Fourth man in sex sting sentenced

A Kalispell man was sentenced Thursday to a suspended sentence of 15 years in Montana State Prison for felony sexual abuse of children.

Daniel Anthony Hall, 35, submitted an Alford plea, in which a defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges that a jury is likely to reach a guilty verdict.

Hall was credited for 196 days already served in jail.

He will be designated a Tier 1 sexual offender, which means he is least likely to re-offend. He must pay a fine of $500 and he will have to pay a monitoring fee.

Hall was part of a sex sting in 2014 that caught six men.

Three of the men — Karl Cilroy Wortley, 34, of Kalispell; Joshua Frederick Naethe, 36, of Somers; and Benjamin David Emerich, 32 of Kalispell — have been sentenced.

Two others, Christopher Paul Adams, 37, of Kalispell and Justin Zeiss, 34, of Kalispell are awaiting sentencing or set for an upcoming trial.

The men all answered an ad on Craigslist that indicated a girl was available for sex. The ad was placed there by the Montana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force as part of a sting operation.

According to court documents, Hall answered the ad and told the 12-year-old girl who was supposed to be on the other end of the cyberspace conversation that he was interested in assisting her in “how to become a woman.”

He then allegedly sent sexually graphic text messages to the fake girl and asked the girl to meet.

When Hall went to the address to meet the girl, he instead was confronted by officers.

In an interview after his sentencing, Hall gave a different account of the story, claiming he was innocent.

He said that he did answer the ad, but believed the girl involved was an 18-year-old instead of a 12-year-old.

Once he found out the fake girl’s age, Hall said he immediately went to the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office to report it because he had experienced sexual abuse as a child.

“Something like this happened to me when I was a kid and I did not want this to happen to somebody else,” Hall said.

Hall talked with a sheriff’s deputy, but Hall said the deputy he contacted was trying to get him to “buy into” the scenario and say incriminating things.

The deputy advised Hall to have no more contact with the ad’s poster, but when Hall left the Sheriff’s Office he thought the child might still be in danger and decided to get an address to meet anyway.

Hall said he drove past the address to collect the license plate number of the car parked out front and was handcuffed five minutes later by the same deputy to whom he had tried to report the crime.

Hall said he wanted to fight the charge but he could not afford to hire an attorney and that his public defender told him to take a plea bargain.

“My attorney told me word for word: ‘Either you take the deal they are offering, or you get 30 years one way or another.’ My attorney was not fighting for me.”

For the next 15 years Hall can’t own guns or use alcohol. He must stay within a three-county radius. He can’t use computers. He must get permission from his probation officer to date.

“For God’s sakes I can’t even go out to eat because there might be a child present,” Hall said. “I can’t go to church without a chaparone. I used to go every Sunday and I can’t go to church any more.”

He said he feels like he was the victim of entrapment.

“They are the ones who initiated anything, not me,” Hall said. “The police decided to do whatever they could to arrest as many people as they could.”

Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said Hall’s claims were not true.

“Lots of people have various excuses as to why they show up trying to have sex with a young girl,” Curry said. “Obviously he would not have been criminally charged, pled guilty, and been sentenced if he wasn’t involved.”

Reporter Megan Strickland may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.