Aberdeen Proving Ground Civilian Employee Sentenced to 12 Years in Jail For Child Pornography

From the U.S. Department of Justice:

Baltimore, Maryland – U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake sentenced David Earl Jones, age 43, of Jarrettsville, Maryland, a civilian employee at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood Arsenal, today to 12 years in prison followed by supervised release for life for two counts of possessing child pornography. Judge Blake ordered that upon his release from prison, Jones must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Harford County Sheriff L. Jesse Bane; and Colonel Marcus L. Brown, Superintendent of the Maryland State Police.

According to the plea agreement, on April 15, 2010, the Harford County Sheriff’s Office received an emergency call reporting that a man was seen looking through a window of a Maryland residence and taking pictures of a 15-year old girl who was fully undressed in her bedroom. Police arrived at the scene and, after a brief foot pursuit, arrested Jones. While in custody, Jones was allowed to make a telephone call and was overheard instructing an individual to delete his Facebook account from the computer.

A search warrant was executed at Jones’ workplace and residence. Computers, CDs and DVDs were recovered from both locations. Three of the compact discs contained 186 videos and 650 photographs of numerous, naked children and women, all in their homes and unaware that they were being filmed.

At least seven minor victims and one adult female victim have been identified from the images that Jones produced. Several additional victims cannot be identified because Jones did not film their faces. All of the identified minor victims attended the same school, and Jones had what appear to be yearbook photographs of some of these victims on his computer as well. Jones recorded his victims on different dates, sometimes over a period of several years.

One of the victims was a child whom Jones videotaped over a period when she was approximately 13 to 17 years old. Jones took at least 61 video images and 156 photographs of the girl, all of which were recovered from a compact disc in Jones’ workplace. Jones would hide in order to film the child in various states of undress.

Another image recovered from Jones’ computer media was a video of a 16-year old girl who, in 2008, filed a police report notifying authorities that she saw a flash outside of her bedroom window and believed that she was being filmed.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov. Details about Maryland’s program are available at www.justice.gov/usao/md/Safe-Childhood/index.html.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI, the Harford County Sheriff’s Office and the Maryland State Police for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Judson T. Mihok and Rachel M. Yasser, who prosecuted the case.