Prosecutors dismiss case of Buckeye director accused of sex crime

The Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office has dismissed a sex crime charge filed by Phoenix police against Buckeye Union High School Principal Joseph Kinney, saying there was insufficient evidence and no reasonable prospect of a conviction.

An agency spokesman said that convicting someone of luring a minor for sexual exploitation requires proof that the person knew or should have known that the person he was communicating with was a minor. Kinney was communicating with an undercover officer rather than an actual minor, and the photo the officer provided of a young girl was not enough to prove that Kinney believed he was communicating with a minor, the spokesman said.

“While the crime of ‘luring’ can be committed if a suspect communicates with an undercover officer, there must be evidence that the suspect believes he or she is directing his or her communications to a minor,” the Public Prosecution Service statement said.

The prosecution also needs evidence, which did not exist in this case, to show that “the suspect intended to engage in sexual acts with a minor” to prove their case, the statement said.

“The undercover officer and the suspect were not in the same state, and the investigative measures normally used to prove this intent in court were not taken in this case,” the agency’s statement said.

Court documents describe sexually explicit text conversations

Court documents show that an FBI task force that focuses on cybercrime involving children began investigating Kinney on July 22. An undercover agent posing as a 12-year-old girl on the anonymous social media app Whisper received a response from a user named “Macabre Pure” after she posted a message saying she was bored and asking what to do.

According to documents, the user suggested that the girl take off her clothes and said he didn’t mind her age, while the officer said she was only 12. According to documents, the officer sent Kinney a photo of a clothed young girl, to which Kinney responded with two photos of himself fully clothed.

Documents say Kinney and the undercover agent continued their conversation, with the agent saying she was in Oregon visiting her grandmother and was bored. Documents say Kinney responded that he would be happy to “rescue” her and perform various sexual acts on her. Kinney also asked the agent to send him nude photos of herself, to which the agent said she did not send those types of photos, but rather another photo of a young girl wearing clothes.

According to documents, the conversation continued on July 23 when Kinney told the officer he was at work. The conversation ended after the officer asked if he liked his job.

Documents state that police obtained a subpoena for Whisper to provide subscription information for the Macabre Pure account and obtained IP addresses linked to Cox Communications and Verizon accounts registered to Kinney. FBI agents executed a search warrant at Kinney’s Goodyear home on an undisclosed date.

Documents state that police stopped Kinney at approximately 7:18 a.m. on Sept. 3, just west of Elliot and San Miguel roads in Goodyear. Police seized Kinney’s phone, and forensic analysis showed that the Whisper app had been installed but deleted.

According to documents, police took Kinney home and questioned him in a Phoenix Police Department mobile command vehicle parked outside. Kinney told police he had been using Whisper on his phone and liked that it “seemed like fantasy and was anonymous.”

According to documents, Kinney said he spoke with several girls on Whisper who told him they were underage, but he assumed they were all adults role-playing. Kinney recalled communicating with one girl who claimed to be 9 years old, but he said he believed she was an adult because the photo she sent him looked older than a girl her age, documents said.

Kinney also recalled having sexual conversations with a girl who claimed to be 12 years old, but he insisted again that he thought she was an adult and that it was just “role-playing and fantasy conversations,” the documents state.

The Buckeye Union High School District school board planned to discuss Kinney’s possible termination Monday night.

Kinney was not available for comment.

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