KILLER OF PERV FREE  (Has no regrets for slaying ‘molester’)

Kenneth Payne, a 48 year old Shelter Island man who was freed from prison six years after being jailed for the island's first murder in 300 years, said yesterday that he did not regret having shot his neighbor to death.  Payne admitted to shooting neighbor Curtis Cook in 1998 because Cook, who had been charged two weeks earlier with molesting and sodomizing an 8 year old girl, had threatened Payne's 12 year old daughter and her girlfriend.  Payne said he disagreed with those who believed he took the law into his own hands and that he deserved to serve out his full sentence.  I am not a vigilante like they said I was, he said.  This was a defensive, protective act.  I felt Cook was an imminent danger to my daughter.