PHELPS COUNTY, Mo. (News First) – A former Phelps County Sheriff’s deputy has admitted to engaging in sex acts with a minor, requesting and receiving child pornography and destroying evidence to impede the FBI. 43-year-old Justin Bradley Durham has pleaded guilty to six felonies.
The Rolla man pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one count of production of child pornography, two counts of receiving child pornography and three counts of destroying records in a federal investigation. Durham admitted as part of his plea that he requested and received a sexually explicit video from a 16-year-old in 2013. He later provided $200 to the victim after she engaged in sex acts with him. He also admitted engaging in sex acts multiple times with a 17-year-old victim, including in his patrol vehicle. Durham exchanged sexually explicit images and videos with her. Durham met the second victim in 2016 when her friend contacted the police and he responded to the call.
The FBI interviewed Durham in 2023 after learning that his PayPal account had been used to send money to another account associated with the sale of child porn. Durham denied purchasing child porn and claimed he had not accessed his Dropbox account for years. He refused agents’ requests to search his cell phone. Two days later, Durham bought a new phone, destroyed his old phone and deleted about 37 gigabytes of data in his Dropbox account before deactivating it. Among those files were hundreds of sexually explicit images and videos, including files containing child sexual abuse material. Durham was terminated by the Phelps County Sheriff’s Department on August 9th of 2023 and later arrested by his former work colleagues. In jail, he told FBI agents that he also destroyed a laptop computer, threw away his phone and conducted a “digital footprint scrub” of his online accounts. The former deputy from Rolla will be sentenced on February 5th of next year.
