Stay in jail, judge orders Arkansas man in child-enticement case

Brian Newman
Brian Newman

A Lonoke County man was arrested one night last month as he sat in his pickup in a Ward cemetery, authorities said, an unsheathed knife at his side, waiting for an 11-year-old girl to emerge from her grandmother's nearby house.

He sped away when law enforcement officers who had sneaked up behind him suddenly turned on their blue lights. But he didn't get far, one of those officers, FBI Agent Nizam Hasheem Alexander, testified Tuesday in a federal courtroom.

Alexander said that when officers arrested 40-year-old Brian Newman of Austin after a brief chase, they discovered that, just as he had promised the girl in a text message a short time earlier, he wore no underwear beneath his clothes.

After hearing Alexander testify about the messages Newman was said to have sent the girl through her Facebook account over a period of two days, and the agent's subsequent interviews with three of Newman's ex-wives, U.S. Magistrate Judge Beth Deere ordered Newman to stay in jail until a federal child-enticement charge against him is resolved.

"Based on evidence of multiple reports of child molestation, I'm detaining Mr. Newman," Deere said, noting that "the fact that nothing actually happened at the cemetery kind of misses the point."

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She was referring to the ex-wives' statements to the FBI agent about complaints that surfaced about Newman after they were divorced from him -- in all cases, after he cheated on them with other women.

The agent testified that he later interviewed Newman, who denied all the allegations. But Alexander said an Arkansas State Police report from years ago reported a "true finding" stemming from one girl's complaint, though the state Department of Human Services' Children and Family Services Division later dropped the case, and he couldn't determine why.

Alexander also testified that he has spoken with police in Pennsylvania and knows they are preparing an arrest warrant for Newman in connection with another girl's report.

Noting that federal prosecutors appear to have a "strong case" against Newman based on his captured text messages, and despite the testimony of his parents, both of whom indicated they didn't "give any credence" to the reports of his ex-wives, Deere denied his request to be set free until trial.

"He's a predator," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristin Bryant had argued, urging Deere to detain Newman. "He preys on young girls."

Attorney Latrece Gray of the federal public defender's office argued that Newman has no prior child molestation charges and that no child pornography was found on his mobile phone, which he reportedly threw out of the truck as he fled from police in the cemetery.

She said his only prior conviction was for burglary in 1995, when he was 18, and suggested he could be placed on electronic monitoring while staying at his mother's home in Austin to ensure he didn't present a danger to the community.

Gray had presented testimony from Newman's father, Steve Newman of Mount Vernon, and his mother, Melody Lance of Austin, who called Brian Newman's ex-wives "vindictive" and "manipulative."

"They're as thick as thieves," Lance testified about Newman's first and second wives, who she said are friends and regularly correspond on Facebook. The older woman admitted on cross-examination by Bryant that she had confronted the 11-year-old girl's grandmother, who reported Newman's texts to police, and admonished her that "we could have handled that in-house."

Lance testified that she was willing to be Newman's third-party custodian and let him stay at her house, even though she and her roommate regularly babysit a nine-month-old child at the home -- another factor Deere mentioned in declining to release Newman to his mother.

Newman was arrested Aug. 17 on a federal criminal complaint supported by an affidavit written by Alexander, who is a member of the FBI's Denied Innocence Task Force, which investigates violations of state and federal law involving the sexual exploitation of children.

Alexander said in the affidavit that he was contacted Aug. 15 by the Ward Police Department, after the 11-year-old girl's grandmother reported that she had seen inappropriate messages from Newman on her granddaughter's Facebook messenger account.

Alexander said the comments started out with "small talk" and then focused on how well the girls' pants fit her, "especially in the front," and included statements urging her not to tell anyone what he had said.

When Newman texted, "your absolutely beautiful," she blocked him from her Facebook account and ceased communication with him, Alexander said. When Alexander interviewed the girl, she told him she knew Newman but had rarely spoken to him in the past and wasn't sure why he contacted her, the agent said.

Upon agreement of the girl's parents, another FBI agent re-started the conversation with Newman the next day through the girl's Facebook account, pretending to be the girl, "in an attempt to discover Newman's true intentions," the affidavit said.

It said that Newman's conversations with the girl became more explicit and that he asked her to send him a photograph. When one was sent of the girl standing in a hallway, he replied, "I thought you was gonna send me a pick of u kno wut," and asked if she was a good kisser.

According to the affidavit, when the girl mentioned she was at her grandmother's house, Newman said, "Hmmmm, I might have to go park at the cemetery" near the house, and asked, "Would you sneak out and come see me?"

When the girl agreed to come outside after her grandparents went to bed, he told her in a text message, "I dare you not to wear any panties when you come out and see me," and said he wouldn't be wearing any underwear, the affidavit said.

Alexander wrote that once Newman texted the girl about 10 p.m. that he was waiting in the cemetery, the officers "moved in" and turned on the blue lights.

The agent said that shortly after Newman was apprehended, officers recovered numerous items they had seen Newman throw out of the truck during the chase. They included a mobile phone, an unwrapped condom, a bottle of lubricant and a sex enhancing device for men.

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Metro on 09/27/2017

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