Midwest City Man To Serve 27 Years In Federal Prison For Producing Child Porn

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – JACK RUSSELL OWENS, 62, of Midwest City, Oklahoma, was sentenced by United States Chief District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange to serve 324 months in federal prison for producing child pornography, announced Sanford C. Coats, United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

According to court records, Owens, a former professional photographer, made pornographic images of prepubescent girls in his Midwest City home. He used both regular cameras and hidden video cameras. He took the pictures and videos in the bathroom, in and around the backyard pool, and in the attic. Some of the pornographic pictures taken by Owens were surreptitious; others were not. Evidence showed that Owens, who frequented girls gymnastics events and went to nudist resorts, had been taking pictures of young girls—both clothed and unclothed—since the 1980s. In addition, evidence also showed that Owens had touched the genitals of a 9-year-old girl on more than one occasion. Owens had told the child, now a young adult, that she would get in trouble if she reported him.

In addition to homemade child pornography, Owens also possessed approximately 20,000 images of child pornography that he had downloaded from the Internet on two different home computers and an external hard drive. The bulk of Owens’s collection depicted girls between the ages of 5 and 11.

Owens’s misconduct came to light when a local citizen, through a chance encounter, observed child pornography on one of Owens’s computers and reported it to the Midwest City Police Department. Owens pled guilty to producing child pornography on May 8, 2013.

This case was part of Project Safe Childhood, the flagship program in the Department of Justice’s National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, and was the result of an investigation conducted by the Midwest City Police Department and the Edmond Police Department, in conjunction with the AT&T Digital Crime lab at the University of Central Oklahoma. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brandon Hale and Chris Stephens.