Michael Joseph Snowden, a 21-year-old repeat sex offender, went to the Freed-Montrose Library in November 2010 to hack in to a computer to look at child pornography and wait for prey.
When a 6-year-old boy and his 8-year-old brother went in to the restroom with their father to change for a swim lesson nearby, Snowden noticed. The dad had forgotten the swimsuits in the car and left the boys to disrobe in a stall.
http://liarcatchers.com/pedophile_tracking.html
When he returned minutes later, he found his children screaming and called Houston police.
After listening to what happened in that bathroom, state District Judge Randy Roll on Thursday said he had to protect the community from Snowden, a diagnosed pedophile.
“I have to sentence you to life in prison,” Roll said. “I think it’s the only solution, the only remedy.”
Prosecutors said Thursday that as soon as the father stepped out of the public bathroom, Snowden crept in, hissing at the boys.
He got down on the floor to see which stall the two were in, then began crawling under the stall wall.
When he emerged from under the wall, sniffing at the children like a dog, the boys started screaming. Snowden then tried to perform oral sex on the 6-year-old.
“I crawled under,” Snowden testified. “I molested him.”
Snowden was only in the stall for a few moments, then crawled into a nearby stall to hide.
When police arrived, he was arrested and charged with sexual assault of a child under age 14, a first-degree felony punishable by a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Asked for leniency
Instead of going through a trial, Snowden pleaded guilty and asked the judge for leniency.
“I’m very sorry for what I’ve done, and I’m not going to re-offend,” he said. He said he will continue taking medication for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Before he took the stand, the 6-year-old took the witness stand to face his attacker.
“He did something bad to me, in a mean way,” he testified. His mother said the boy’s nightmares have stopped and almost a year of counseling has helped.
“He seems pretty brave and strong,” she said.
Before the ruling, Snowden testified he was molested by a stranger when he was 8, which made prosecutors scoff. He had never said that before Thursday, despite being arrested several times for sexual offenses and spending time in treatment for pedophilia.
He also said he had been abandoned in a restaurant by his birth mother when he was 8.
His adopted mother gave a statement to authorities imploring Roll to sentence him to life.
She wrote that he was obsessed with oral sex with very young boys and that she feared what he might do next. She also said she was in fear for her life because he had a history of hitting people, including his grandfather.
In 2005, Snowden was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in Upshur County involving a 1-year-old. Snowden was 15 at the time.
He also threatened a woman’s life who reported him for plotting to break in to a neighbor’s house to molest their son. He testified he was “banned” from the county because he kept getting in to trouble.
Snowden later moved to Houston where he lived on the streets.
Since then, he has twice pleaded guilty to prostitution charges and twice been found guilty of failing to register as a sex offender.
‘A true predator’
In asking for leniency, Snowden said he was not taking his medication on the day of the attack. He also said he had attempted suicide at least five times because of remorse.
Assistant Harris County District Attorney Maritza Antu said Snowden admitted to investigators that he taught himself how to hack computers to feed his “addiction” to child pornography.
“He will do anything to sexually gratify himself,” Antu said. “That is a true predator.”
