Madison County man sentenced to decades behind bars for child pornography

MADISON COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - A Madison County man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison on Friday.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, 43-year-old Donald Caudy III pleaded guilty in February to one count of using a minor to create visual depictions of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the investigation began in May 2022, when the Michigan State Police were investigating an individual suspected to be involved in crimes involving the possession of child pornography. While reviewing evidence obtained in that case, law enforcement discovered that the individual from Michigan had received multiple sexually explicit images of the same child from another individual and had been involved in chat conversations involving graphic discussions of the sexual assault of children.

The investigation ultimately revealed that the person responsible for sending the images of the minor and engaging in the graphic chats with the Michigan suspect was Caud.

During a search of Caudy’s electronic devices, the U.S. Attorney’s Office says multiple sexually explicit images of a four-year-old child were discovered. The images were the same images that had been distributed to the suspect in Michigan.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Caudy admitted that he was responsible for creating the sexually explicit images and, ultimately, distributing them to the suspect in Michigan.

Under federal law, Caudy must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence. Upon his release from prison, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for twenty years.