Prosecutors Win Maximum Sentence for Houston Child Predator SAN MARCOS, November 16, 2004 - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott won a resounding victory in a Hays County courtroom late Monday in a week-long trial of a Houston man found guilty on three counts of Internet sex crimes intended to physically harm a child.

Michael Edward Kilpatrick, 47, was sentenced by a jury to a maximum 20 years in prison and fined $10,000 for his crime, one of the lengthiest sentences yet handed down in one of Attorney General Abbott’s Cyber Crimes cases.

“Again we are seeing the fruits of our labors to take would-be child sex offenders off the Internet and off our streets,” said Attorney General Abbott. “If these offenders will go to such lengths to meet a child in this manner, then we in the law enforcement arena will also go to great lengths to see that they receive the punishment they deserve.”

Th e jury deliberated just over an hour last Friday to find Kilpatrick, a former Hewlett-Packard employee, guilty of criminal solicitation of a minor, attempted aggravated assault of a child and attempted sexual performance by a child, all felony offenses. The verdict reflects Kilpatrick’s attempt in August 2003 to meet an individual he believed to be a 13-year-old girl he solicited for sex in an Internet chat room.

The “girl” was an undercover investigator from Attorney General Abbott’s Cyber Crimes Unit. Kilpatrick drove from Houston to meet the girl and was arrested near Buda by Cyber Crimes officers and Hays County Sheriff’s deputies and officers from the U.S. Secret Service. He had booked a hotel room in south Austin prior to driving to meet the girl.

During the punishment phase, Cyber Crimes prosecutors called two of Kilpatrick’s stepdaughters from a previous marriage. They testified that the defendant touched them inappropriately when they lived with him. Another expert witness who works with sex offenders testified for the prosecution.

Assistant Attorneys General John Saba and Laura Popps prosecuted the case at the request of Hays County District Attorney Michael Wenk.

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