NEW YORK—A man with a “passion for family” was ordered held without bail as a danger to the community on Tuesday after he was arrested at an airport on charges of planning to meet a Colorado mother and her 11-year-old daughter for sadomasochistic sex.
Paul Hinkley, 69, had used his credit card to reserve a hotel room to have sex with the mother and her daughter and had told them to expect bondage and discipline, prosecutors said. In the car he drove to the airport, federal agents found rope, an enema bottle, condoms and Viagra, they said.
The Manhattan man was arrested Monday at Newark (N.J.) Liberty International Airport on charges that carry a potential mandatory minimum penalty of 30 years in prison and a maximum of life. He had showed up at the airport expecting to meet the mother and daughter, Assistant U.S. Attorney David A. O’Neil said.
But Hinkley, using the screen name saltyoldsailor200269, actually had been speaking on the Internet from January through July with an undercover officer in the Canon City Police Department in Canon City, Colo., prosecutors said in a release.
He was charged with crossing state lines intending to engage in sexual activities with an underage girl. He also was charged with using the Internet to attempt to entice a minor to engage in sexual activities and with traveling in interstate commerce for sex with a minor.
At a bail hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, O’Neil said the white-haired Hinkley, the founder of the JMJ Cross Enterprises engineering consulting business, was a danger to the community and a risk to flee.
O’Neil said Hinkley admitted to FBI agents after his arrest that he intended to have sex with the mother he knew on the Internet as Sheryl and her daughter, Cassie, and that he believed the girl was 11 and he planned to use the rope to tie her up.
In court papers, authorities said Hinkley had told the fictitious Colorado mother that “this is a glorious threesome I am looking forward to.”
A lawyer who represented Hinkley in court Tuesday told Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis that his client, an owner of real estate in Manhattan and on Long Island, had no previous arrest record and deserved bail.
“He has never before done anything like this,” attorney Philip L. Weinstein said.
He said Hinkley, who wore to court a casual shirt with palm trees on it, had told him he once worked for the U.S. Coast Guard and had three adult children.
According to court papers, Hinkley has a video biography on his company’s Web site in which he says his “passion for family and engineering is matched by his love for sailing.”
The biography also describes him as an avid sailor who twice weekly practices judo, which O’Neil cited as another reason why he presents a danger to the community.
