Another Child Porn Sweep Reveals Ugly Details

LAKELAND, FL — Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is not playing around when it comes to busting child sex offenders. The sheriff and his office have made it personal.

In the latest “Operation Guardians of Innocence IV: Fall Haul” and “Operation Trick-or-Treat”, those arrested range in age from 19 years old to 77 years old and are facing a total of 626 charges, including 624 felonies and two misdemeanors. The combined prior criminal histories of all of the men includes 114 felonies and 71 misdemeanors.

Sheriff Judd and his personnel are vigilant in their efforts to keep chasing child predators, though they know it is not ever going to eradicate it.

“The folks that work in this investigative area go through psychologicals every six months,” Sheriff Judd said in a Friday morning press conference on November 8. “But we also have our own counseling sessions with them because this is the most horrible, nasty stuff – you just can’t believe what they’re subjected to while doing these investigations.”

Sheriff Judd is one of the most outspoken law enforcement representatives to emphasize the true nature of these crimes.

“I can’t believe when people suggest to me that (these crimes involve) a girl who is 15 and looks 25 – wrong,” he said in the conference. “These are pictures of babies, some as young as infants and toddlers, being bused by developed, grown men.”

Sheriff Judd went on to underscore how terrible it is, but that it is illegal to share with the public all the details.

“We would never share, but I only wish the public had a full understanding about how deviant these people are with what they’re watching as far as video clips and still pictures,” Sheriff Judd emphasized. “Some are live movies (of these babies) being sexually abused where they’re screaming and crying and hollering. But if people in the real world saw what we saw, they’d probably take up arms against them.”

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd from Friday, November 8, 2019 press conference

They have arrested countless child predators in multiple stings, with the last, “Operation Guardians of Innocence IV: Fall Haul,” a month-long special investigation by the PCSO Computer Crimes Unit, which focused on identifying members of the community who possessed and shared child pornography.

The suspects range in age from 19 years old to 77 years old and are facing a total of 626 charges, including 624 felonies and two misdemeanors. The combined prior criminal histories of all of the men includes 114 felonies and 71 misdemeanors.

In announcing the charges at a Friday, November 9 morning news conference, Sheriff Judd, in his usual fashion, stands comfortably at the podium and has posters with all those arrested, showing each of their photos with a detailed breakdown of each of their offenses.

Sheriff Grady begins the press conference with an earnest introduction:

“As you well know, the men and women of the sheriff’s office the number one priority here at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office is to protect our children, all of the children – that is our prime goal and our prime focus. If we as a society can’t protect our children, that is a sad state of affairs. That doesn’t happen in Polk County because of the hard work of the sheriff’s office. Let me go over two operations that we have completed. Neither one is a surprise to you because operation Guardians of the Innocence, this is number 4, we call it our Fall Haul, and at same time we did Operation Trick-or-Treat, during the month of October to make sure our sex offenders were appropriately registering and living where they were supposed to live. If you look at these two you’ll see this is the most that we’ve arrested that we can remember at one time. Some people just never learn and that’s why we’re here today. This operation occurred successfully because of the hard work of the men and women at the sheriff’s office but we’ve executed up to this point 23 search warrants in order to do this investigation and we may have to execute more search warrants.”

Polk County Sheriff’s Office press conference November 9, 2019

Sheriff Judd says his office made a total of 31 arrests, 17 of them were a result of “Fall Haul,” and 14 resulted from “Operaton Trick-or-Treat.”

Forensic investigations into the offenders electronics is still in progress at this time and Sheriff Grady anticipates there will be many more prosecutions later on.

Let me give you a snapshot of these people. These folks, just this group had 499 previous criminal charges. Why do I highlight that? There are people marching around the state and country saying we are too touch on criminals, we lock up too many people, but if that were true, if we didn’t give breaks, probation, diversions and you looked at all their criminal history – and all of their history are not sexual-related – if you looked at all 499 cases certainly they’d all be in prison forever. So, for those of you who continue to say to our constituency, oh we have this too tough criminal justice system we need to let them out, quit lying to them, we have a very forgiving criminal justice system. On these folks here we have filed 672 new felony charges with the assistance of our state attorney’s office and it’s our intention for these people to never have access to our children. It’s important for you to understand that we are all serious about these folks. If you notice there’s not one female in the group. These deviants, these perverts, are limited to males. They are targeting our children online, or watching child pornography online, and we know that the overwhelming majority of them watching online would subsequently have sex with children given the opportunity.

Polk County Sheriff’s Office Friday morning press conference, led by Sheriff Grady Judd

Below is Sheriff Judd’s list (some are not mentioned by Sheriff Judd, put are pictured) and commentary:

• William Hague, 76, is the oldest person, spent over 30 years working for Polk School district as a teacher, adminstrator, an assistant principal at a middle school. “We’ve charged him with 252 counts of child porn. He confessed,” Sheriff Judd said. “I want you to know he has been retired for 18… He’s currently in jail, he’s married and has adult children. His child porn was normally children 8 years of age. When we served the search warrant he was engaged in an active chat about how to have sex with children.”

• Brett Kinney, 40, was a manager for Disney in the entertainment department. Britt has worked for 15 years for Disney. “We’ve arrested him two times,” Sheriff Judd said. “Once he bonded out and we found additional materials, we put him back in the county jail. He’s married with no children and he’s been charged with 24 counts of child porn. He said he’s been viewing child porn for 22 years and fantasizes that he’s the child being victimized in the child porn he watches. He prefers children 2-3 years old. this guy is scary and a deviant, a person who has deep-rooted sexual issues and is in jail – and he confessed.

