By Bill Parry
A 63-year-old East Elmhurst man pleaded guilty to child pornography charges last week and faces between one to three years in prison, according to the Queens district attorney’s office.
The defendant, Michael Murray, was arrested in April 2014, after computer technicians at a Best Buy store in Long Island City discovered sexually explicit photographs of children on a computer he left for repairs, the DA said.
According to the charges, when the technician at the 50-01 Northern Blvd. location began to work on Murray’s laptop computer, the screen saver started displaying a slide show of multiple images of young girls posing provocatively, as well as pictures of girls engaged in sex acts with adult men. The technician alerted his supervisor to the slide show’s content, and then the supervisor contacted the police.
When the NYPD went to Murray’s East Elmhurst home soon afterwards, he admitted that he knew what was on his screen saver and he had been exchanging files of child pornography with others on the Internet for about five years, prosecutors said. A forensic exam of Murray’s computer revealed nearly 400 images of child pornography.
“The defendant has now admitted to having vile, disturbing images of children on his computer’s hard drive, which he even used as a screen saver slide show,” DA Richard Brown said. “It is important for the public to remember that these photographs depict real children who have been sexually abused. They are youngsters who will forever be emotionally and physically scarred by what happened to them.”
Murray pleaded guilty Feb. 3 before Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard L. Buchter to promoting a sexual performance by a child. Buchter indicated that he would sentence the defendant to a term of one to three years in prison March 22.
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparr
