Gilroy
– A 42-year-old Gilroy man thought he was meeting a 13-year-old
girl for a sexual liaison in Felton on Friday. Instead he
encountered Santa Cruz County sheriff’s detectives.
Jeffrey Clark Smith brought sex toys and sexual aids with him,
only to find he had been set up.
Gilroy – A 42-year-old Gilroy man thought he was meeting a 13-year-old girl for a sexual liaison in Felton on Friday. Instead he encountered Santa Cruz County sheriff’s detectives.
Jeffrey Clark Smith brought sex toys and sexual aids with him, only to find he had been set up. Now detectives are looking into other possible victims based on items found at his house, including a list of names and phone numbers and pictures of nude girls.
Smith is an unemployed electrical engineer, has never been married and has frequented Gilroy bars since being laid off from a high-tech company in July 2001, according to a longtime friend. His parents are “millionaires” and live separately in Arizona, the friend said. Smith has called Gilroy home since 1991 and lives in a five-bedroom house that the friend described as “a beautiful home.”
The 13-year-old girl is real and so is the victim, even though Smith never had sexual contact with her, according to sheriff’s detective Ian Patrick, who investigated the case. The girl lives in Santa Cruz County and met Smith on an Internet chat site. What Smith didn’t know, however, was that her mother had previously discovered the sexually explicit instant messages the two were exchanging and called the sheriff’s office.
The text messages “were of a very graphic sexual nature,” Patrick said. “Basically, it appeared to us he was setting up a meeting for sexual purposes.”
If a tryst was what Smith wanted, detectives figured they could lure him into a trap. Pretending to be the girl, they continued the correspondence, ultimately setting up a rendezvous at an undisclosed location in Felton.
When Smith showed up, they arrested him on charges of attempted child molestation and sending harmful matter with intent to seduce a minor.
The girl had saved the instant messages, now in detectives’ hands. Patrick said they show she was honest about her 13 years, but he told her he was 28.
Faced with this evidence, Smith admitted to detectives he had sent the messages, Patrick said. He declined to release more details of Smith’s police interview since the case is still under investigation.
Smith posted $25,000 bail that same day from the Santa Cruz County jail and did not yet have an court arraignment scheduled as of Wednesday afternoon. He did not return a message left at his home.
With the help of Gilroy police, Santa Cruz County deputies served a search warrant at Smith’s home at 995 Oak Brook Way, off the west end of Luchessa Avenue. There they found “photographs that appeared to be underage girls, … nude images and sexual positions,” Patrick said. The list of names and numbers – mostly of out-of-state girls – led Patrick to suspect Smith may have been corresponding with other underage girls. A forensics unit has not yet searched Smith’s computer.
“I fully anticipate that there will be” other victims, Patrick said. “We’ve still got a lot of follow-up to do.”
The sting was a first for Santa Cruz deputies, according to Patrick.
“We have never, as far as I’m aware of in this county, taken it to the point where we have gotten (a suspected child molester) to meet us,” the detective said.
The longtime friend, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said the news of his arrest was “extremely shocking.”
“I haven’t been able to pick my jaw up off the floor,” the friend said.
