"The federal investigator who reviewed this, and who works both the east and west sides of Missouri, said the size of this collection was in the top 10 percent he had ever seen," assistant U.S. attorney Katharine Fincham said during the hearing. "I've been prosecuting here for eight years and I've never see a collection like this."
The sickening standout -- and boy is that saying something in this case -- were multiple videos of a girl called "Vicky," shot from the ages of 5 to 12. In the videos, Vicky is hogtied, masked, tied to beds, and raped by adult men. Investigators say Laursen watched these files again and again, and even had his thousands of images arranged in a way that would make it easier to access whichever film he was in the mood for. He did this while his 15-year-old daughter was present in the house, on a computer they both used.
As if collecting the images wasn't bad enough, Laursen actually paid people to provide him with images and videos, directly contributing to the sexual abuse of young children.
Before sentencing, three of Laursen's friends came forward as character witnesses and pleaded with the judge for lenient sentencing. These included a retired pastor from Lee's Summit who admitted he had little information on Laursen's case beyond attending a prior sentencing hearing during which he did hear about the more gruesome computer files but still felt Laursen could benefit the community. A longtime friend of Laursen's from New York City also spoke to his good character, and stood by that even while Fincham presented her with photos taken from Laursen's computer and asked if those didn't reflect a conflict with describing Laursen as a harmless man. A third, who taught with him, said she didn't know the child pornography-loving part of Bill Laursen, and therefor, she didn't have enough evidence to contradict her opinion of him as a loving, caring man. She said this with photos from Laursen's computer about eight inches away from her face, in Fincham's hand. Nope, just not enough evidence there. Seriously.
At one point when Laursen's pastor was talking about how the musician had taken responsibility for his actions and not played the victim, Fincham asked if he'd read Laursen's comments in my story. The pastor had not. As a journalist, I'd like to think that contributed in some way. Even just an extra 24-hours in his cell.
Before sentencing Laursen had a chance to speak to the judge, saying he'd learned his lesson and finally accepted responsibility for the hurt he'd caused, and that he was a changed man who would seek to better himself. All familiar lines from the same script he used on friends in the jazz scene when he was denying possessing any graphic pictures of children being raped. So either he has changed, or he's just a sociopath.
As part of Laursen's sentencing, he will have to make restitution payments to Vicky for the rest of his life, including his incarceration totally at least 10 percent of his annual income. He'll be under supervision for a decade after his release, and won't be allowed near children unless some sort of supervisor is present and approved. Assuming he completes his sentence, he won't be out of jail until he's roughly 64.
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I remember the story from last year.
Though you suggest that having pictures of teenage girls isn't any better than "child" porn, you have no idea how much I wish I was reading about the feds finding a couple dozen pictures of 16-year-olds instead of the videos of Vicky.
What a sick piece of shit.
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