A man and his son have been sentenced to long prison terms for sexual abuse after Polaroid photos from the 1980s and 1990s of sexually exploited children were discovered on the wall of the Sacramento-area home where they lived for more than 40 years. It was announced. The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office announced Tuesday.
Her father, Theodore Smith, 90, was sentenced to 100 years in prison last month in Sacramento County Superior Court after pleading no contest to 11 counts of indecency with a child and three counts of indecency with a child. The law firm said in a statement: His son, James Smith, 66, pleaded no contest to two charges of indecent acts on a child and was sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.
Authorities were led to the Smiths in 2021 when the new homeowners were renovating an outbuilding on their property in Orangevale, California. Polaroid photos and videotapes fell from the walls of the building during renovations, the district attorney's office said. Said. Hundreds of images taken between 1985 and 1995 showed anonymous children under the age of 14 being sexually abused by adults, authorities said.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office announced in a statement on Facebook in 2021 that law enforcement officers were able to identify the children, now adults, from photos. Investigators eventually linked the images to Theodore and James Smith.
The father and son had lived in their Orangevale home for more than 40 years, but recently moved to Alto, Texas, a rural area in the eastern part of the state about 55 miles outside of Tyler, the sheriff's office said. The sheriff's office said Alto's new home was searched after the Smiths were identified as persons of interest. Due to the statute of limitations, the material could not be brought before 1988, but after that year there was enough material for criminal charges. The two were arrested in October 2021, according to the sheriff's office.
“The victims were under the age of 5 when the abuse began and continued for most of the first 10 years of their lives,” the district attorney's office said. “The victims did not tell anyone about the abuse except their spouses.”
It was not immediately clear how many children were in the images. It was not immediately clear how the Smiths knew the victim.
The Sacramento County Conflict Criminal Defense Office said the Smiths do not appear to have attorneys and attempts to contact them Wednesday were not immediately successful. According to inmate records, Theodore Smith was being held at the Sacramento County Main Jail and James Smith was being held at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center.
