Harrisonville man sentenced to prison for possessing child pornography
A Harrisonville man was sentenced to eight years in prison this month after pleading guilty to five counts of possessing child pornography.
Cass County Circuit Judge William B. Collins sentenced Alexander G. Crawford, 41, to serve eight years in prison and ordered Crawford to be placed in the sex offender assessment unit. Crawford will receive credit for time already served.
The defendant entered a guilty plea in October and was sentenced earlier this month, online court records said.
A probable cause statement filed in 2015 by a Gladstone police officer and a member of the Western Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force details how authorities found child pornography videos on Crawford’s personal laptop.
The charges were filed in July 2015 following an undercover investigation by the Western Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force into child pornography files being shared through the “Gnutella Peer to Peer” file sharing network.
During the investigation, a detective identified a computer with an IP address as being “a potential source for at least three files of investigative interest,” court records said. The computer of interest was using a program known as LimeWire Music to share the files.
The detective successfully downloaded a file March 24, 2015, from the computer in question. The file was of a naked prepubescent female child, who was being sexually abused by a man.
A query of the IP address through the American Registry for Internet Numbers showed that it was registered to the Embarq Corporation, also known as CenturyLink. By March 26, 2015, the detective obtained a subpoena from the Clay County prosecutor’s office to obtain the subscriber information associated with the IP address.
Embarq complied with the subpoena and showed that the IP address in question was assigned to AGC Automotive, 1500 Clearwater Drive in Harrisonville.
Three months later, a detective with the Western Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force applied for and was granted a search warrant from Cass County Circuit Court to search AGC Automotive.
Members of the task force and local authorities searched the vehicle repair shop on July 1, 2015. The owner of the business, Crawford, was there at the time of the search and said he was the only employee working at AGC Automotive.
Crawford also said he lived in a tan building on the premises.
During the search, authorities found a Gateway laptop computer with at least 39 videos of interest.
Many of the videos, court records said, depicted young females who appeared to be under 13. Authorities said the videos appeared to show children naked or engaged in sexual activity with men or other children.
Crawford initially denied any knowledge of the file-sharing programs or any involvement with child pornography, court records said. However, after authorities confronted Crawford with the videos found on the laptop, he said he used LimeWire to download pornography, but stated he downloaded “web cam” videos of older teenage girls.
Crawford said sometimes when he downloaded those videos, he would get videos of young children. He said he deleted pornographic videos depicting young children and denied a sexual interest in young children.
Authorities said many of the child pornography files, however, had been downloaded as recently as June 27, 2015. Crawford was charged with five counts of possession of child pornography by July 2015.
He is currently being held in the Western Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in St. Joseph, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
Kaitlyn Schwers: 816-234-7909, @kaitlynschwers
This story was originally published December 14, 2017 at 3:48 PM with the headline "Harrisonville man sentenced to prison for possessing child pornography."