A northwest Arkansas man faces a potentially long prison sentence after an arrest last week in Benton County on charges from 2018 in which police discovered a series of surreptitiously recorded images of two underaged girls and an adult woman in his cell phone.
William Brian True, 51, had apparently been a guest of the Arizona Department of Corrections for the past three years and was extradited to Arkansas to stand charges on eleven counts of Distributing, Possessing or Viewing Matter Depicting Children.
Although the court documents say the images were recorded in a bathroom of True’s home near 24th Street and Chandler Boulevard in Ahwatukee, Arizona the case against him started when the Benton County Sheriff’s Office intercepted the downloading of pornography while True was in Arkansas on business.
The images included two girls, 13 and 14, and an adult woman in various stages of undress, the court records say. The girls were changing clothes and taking off their bathing suits while the woman was using a toilet. The recording device was positioned to capture their nude photos, police said.
The victims, apparently, did not notice they were being secretly recorded, although one young victim nearly figured out how her privacy was being violated, the documents said. An affidavit filed by Phoenix police said the 14-year-old girl is seen taking off her bathing suit, exposing herself.
True’s legal problems started when deputies were conducting an investigation about the downloading of illicit images, according to Sgt. Shannon Jenkins, a spokeswoman for the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, which has a cybercrime unit.
Benton County detectives notified Phoenix police when they realized the images were probably recorded in a bathroom in True’s home, the document said.
The Benton County detectives sent Phoenix police nine files containing images of the three victims, the court documents said. When Phoenix police served a search warrant True’s home, they found the bathroom where the recordings occurred, according to court documents.
True told police he was on business in Benton and was staying at a Comfort Inn in Bentonville, in northwest Arkansas, when sheriff’s investigators “raided’’ his motel room and seized his iPhone and his iPad.
True remains jailed on a double no bond hold for the child pornography and on a detainer from out of state.
