A registered sex offender, Thomas O. Stroud Jr., has been sentenced to 130 months in prison for possessing child pornography. The sentencing was handed down by U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. in Cape Girardeau.
Stroud, aged 43 and residing in Wappapello, Wayne County, Missouri, entered a guilty plea in November at the U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau. This marks his second federal conviction for possessing child pornography; he was previously convicted on similar charges in 2009.
Court documents reveal that after his release from federal prison for the earlier offense, Stroud was mandated to register as a sex offender and placed under a 40-year term of supervised release. However, during this period of supervision in March 2024, Stroud's probation officer discovered he had been using a cell phone to communicate with an individual in Indiana and had acquired several images of child pornography through these communications.
Following the completion of his current sentence, Stroud will again be subject to supervised release.
The investigation into this case was conducted by the U.S. Probation Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Koester leading the prosecution.
