Cargo airline Pan American Airways founder Robert L. Hedrick has been found guilty on child pornography charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
He was arrested after undercover officers in Wisconsin and Louisiana who were posed as young girls in chat rooms, said that Hedrick talked to them in sexually explicit chats, reported the Associated Press.
He was convicted on May 21 of "distribution and possession of child pornography, transfer of obscene materials to a minor and attempted sexual exploitation of children," by a judge in Texas, reported the AP.
Hedrick claimed to the court that he was framed and that he is innocent. "I can't ask the court for anything," Hedrick said, reported The Brownsville Herald. "I was framed. I didn't do what I was charged and convicted of."
The Brownsville Herald reported that the government originally asked for a 90 year sentence. Prosecutors showed the evidence to the court of the chats undercover officers had with Hedrick when he thought they were 13 and 14-year-old girls. Hedrick's defense attorney claimed it was not Hedrick at the keyboard and that he had enemies that set him up, reported the AP.
In the chat rooms, Attorney Violet La Tawn said that Hedrick's goal was to get young girls to send him nude photos. He would begin conversations in internet chat rooms then send them pornography.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Violet LaTawn Warsaw told jurors that Hedrick's ultimate goal was to convince teenage girls to send him nude photographs. To that end, he searched for them in Internet chat rooms, began conversations that quickly turned sexually explicit and sent them pornography.
"If he had pleaded guilty, because of his age, he would have died in prison," Defense attorney Ed Stapleton said to the AP. "At least this way he'll have an appeal."
Hedrick founded Pan American Airways, which was a cargo airline that he set up in the building that used to belong to Pan American World Airways, which collapsed in 1991. His airline had flights that went between the U.S. and Latin America.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
