U.S. wraps up its portion of trial in child-porn case

Federal prosecutors rested their case Wednesday against Robert Nathan Hensley of Cabot, who is facing child-pornography charges accusing him of trying to arrange online to use his homemade “sex machine” on a 14-year-old girl.

During the text messages that Hensley, 57, exchanged with undercover FBI agents who were pretending to be the girl’s father, he described how he would like to tie the girl up and “work her over,” and offered to buy her for $3,000, promising she would experience “a lifetime of bondage and sex.”

But Hensley, who operated a heating and air conditioning repair business, Last Place Heat & Air, contends that the text messages he exchanged with undercover FBI agents were misunderstood. He says he only tried to match the raunchy language used by the agents because he believed he could help authorities catch a child predator who advertised “daddy/daughter” activities on Craigslist.

Then 55 and a twice-convicted child sex offender, Hensley exchanged text messages with the undercover agents on Oct. 12 and 13 of 2017, after he found their phone number through an ad titled “young, fresh, petite.” He was arrested on Oct. 13, 2017, after the agents stopped his vehicle at a Cabot intersection.

Agent John Sablatura testified that although Craigslist won’t accept advertisements offering sex with anyone younger than 18, child predators know to look past the disclaimers and ascertain the true age of the solicited person through a conversation with whoever posted the ad.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, a jury of nine women and three men heard testimony from Sablatura, who was one of the undercover agents who exchanged texts with Hensley, as well as from computer experts — one who works for the FBI and one who is a consultant for defense attorneys.

Another FBI agent, Hasheem Alexander, generated the bulk of the undercover messages with Hensley, but wasn’t available to testify because, according to an order filed in late November, he is under investigation on accusations that he misrepresented time and attendance reports and “failed to comply with agency conduct policies.”

Jurors also heard Thursday from FBI Agent Timothy Whitlock, who described lists of websites he found had been visited through Hensley’s laptop computer, even if they had been deleted in the browser history.

He explained that all images from any Web page ever visited, even if only momentarily, are saved on the hard drive. Whitlock acknowledged on cross-examination that he didn’t find any indications that Hensley had conducted searches for child pornography on either of his cellphones or his laptop.

Expounding on that, defense attorney Latrece Gray presented testimony from Robert Gray, a computer consultant who said he reviewed Hensley’s computer in Whitlock’s presence. Robert Gray, who is no relation to the defense attorney, described the inner workings of computers to the jury. He confirmed that the FBI uncovered the files from Hensley’s hard drive, but said it is “absolutely” possible for a computer to retain an image that a user never saw and didn’t know existed.

Any Web page accessed, even if only through a pop-up advertisement, transfers its “entire contents” to the computer user’s hard drive, Gray said.

Latrece Gray had earlier told jurors that Hensley liked to visit adult pornography sites, which aren’t illegal. Robert Gray said the websites Hensley visited, including Craigslist and the now-defunct Backpage. com, could have transferred images of child pornography that he never viewed, but that were buried within the site, to Hensley’s computer when he viewed adult pornography.

The computer consultant also acknowledged that a computer cleaning application had been started on Hensley’s laptop shortly before FBI agents confiscated it, but said he couldn’t tell if the computer had actually been “cleaned” at the time.

Because of other proceedings scheduled Friday before U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who is presiding over the trial, it is scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. Monday, at which point Hensley may testify.