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Boone Man Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison
Charlotte -- December 5, 2024: Press Release U.S. Attorneys Office of Western North Carolina: Jacob Elijah Kilgore,
29, of Boone, N.C., was sentenced to eight years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release today for using the dark web to transport child pornography, announced Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Kilgore was also ordered to register as a sex offender after he is released from prison.
Cardell T. Morant, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in North Carolina and South Carolina, and Chief Andy LeBeau of the Boone Police Department join U.S. Attorney King in making today’s announcement.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the sentencing hearing, in February 2023, law enforcement determined that Kilgore was using the dark web to share over 150 videos and images depicting the sexual abuse of children.
On February 23, 2023, investigators executed a search warrant at Kilgore’s apartment, seizing a homemade laptop that contained 11 integrated hard drives. A forensic analysis of one of the seized hard drives revealed that it contained an extensive collection of videos and images of child pornography, with a running time of more than 66 hours for the video files, and approximately 55 gigabytes of storage space for the image files. Some of the videos and images in Kilgore’s library depicted children as young as infants and toddlers being sexually abused. During an interview with law enforcement, Kilgore admitted to accessing the dark web to download child pornography and using a peer-to-peer network to transfer child pornography to others.
On December 8, 2023, Kilgore pleaded guilty to transportation of child pornography. He is in federal custody and will be transferred to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons upon designation of a federal facility.
In announcing Kilgore’s sentence, U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell said that the public should know that “this kind of conduct leads to long prison sentences.”
The investigation was handled by HSI and the Boone Police Department with the assistance of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant United States Attorney Daniel Cervantes of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte prosecuted the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit justice.gov/psc
