Frakes found guilty of child pornography

By Editor | March 1, 2017 |

A Fayette County jury took little time in returning three guilty verdicts for a Vandalia man charged with possession of child pornography.

A jury trial for William B. Frakes began with jury selection on Monday morning and ended on Wednesday morning after the defense rested with Frakes invoking his right not to testify.
The jury found Frakes, 56, guilty of two Class X felonies alleging that he “knowingly obtained a photograph of a child depicted as being bound, actually or by simulation, whom the defendant would have reason to know is under 13 years of age” and a Class 2 felony alleging that Frakes “with knowledge of the nature thereof, possessed a photography, a child whom the defendant reasonably should have known to be under the age of 13 years.”
After the guilty verdicts were returned, Associate Judge Kevin Parker set a sentencing hearing for 1 p.m. on April 13.
Fayette County State’s Attorney Joshua Morrison, who prosecuted the case, said that Illinois law mandates that the sentences on the three counts be served consecutively. With the maximum penalties being 30 years for Class X felonies and seven years for Class 2 felonies, the maximum penalty for Frakes is 67 years, Morrison said.
Frakes was represented at trial by Robert Bas of Edwardsville.
Frakes was taken into custody on July 18 of last year by Vandalia Police after three child pornography counts were filed by Morrison’s office earlier in the day. The charges were filed after search warrants were executed at Frakes’s residence.
Morrison said that the case was initiated when Flickr, an online photo storage site owned by Yahoo, notified the National Center for Exploited Children of photos recognized as child pornography.
The NCEC, in turn, notified the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, which, in turn, contacted Scott Morrison, a Greenville Police sergeant who serves as an investigator with the AG’s child pornography task force, Joshua Morrison said.
During his investigation, Scott Morrison was unable to get a phone in Frakes’s possession to charge, and he contacted Joseph L. Purfield Jr. of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, who assisted with that procedure.
Both Scott Morrison and Purfield were among the prosecution witnesses during the trial, which included the presentation of three photos, two of sexual nature that depict a child under the age of 13 in a bound position and one that has a sexual connotation, Joshua Morrison said.
The state’s attorney, in his case, said that Frakes uploaded the photos to his phone and also to Flickr. While the photos were deleted from the phone, Morrison said, they were not deleted from the Flickr account.
During his opening statement, Bas contended that the photos inadvertently showed up on Frakes’s phone, and that he did not know they were there until search warrants were executed.
However, Morrison argued, the act of uploading the photos to the phone and to a Flickr account “takes affirmative action,” that the photos could not inadvertently show up like a website pop-up.