A man who transported child pornography from Ashdown, Ark., to Broken Bow, Okla., pleaded guilty Thursday in a Texarkana federal court.
Patrick Kellam, 42, admits he downloaded images of child porn while living in Ashdown which he kept on his cell phone, a computer tablet, and a laptop, in court documents filed following his plea hearing Thursday before U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey in Texarkana. Kellam took his devices, and his offensive, illegal pornography with him when he moved to Broken Bow in June 2013.
Kellam appeared before Hickey with Texarkana lawyer John Pickett for a plea hearing Thursday morning. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Ferguson said Kellam’s plea agreement includes forfeiture of the Verizon Samsung phone, Samsung tablet and Dell laptop on which child pornography was found.
Kellam came to the attention of Arkansas State Police investigators in 2013 when they were contacted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. NCMEC was alerted by Verizon in March 2013 that Kellam was attempting to upload child pornography to a cloud-based storage service. Other services such as Google and Yahoo, alerted NCMEC as well, Ferguson said.
When state police investigators contacted Homeland Security about Kellam’s online activities, Homeland Security went looking for him at his last address in Ashdown and learned he had moved to Broken Bow. In June 2015, during an interview with Homeland Security at his Broken Bow home, Kellam admitted he had been downloading child porn for some time and, “knew it was wrong.”
Kellam admitted some of the images he kept involved infants being sexually exploited and that at least one involved a pre-pubescent girl between the ages of 6 and 9 years being sodomized by a grown man. In all, investigators found 67 images which clearly fit the definition of child pornography in Kellam’s possession. Ferguson said the investigation began in the Texarkana Division of the Western District of Arkansas and ended in Oklahoma.
Kellam was released March 29 following a detention hearing in Texarkana on a $5,000 unsecured bond and the condition that he wear an electronic monitor. Hickey
Kellam faces five to 20 years in federal prison at sentencing and must register as a sex offender. Hickey warned Kellam that if he fails to appear in court, he will face a new charge and more time behind bars. Kellam will return to court for sentencing in a few months.
