A Briton living in the United States who plotted to kidnap, kill and eat a child will be sentenced today.
Agents who raided the home of Geoffrey Portway, 40, in Worcester, Massachusetts, found a dungeon with a child-sized coffin, scalpels and butchering kits.
Portway pleaded guilty in May to solicitation to commit a crime of violence (kidnapping of a child) and distribution and possession of child pornography.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, the US district court in Worcester must sentence him to between 216 and 327 months in prison, before he is deported.
The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts has said that, according to the agreed statement of facts, Portway engaged in numerous chats with many individuals about a mutual interest in abducting, raping, murdering and eating children.
Many of these conversations were accompanied by the trading of child pornography. These chats also included images of children known to them, accompanied by discussions of the desire to sexually abuse, murder and cannibalise them.
Portway solicited several people for their help in abducting a child, predominantly Michael Arnett, of Kansas.
Portway used Skype and other methods to communicate with Arnett, trading child pornography including images of injured, mutilated and dead children while chatting about the sexual abuse, rape, abduction, murder and cannibalism of children.
Over months, he repeatedly solicited Arnett to kidnap a child for him, with the intent that Portway would ultimately rape, kill and eat the child.
These solicitations for help abducting a child included discussing real children, by name and photo, whom Arnett claimed to know and have access to.
Portway and Arnett discussed different ways to kidnap children and the age range that Portway preferred. Portway was told that Arnett had experience with the abduction and sexual abuse of children.
On July 27 last year, federal agents along with state and local police executed a search warrant at Portway’s home. Computers and digital devices containing his child pornography collection were seized, as well as the computer he used to trade child photography and attempts to plan the abduction of a child.
Agents also discovered a locked door in the basement, and inside a second door was a dungeon lined with sound-deadening material and containing a chair, television and what appeared to be cable access to the internet.
The room also contained a child-sized homemade coffin with exterior locking devices, a steel cage approximately three feet wide, two feet high and four feet long, with multiple locking devices, and a steel table top with steel rings at six points, presumably for restraints.
Outside these rooms were a cabinet freezer, an upright freezer, disposable scalpels, butchering kits and castration tools.
The dungeon was described in detail by Portway in recovered chats as a place he intended to use to keep kidnapped children while he sexually abused them and as a place to eventually murder and eat them.