United States Attorney James T. Jacks
Northern District of Texas

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txn/

GARLAND, TEXAS, MAN SENTENCED TO NINE YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON
ON FEDERAL CHILD PORNOGRAPHY CONVICTION

Defendant Disposed of Personal Computer, With More Than
250,000 Images of Child Pornography, in Church Dumpster

DALLAS — William Turner McBurney, 58, was sentenced this afternoon by U.S. District Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn to 108 months (nine years) in federal prison for receiving child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. In addition, Judge Lynn ordered that McBurney serve a lifetime of supervised release and register as a sex offender. He must surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on November 2, 2010.

According to documents filed in the case, in February 2009, McBurney disposed of a computer and external hard drives by throwing them in a dumpster at the Eastern Hills Baptist Church in Garland, Texas. A church employee found the computer equipment and turned it over to the Garland Police Department. After a detective found child pornography images on the external hard drive, he sent it to the North Texas Regional Computer Forensics Lab (NTRCFL) for further examination, which resulted in the discovery of more than 250,000 images and videos of child pornography.

When officers with the Garland Police Department went to McBurney’s residence in Garland to execute an arrest warrant, McBurney admitted disposing of the computer equipment in the church dumpster. He admitted that he had been collecting child pornography for many years, collecting thousands of images. He gave detectives an additional laptop computer, tower, CDs and a thumb drive that were in his home and led them to an offsite storage facility where he had more electronics containing child pornography. Detectives found books and CDs containing images of nude children. An examination of the thumb drive revealed more images of nude young girls between the age of 11 and 13. It also contained 55 encrypted video files. McBurney admitted that he had been downloading child pornography onto the thumb drive when the police arrived that day.

 McBurney also admitted that he viewed and downloaded child pornography in the Starbucks parking lot because it had open wireless access. He also admitted that detectives would find thousands of additional images and videos of child pornography of the equipment they seized that day.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov/

The case was investigated by the Garland Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); Assistant U.S. Attorney Camille Sparks prosecuted.

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