Walk through blizzard for sex results in 10 years behind bars

A 54-year-old financial consultant who trudged through a snowstorm in Post Falls last winter carrying hot chocolate for a 15-year-old he planned to meet for sex was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.

Thomas R. Cartwright of Post Falls was arrested in February as part of a police sting operation in which officers pretending to be teenage girls planted ads in online sex magazines accessed through phone apps.

Cartwright was among seven men arrested in the sting, which netted four Washington men, a man who drove several hours from Portland, and a convicted Rathdrum sex offender.

Called Operation Lonely Heart, the sting was conducted by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and local police.

Police said Cartwright walked a mile from his home through a February blizzard to the 7-Eleven convenience store, carrying condoms and a hot chocolate to meet the teenager for sex, deputy prosecutor Becky Perez said.

“It was extremely snowy, windy and cold,” Perez said.

Barrett Hillier, a Bonneville County deputy and part of the ICAC team, said he interviewed a cooperative Cartwright after his arrest.

“He allowed us to look at his phone. He told me he went to meet the … girl at a gas station to bring back to the house, to watch a movie, to cuddle, and to engage in sexual activity with her,” Hillier told the court.

Cartwright said he often used the apps to contact people because he worked from home and was lonely.

That night, he said, he made a mistake when he learned the person he talked to was 15.

“That night I met two women. One was a woman in her 30s. We talked about the snow. The other one was supposedly 15,” he said.

He engaged in a sexual conversation and invited the teen to his home.

“I knew it wouldn’t be right because of her age … I wasn’t thinking straight,” he said.

Cartwright said he didn’t look at child porn and he had not before been sexually active with someone under 18 years old.

His attorney, Jay Logsdon, accused police of persuading his client into have sex with the putative 15-year-old.

“These are highly trained agents,” he said.

But Perez said police played along, and Cartwright bit.

“I don’t think there is much evidence he was in any way entrapped,” Perez said.

First District Judge Cynthia K.C. Meyer agreed with prosecutors.

“There is a difference between the state inducing the defendant to commit a crime and the state providing an opportunity for the defendant to commit a crime,” Meyer said. “I am seeing the state did not persuade; they did provide an opportunity.”

Meyer sentenced Cartwright to three mandatory years behind bars and seven years to be used at the discretion of the Idaho Department of Correction.