A Cabool man who entered a guilty to felony possession of child pornography was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison.
Earl Dale Sawyer, 62, was sentenced by Judge John D. Beger in Texas County Circuit Court.
Sawyer was arrested and charged with the felony on May 10.
According to the probable cause statement, on Jan. 26, Feb. 3 and April 7, investigators with the Missouri Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force downloaded video files of child pornography from three IP addresses in Missouri leased from CenturyLink. Subpoenas issued to CenturyLink for subscriber information all returned to Sawyer.
On May 10, a search warrant for Sawyer’s residence was executed and during the search of Sawyer’s bedroom, two USB thumb drives were located in the pocket of a pair of overalls in the closet. These devices were previewed at the scene and were observed to contain more than 200 video files with names consistent with child pornography.
Wayne Becker of the South Central Missouri Computer Crime Task Force stated in his report that he opened and viewed a file by a name known to him from previous investigations. The video consisted of a young female, known and previously identified as under the age of 12, engaged in sexually explicit conduct with an adult male. This child victim is known by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
According to the statement, during a post-Miranda interview, Sawyer told Becker he used a program to download child pornography using his desktop computer and would then transfer the files to the thumb drive so that his children would not find them. He then said he thought he had last viewed the child pornography about a month before his arrest.