Source: Office of United States Attorneys
ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey on Friday sentenced a registered sex offender from St. Francois County, Missouri to 293 months in prison after the man was caught again with child sexual abuse material.
Judge Autrey added three more years to David Russell Darr Jr.’s sentence because he violated his supervised release in a 2010 case in which he pleaded guilty to production of child pornography.
Darr, 35, of St. Francois County near Farmington, pleaded guilty in June to one count of receipt of child pornography. The investigation into Darr began in February of 2023, when the Missouri State Highway Patrol received four separate CyberTipline reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Three tips indicated that Darr had uploaded child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and the fourth showed that he sent an image containing CSAM to someone on Instagram, his plea agreement says. A search of his room located a microSD card taped under his bed that also contained CSAM, with more found later on a cell phone, the plea says.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Becker prosecuted the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.