Saturday, May 12, 2007

Taxpayers to foot bill for internet pervert's appeal

Apparently, prison life has not been what Gary Blankenship expected.

Blankenship, 57, formerly of Neosho and at one time an official at O'Sullivan Industries, has filed documents attempting to get out of his prison sentence...despite the fact that he was not convicted, but pleaded guilty Oct. 19 to possession of child pornography and promoting obscenity. Apparently, he received more prison time than he expected after agreeing to plea guilty to only two counts, isntead of the original 10.

Blankenship was caught by one of Diamond Police officer Jim Murray's ongoing Internet sex stings. Murray entered a chat room pretending to be an underaged girl. Police say Blankenship propositioned the "teen," arranged for a meeting with her to have sex, then was arrested when he arrived on Jan. 27, 2005.
Blankenship was initially charged with eight counts of possession of child pornography, one count of enticing a child, and one count of promoting obscene material to a minor.

The case was heard in McDonald County Circuit Court on a change of venue from Newton County.

Judge Kevin Selby ruled on March 29 that Blankenship could proceed as a pauper, meaning the taxpayers will pay for a public defender to represent him.

11 comments:

Aimee said...

Was he not smart enough to talk with his attorney about the length of his potential sentence prior to making his guilty plea?

Oh, wait, he probably wasn't, since he was fulfilling his obsessions during work hours and left work early to meet up with the "teen" that resulted in his arrest in the first place.

Now we have to pay so this child-porn-loving-low-life is not imprisoned for the time the courts have decided (following his guilty plea). If I had decided his sentence, he would be in jail for a very long time (maybe less time, because he plead guilty). He could appeal, but the Court of Aimee does not hear appeals, especially for people who look at our children as a source of sexual pleasure (and especially if they plead guilty.)

Anonymous said...

Most of the time you either get what you pay for or you get less than what you paid for. I doubt Blankenship will be the exception to the rule.

Anonymous said...

The following facts never made it into the court records:

Blankenship was arrested at 7:50 pm and by 12:43 a.m. that same night he had posted a $100,000.00 bond (not bad for a pauper) and was in a room called LoliAngels. This group produced and traded child porn. The were 32 members of this group and Blankenship entered the “Post” area of the room and evidently posted a warning because within 2 days the group no longer existed.

The members had email addresses such as dadandlittleone@yahoo.com, sober_sucks@yahoo.com, and Yahoo profiles such as “alaboy12” “daddyneedsu2003,” “littlejoie13,” “footlover,” and “lolitaart_lover.” Blankenship’s profile was “lngtlltxn3.” The 31 other members were sent an email from a “MoGuy710” that stated that “lngtlltxn3” was having computer problems and if they had any recent pictures that they could email them to MoGuy710 and he would see that “lngtlltxn3” received them. None of the LiliAngels members responded.

Phone numbers were also recovered that had female names and notations, “she called me,” “calls me-Detroit,” “Pic Trader. Mobile-Austin,” and “classypeachgirl.”

In Blankenship’s Yahoo Messenger were “friends” with such names as “tightpussy4oldmen,” “ozarkflirt,” and “girlyprincess16.”

In Blankenship’s Yahoo address book were 72 email addresses with such names as “daddyslilasslicker,” “Does Phone,” “hot_bi_fem_4_you69,” “nastybigirl_tx,” “PicTrader3,” “school_girl_luvs_fun69”, and “webblond23.”

On January 3, 2005, lngtlltxn3 sent 3 pictures of a nude young girl to pantyselling@yahoo.com with the comment, “Enjoy.”

The day after Blankenship’s arrest, a Diamond officer went to speak to O’Sullivan’s attorney in Lamar and was waiting in the front office when a secretary passed by and said, “I am glad you caught him.”

Anonymous said...

I don't understand how you can plead guilty and then want to appeal. What a waste of taxpayers money.

Anonymous said...

Isn't that just ducky! I knew him for a period of time at O'Sulivan and you would have never guessed it. I think he got off to easy the way it was.

Anonymous said...

Way to go Jim Murray!!! You are a GREAT guy for doing what you are doing.

Anonymous said...

I hear his suckretary was in on it too...Is she doing him now too? I mean is she doing time too?

Anonymous said...

You know, that kind of innuendo is an explanation for why one would hide behind being anonymous. Without substantiation (which would be difficult), that is slanderous!

I worked with him at good old O'Sullivan and to a person, all of his employees, superiors and peers appeared to be clueless. After the fact, people said things like "that explained a lot of strange behaviors", but no one came out and said they knew what he had been doing. He wasn't close to anybody in the office. Guess we were all too old! If the Company had known they would have gotten rid of him. Seems to me that they did that once before with another employee.

Feedback was that Gary was a little smarmy, but he hid his disease very well as far as I knew. You NEVER heard him even telling off-color jokes - a rarity in that crowd.

Anonymous said...

Several of us knew he was up to something. We just had no idea he was trading pictures of babies and small children being raped.

We knew what he was doing was probably nasty, we did not know it was illegal.

Anonymous said...

I worked with him also. You never would have suspected that he was a low life to this extent!

Anonymous said...

To the one liner:

That makes three incredibly insightful posts from you on this issue. Do you have anything to add?