly after April 5, when he posted $15,000 bail in Becker County (Minn.) District Court. He is charged in Becker County with molesting a 6-year-old boy.

Police said they spoke by phone in May with Richard Wacksman, a former Fargo doctor who befriended Duncan before Duncan moved to the area in 2000.

Wacksman, who now lives in New Port Richey, Fla., did not immediately return phone messages left by the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Fargo police reports say Wacksman told them he last spoke to Duncan around April 15 by phone. The reports also said Wacksman loaned Duncan about $6,500 before his court appearance in Detroit Lakes, Minn., on the Becker County charges, to help with attorney fees.

The Forum newspaper, citing police records, reported that Duncan visited Wacksman in Florida in March.

Before moving to Fargo in 2000, Duncan had served 14 years in prison for raping a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint in Tacoma, Wash. When he moved to Fargo, police released information saying Wacksman had proposed that Duncan live at his home and that Wacksman said he had no reason to fear for the safety of his children.

The sentence review board in Olympia, Wash., rejected Wacksman's idea, saying that "under no circumstances whatsoever would the board allow Mr. Duncan to reside in a home where victim age children reside."

Don Nicholas, whose oldest son was a friend of one of Wacksman's children, said a neighborhood meeting was held to discuss Wacksman's friendship with a registered sex offender.

Nicholas, who now lives in Virginia, told the Forum he did not attend the meeting, but he said neighbors confronted Wacksman, and Wacksman told them he would allow Duncan to visit only when supervised.

Wacksman told his neighbors that Duncan was a changed man, Nicholas said. "Obviously, he wasn't," Nicholas said.

Police said Duncan gave them little trouble during the five years he lived in Fargo. They searched his Fargo home twice, once in August in connection with the Becker County case and again in April, when they suspected Duncan had not notified them of an address change as required by law.

In a search conducted Aug. 20, 2004, police said, they confiscated more than 40 items, including seven cameras and video tapes, DVDs, CDs and floppy disks.