A man who was tracked down after a video of him sexually assaulting a two-year-old girl was found in the Nevada desert was convicted on Tuesday of that attack and another on a six-year-old.
Chester Arthur Stiles remained sitting, showed no emotion and stared straight ahead as guilty verdicts were read against him for 22 felonies, including sexual assault.
He faces multiple life prison terms at sentencing, which was set for May 8.
“This guy is sick,” juror Jeffrey Taube, 34, said later.
Nineteen of the charges stemmed from acts Stiles videotaped of himself with the two-year-old sometime from April to August 2003. The jury somberly viewed the graphic homemade VHS tape late on Friday in a hushed courtroom where the judge excluded the public but allowed five news reporters to remain.
Outside the presence of the jury, Clark County District Court Judge Jennifer Togliatti called the recorded images “clearly child pornography in its most graphic form.”
A man gave the tape to authorities in September 2007, five months after he found it hidden in a desert lot 97km west of Las Vegas. That man later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct a public officer for the delay in turning in the video.
With clear evidence of a sex crime on a toddler but neither the victim nor the abuser identified, investigators released images from the video in a nationwide hunt for both people.
Stiles, 38, of Las Vegas, was arrested in October 2007 after he was identified as the man on the video and a fugitive in a case involving a six-year-old girl. Prosecutors said he molested the older child in late 2003.
The jury of nine men and three women deliberated about four hours after hearing 16 prosecution witnesses testify over six days.
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