• Donald Durr, 52, is another Disney employee for 20+ years, and works in maintenance in Disney hotels. “He said, ‘I’m a pervert, but I’m not a monster.‘ Are you kidding me? I agree with the first part, you are a pervert, but you’re also a “monster with a capital ‘M’ We charged him with 8 counts of possession of child porn and he’s still in the jail.”

• Edgar Villegas, 28, has already been to prison for possession of child porn and spent six years there, was released in March 2019, and was accessing child porn again as early as May. “He prefers children as young as 2 years of age. He was released from prison in March of this year on probation,” Sheriff Judd said. “We found him in possession of more child porn while he was on probation. We’ve got him charged so far on 2 counts but still going through forensics on his computer.” His statement was, “I relapsed, I made a poor choice.” He’s back in jail.

• Charles Mabry, Jr. 37, was in prison for a low level meth crime and was in work release, being prepared to go back into society, and be successful. “While in prison, on Sundays with his GPS monitor, he was allowed to go to his father’s house and was watching child porn on his father’s computer,” Sheriff Judd said. “He does quality control for Quality Beef in Wachula, and is charged with 53 counts of child porn. You try to help these rascals out and this guy while still in prison was looking at child porn.”

• Rodney Montgomery, 51, previously was arrested when he traveled to Pinellas County to meet a 13-year-old but met an undercover agent instead. “Over there they sentenced him to 21 months in the Florida State Prison system,” Sheriff Judd said. “He confessed this time. Got him for 20 counts of possession, with children as young as 5,” Sheriff Judd said. “We know he not only looks at child porn but will travel if he thinks he can have sex with a minor. They don’t change, folks.”

• Bryan Murray, 54, sent nude pictures of himself to what he thought was a 13-year-old child. He said, “I can take better care of you than those school boys, a 54-year-old man.” An undercover detective took over the account at that point. “We charged him with attempted lewd battery, transmission, using computer to seduce a child, and he confessed,” Sheriff Judd said.

• Michael Arumbulo, worked at the Heart of Florida Hospital in ICU. “He likes child porn, charged with 10 counts of child porn,” Sheriff Judd said. “He confessed and when we served a search warrant he was looking at pornography. It’s our understanding he is no longer working at Heart of Florida Hospital ICU.”

• Mark Ott, 49, a mechanical engineer, has two sons, one still in high school, and is charged with 74 counts of child porn, with children as young as THREE MONTHS, “Ladies and gentlemen in makes me sick to my stomach to hear this,” Sheriff Judd remarked.

• Jacob Jackson, 31, was caught soliciting a 13-year-old girl on Facebook, who notified the sheriff’s office. “The child said she knew who it was, saying it was Jared Jackson, explaining she did her own research on the FDLE website and I saw his picture,” Sheriff Judd elaborated. “But she was wrong because he has a brother a year and a day younger, who looked just like his brother, Jacob who was online trying to seduce her. She was astute enough to research.” As a result of the investigation they discovered find Jared Jackson, who wasn’t supposed to be living at his mother’s address, was living there with Jacob and caught him talking to the 13-year-old. Jared and their mother took Jacob’s computer away from him and delivered a lecture about how he didn’t need to get in trouble and how bad prison was.

• Awani Malek Basta, 52, from Bartow, originated from Egypt, now a U.S. citizen, has been listed as sex offender since 2009, and has 17 previous felony charges. “We’ve given him three new charges,” Sheriff Judd said. “He is a serial stalker. He is not related to children, but to adults. Has been known to visit Starbucks, and gropes women’s bottoms – 7 documented cases, not counting the women who didn’t report. Arrested in October 15 at Panera Bread, currently in County Jail for a Starbucks case from Lakeland , he also has 3 charges for failure to comply with sexual offender registry laws. “If you get in front of this rascal at a store he’s liable to grab your butt. He’s got a hitch in his giddy, I just don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Sheriff Judd said, which added a little comedic relief to the dire topics being presented. “But we’re going to keep him in jail for a while and if he grabs anyone’s butt there somebody will punch him in the nose. Ladies beware. I think he buys latte, I don’t know why he likes Starbucks and Panera but this guy’s dangerous, what’s next? He’s got issues. Watch out for him.”

A reporter asked if there is a genetic predisposition but the sheriff told him he’d have to ask a psychologist but sheriff said he assumed it was learned behavior passed down.

History tell us that these folks don’t change. There is research that says that some, not all, can be trained to control these emotions. We have a very robust system here and track them, arresting them periodically all along. On Halloween day we were out following up all our sexual offenders to make sure they didn’t have candy out and lights on. There’s a lot that goes on you don’t see. This is a cancer on society that we have to deal with. This is a cancer I suggest will never be cured and we can only keep it under control with prison and a lot of medication while you’re on controlled release, probation or offender watch status.

I can tell you that the internet has made it much easier for sexual predators to prey on children. Because now they can go on virtual game sites and pretend to be people they’re not. Way back in the day, B.C. – before computers – sometime before the stone age and where we are now that when we saw child porn used to be old 8 mm stuff from another country. Today, it’s produced with phones like we have now that can not only take still photos but videos. It’s easier for them to communicate and locate each other. Birds of a feather. We go in and clip their wings.”

Sheriff Grady Judd

Most of the victims who are shown in the child pornography have not been located but Polk County Sheriff’s Office says it is their primary objective, working with NcMEC, which uses algorithms to held find victims.