Seattle ex-con pleads guilty to abducting MA girl
A Seattle man with a long rap sheet has admitted that he coerced a 14-year-old Bay State girl into sending him pornographic videos and images of herself and to abscond with him back to Seattle.
“If you run away let me know we can take this show on the road I need a partner in crime,” Jabarie Phillips wrote to the middle school girl on Facebook when she told him that she had some issues with her family.
Phillips, who also goes by the last name Lindsey, 44, pleaded guilty to one count of coercion and enticement of a minor in federal court in Boston Wednesday.
U.S. Senior District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. scheduled sentencing for Sept. 8. Phillips could see up to a lifetime in prison for the crime.
“Are you hearing yourself you got out of the joint after doing 12 years, and now u tryna fw a 14 year old? U tryna do 12 more?” the girl had written to Phillips in a Facebook chat on April 23, 2019, according to a federal court document. The “fw” abbreviation stands for “(expletive) with.”
He had been doing hard time for a 2008 manslaughter conviction, the latest in a rap sheet that includes domestic violence and resisting arrest and a 1996 robbery, according to court records.
On May 1, 2019, the minor took an Uber from Fall River to Boston Logan International Airport to meet up with Phillips, according to the document.
The two then took a cab to South Station to board their 8 p.m. bus to Seattle.
The next day, her mother reported the girl missing to her local police department, who shared the information with the FBI.
The FBI matched the public Facebook picture of Phillips to surveillance footage from the airport, tracked his purchase of the Greyhound tickets and made note of the bus route and schedule.
On May 3, police in Minneapolis intercepted the bus, arrested Phillips and recovered the girl.
Police interviewed the girl, who told them that the two had been talking on Facebook and in video chats for two months before their illicit trip.
She told them he knew how old she was and that he made her perform oral sex on him in the bus and that he was already asking for intercourse.
Phillips had not been shy in asking the girl for what he wanted, despite her age, with snippets of their conversation detailed in court documents showing he wrote her things like “can you pull your pants down and show me what it looks like” and “What’s wrong with letting me watch don’t take offense!!” and “I wouldn’t ask nobody else to do this but you I feel I gotten to know you.”