A Tennessee man has been sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for producing sexually explicit photographs of a 16-year-old Trumann girl who disappeared from her home in January 2018 and was found five days later in a Nebraska hotel room with him.
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. imposed a 280-month sentence on Craig Gillum, 55, of Shelbyville, who pleaded guilty on Aug. 1, 2019, to a charge of producing child pornography, in exchange for prosecutors dropping two other charges -- another count of production and a single count of receipt of child pornography.
"This defendant manipulated a child into sending explicit images and then transported her out of the state to continue his depravity," U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland said Friday in a joint announcement with Diane Upchurch, special agent in charge of the Little Rock field office of the FBI.
The girl's parents reported on Jan. 28, 2018, that she was missing from her room at the family's home, according to court documents. They reported her disappearance about 11:30 a.m., noting they had last seen her at 9 the night before, after the family went to the movies and returned home.
Hiland said officers searched the girl's email account, which revealed sexually explicit messages from Gillum. Hiland said that in some of the emails, Gillum sent explicit photographs of himself and asked the girl to send images of herself, which she did. The messages had been exchanged since late October of 2017.
He said that when agents learned the girl was staying in a motel in Nebraska and officers found her, her hair had been cut and colored. She told the agents that Gillum had picked her up at her home and driven her to Nebraska.