Child Porn Production Leads To Jail Time For Silver Spring Man

SILVER SPRING, MD — A 23-year-old Silver Spring man was sentenced to prison for producing child pornography after special agents seized over 1,000 photos and videos of minors from his home, United States District Judge George J. Hazel announced Tuesday.

Demetrius Murray will serve 21 years in prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release. He will also have to register as a sex offender.

Prosecutors say Murray contacted an 11-year-old boy in Utah through Xbox Live and then on a private chat on the internet chat service KIK. The two Skyped, where Murray streamed pictures of himself masturbating to the boy, prosecutors said. The boy then created a video of himself masturbating, which depicted child pornography, and sent the video to Murray as part of a text message.

The victim's mother learned of Murray's interaction with her son and reported it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

As a result of the cybertip, Homeland Security Investigations agents and officers from the Montgomery County Police Department executed a search warrant at Murray’s Silver Spring home in January 2016. Agents recovered more than 600 images and more than 400 videos depicting minors, the vast majority of which depicted child pornography, prosecutors said.

Murray's iPhone was seized during that search and showed that in May and June 2015, Murray engaged in text messaging with another boy who lived in Alabama. The boy told Murray he was 14-years-old, and Murray requested he send pictures of his body and pictures of himself masturbating. When Murray learned that the victim had a 4-year-old relative, Murray asked the boy to send pictures of the relative performing oral sex on him, prosecutors said.

The sentence was announced by Acting United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Stephen M. Schenning; Special Agent in Charge Andre R. Watson of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); and Sheriff Terry Thompson of the Weber County, Utah, Sheriff’s Office.

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