Posted on 01/15/2008 9:38:14 PM PST by Coleus
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A small-town mayor and church pastor was in jail Monday on charges of soliciting sex over the Internet from a police detective posing as a 13-year-old girl. Allen Kauffman, 63, was arrested Friday on four counts of felony enticement of a child in the latest sting orchestrated by a police detective in another southwest Missouri town, Diamond.
Prosecutors alleged in court filings that Kauffman believed he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl from the Joplin area in a Yahoo chat room last November and December. In online messages, Kauffman allegedly asked the girl for sex and for nude pictures and encouraged her to have sex with a girlfriend in front of a Webcam so Kauffman could watch.
"He very much believed he was talking to a 13-year-old girl," Diamond Police Chief Keith Brumfield said. Messages were left Monday with Kauffman's attorney, Mel Gilbert, who sought reduction of Kauffman's $50,000 bond. A phone message left at Kauffman's home was not returned.
A hearing was not immediately scheduled. Kauffman is mayor of Collins, a town of about 200 people in St. Clair County about 50 miles northwest of Springfield. He is married and serves as a pastor of the Temple Lot Church in Collins, Diamond police said.
It was the latest in a series of online sex stings by Diamond police Detective Jim Murray, a retired chief of the force he now works for. His investigations have led to 20 arrests, more than half of which have resulted in prison time for adult men convicted of soliciting sex from Murray's online character, Brumfield said. The other cases are pending. Murray, 69, typically poses as a 13-year-old girl in chat rooms and waits for others to make sexual advances.
http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080115/NEWS01/801150338/1007/NEWS01
When detectives came to arrest him at his home Thursday, Collins Mayor Allen Kauffman just wanted to know how he and police investigators could make it all go away, police said. Kauffman told them it wouldn’t be good for everyone to know the town mayor and pastor of Temple Lot Church in Collins was arrested for enticing a 13-year-old girl over an Internet chat room, police said.
But the 62-year-old Kauffman was still behind bars Monday in the Newton County Jail, facing four counts of enticement of a child. It was the result of an online Internet investigation by the Diamond Police Department that began in mid-November, said Diamond Police Chief Keith Brumfield.
Kauffman is being held on $50,000 bond, according to the Newton County Prosecutor’s office. A court date has not yet been scheduled. Diamond Police Detective Jim Murray said in a probable cause statement that he was giving an online Internet training session to a Jasper County detective on Nov. 16.
Murray was masquerading as a 13-year-old girl with the screen name “Cin” for “cindydiamond,” when “duke dukeadk” sent a private message asking if Cin lived in Diamond. Duke later asked Cin to add him to her Instant Messenger, and expressed interest in taking nude pictures and having sex with her. In one instant message reprinted in the probable cause statement, Kauffman told “Cin” he did not want to post photographs of himself on his online profile “so no one can trace me down.”
“He later turned on the webcam and took several shots of his face and body parts,” Brumfield said. In instant messages Dec. 11 and 12, Duke asked Cin if he could take some nude pictures of her and encouraged her to have sexual activity with a girl on a webcam so he could watch, according to the probable cause statement.
Duke said he had worked in Joplin for an insulation company and that he lived north of Springfield and shopped at Wal-Mart in Bolivar, according to the probable cause statement. It said a Joplin insulation company employee said the webcam photos might be Kauffman. After Murray completed all of his reports, he took them to the Newton County prosecutor, who issued a warrant for Kauffman’s arrest and set bond at $50,000, Brumfield said.
On Jan. 10, Brumfield and Murray went to Collins with the Newton County warrant to arrest Kauffman at his home. He lives down the road from the Church of Christ that he pastors, Brumfield said. Collins is a town of about 200 people in St. Clair County, about 50 miles northwest of Springfield. “At first he did not have any remembrance to what was going on,” Brumfield said. “As soon as some of the screen shots were shown to him, and some of the things he said were shown to him... he said ‘Yea, I made a mistake... How can we make this go away?’ because of his position in town and being a pastor,” Brumfield said.
Kauffman is also married.
He offered no resistance when the officers arrested him, however, Brumfield added. The Diamond Police Department has conducted successful Internet stings since Murray, the retired Diamond police chief, launched them in 2002, Brumfield said. Since then the department has made about 20 arrests in the area, 11 resulting in convictions and nine are pending, he said.
“We call him ‘the patrol officer of the Internet,’” Brumfield said. Murray and Diamond officers have arrested individuals ranging in age from 24 to 62, he said, making Kauffman the oldest person snagged during the Diamond Police Department’s crackdown.
The Internet: where men are men, and women are men, and 13-year-old girls are FBI men.
Church pastor caught in a child sex sting.
It just goes to show you can’t trust *uckabee just because he claims to be a man of God.
At least the wolves are being smoked out of the henhouses.
I have an extreme dislike for Huckabee. But I do not think he’s a pervert. He’s creepy. He’s too slick. But that doesn’t make him a child molester.
I didn’t say he’s a child molester.
I was just pointing out that people shouldn’t be taken in by him just because he claims to be a man of God. A lot of times really bad people hide behind religious piety as a cover for their own wicked ways.
Is the perp a Democrat?
I really think that the hen houses are full of wolves. It is a liberal cliché, but there is some truth to the notion that the most intolerant and judgmental Bible-thumping preachers are the most likely to be wallowing in sin and depravity themselves.
-ccm
“He is married “
huh!
Silly me...I thought celibacy was the cause of such behavior. /s
Being married is no guarantee for having sex on a regular basis.
Especially sex with teenagers.
LOL
Nor does having sex on a regular basis keep predators from preying on others.
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