Carthage man sentenced to 24 years for sexually exploiting Michigan child

A Carthage man was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison during a hearing in U. S. District Court in Springfield for the sexual exploitation of a Michigan child.

Judge David P. Rush sentenced Charles Ward Kuenzel, 26 to 253 months in prison followed by 20 years under supervised probation.

Kuentzel's crime was described in a news release issued by the U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri following his September 12 guilty plea.

By pleading guilty today, Kuentzel admitted that he used a child victim to produce child pornography from Sept. 1, 2020, to April 21, 2021.

According to today’s plea agreement, the mother of the child victim, identified in court documents as Jane Doe 1, contacted law enforcement in Michigan because her daughter was in an inappropriate online relationship with an adult man. 

The child victim told investigators she met Kuentzel in a public Discord game server, through which they communicated. FBI agents in in the Detroit division were able to identify Kuentzel in the online chats, in which Kuentzel and the child victim sent one another sexually explicit images of themselves. Kuentzel engaged in video chats and sexual conversations with the victim.

Officers executed a search warrant at Kuentzel’s residence on Aug. 26, 2021, and seized his cell phone and microSD card. Numerous images of the child victim, including child pornography, were found on the cell phone and the microSD card.

During the forensic examination, investigators also found several sexually explicit images of another child victim, identified in court documents as Jane Doe 2. She told investigators she was 14 years old when she met Kuentzel on Omegle, and they communicated through the Snapchat and Kik applications. Kuentzel requested nude images from Jane Doe 2, which she provided.