A Gassville man pled guilty to possessing or viewing child pornography during a session of Marion County Circuit Court April 5 and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
The state dropped a charge of engaging children in sexually explicit conduct for use in visual or print medium against Uhlan Esel “Buddy” Woods.
The dismissed charge was a Class Y felony, the most serious classification of crime in Arkansas not punishable by death.
Woods entered his plea and was sentenced in Marion County because he has been held in the Marion County jail for security reasons.
He was accused of having several sexually explicit images of a teenage relative on his cellphone and computer.
About 7 p.m. on July 13 last year, Baxter County sheriff’s deputies responded to a residence along Cotter Road just outside Gassville.
The deputies determined that Woods had been involved in an argument with his wife during the morning after she reported finding inappropriate images of the young relative on his cellphone and confronted him about her discovery.
The wife told investigators she answered Wood’s phone because he was not in the house at the time. She said she noticed an “App” on the phone. The “App” allegedly would allow the use of another number for texting and calling.
She said when she opened the “App,” called TextFree, on her husband’s phone she saw messages and pictures that had apparently been sent by the teenage victim.
One message directed the victim to send nude photos of herself or “she would be in trouble,” and another threatened if the requested photos were not sent to a certain toll-free number, the writer would “ruin the life” of the teen.
After the argument with her husband, the wife told investigators she left for work. When she returned, Woods was gone, and it was found he had taken his two grandchildren — ages one and three — and a 9-millimeter handgun with him.
At the time, Woods had court-ordered custody of the children.
A Be-On-The-Lookout (BOLO) was broadcast to alert law enforcement agencies to watch for Woods. A deputy was able to contact Woods while he was on the road and attempted to convince him to drop the young children off at a safe location.
Woods was reported to have replied he intended to take the youngsters to relatives living in Iowa. He was stopped and taken into custody near Rolla in Phelps County, Missouri. The children were not with him.
Investigators determined Woods had dropped them off at a family member’s residence in Gamaliel before he fled the county.
Lawmen went through Woods’ cellphone and laptop computer and reported locating a significant number of inappropriate images of the teenage relative.
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