Central Texas man linked to at least 10 child exploitation victims

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Henry Larry Spradling III, 42, who was held Thursday evening in the Williamson County Jail in Georgetown charged with online solicitation of a minor, told a McLennan County undercover investigator posing online as a 13-year-old girl he had a 12-year-old girlfriend and discussed having sex with her, according to an arrest warrant affidavit released Thursday.

“Something about a young girl just does it for me,” he told the undercover investigator, authorities said.

Homeland Security Investigations in Austin, which alerted local investigators on May 25 to a potential child exploitation case originating in Fresno, Calif., has identified a total of at least 10 juvenile victims, the affidavit says.

A local investigator determined a man identified in the affidavit as Spradling was “in communication with a 12-year-old juvenile and was communicating in a sexually explicit manner.”

Spradling, the investigator determined, “was also in communications with numerous other potential minors and was discussing (with undercover agents) perpetrating on live victims,” the affidavit says.

Local investigators say Spradling may have been in communication with multiple children and asked parents and guardians who think he may have had contact with their children to call the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office at (254) 757-5095.

On Tuesday, a McLennan County investigator initiated online communications with Spradling, posing as a 13-year-old girl.

Spradling told the investigator about his previous girlfriend, who is 12, and “began to discuss having sexual intercourse with her.”

“Spradlin further went on to discuss that he was watching pornography and began to request photographs of the child’s ‘booty,’” the affidavit says.

He sent a video of a female’s genital area “and indicated that it is the child he is discussing, and stated ‘please don’t show anybody,’” the affidavit says.

Spradling was arrested on Wednesday.