Kansan pleads guilty to luring teenage girl via text messages
Posted on Friday, May 16, 2008
FORT SMITH — A Kansas man pleaded guilty Thursday in U. S. District Court to one of two counts charging him with trying to contact a 14-year-old Fort Smith girl he met through cell phone text messaging to have sex.
Timothy Whittenburg, 43, of Ellinwood, Kan., entered the plea before U. S. District Judge Robert Dawson to a felony charge of coercion or enticement of a minor.
Whittenburg’s plea was part of an agreement with the government under which another charge in the two-count indictment, traveling in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, would be dismissed when Whittenburg is sentenced.
Dawson told Whittenburg he could be sentenced to five to 30 years in prison, fined up to $ 250, 000 or both. Sentencing is expected in several weeks, following the completion of a presentence report by the court’s probation department.
Until then, Whittenburg will remain in the Sebastian County jail, where he has been held since his arrest in September.
Whittenburg had been charged in Sebastian County Circuit Court with Internet stalking of a child, but Dawson said in court Thursday the state charge was dismissed.
According to Fort Smith police, Whittenburg believed he was traveling to Fort Smith to meet with a 14-year-old girl he had been communicating with by cell phone text messages.
Police reports said the teen’s mother had confiscated her cell phone following an argument. While in the mother’s possession, her daughter’s phone received several text messages from what she believed to be older men.
She identified herself as the girl’s mother and scared off all but one who continued to send messages. She played along posing as her daughter and received several sexually explicit messages meant for her daughter.
On Aug. 27, the girl’s mother went to police when the male caller wanted to make a date to meet. Police took over the daughter’s identity and set up a date for Sept. 7 to meet the caller in Fort Smith.
On that day, Whittenburg drove a yellow Peterbilt tractor, and officers spotted and followed it when it exited Interstate 40 at Roland, Okla. They followed the truck into Fort Smith, where it stopped near the spot the police had set for the meeting.
When Whittenburg moved in to meet with a decoy posing as the teenager, recruited from the Van Buren Police Department, officers staking out the location arrested him.
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