Executive from Pfizer's legal department pleads guilty to child pornography

From The Day:

Just a few months ago, Alan Hesketh was a well-respected pharmaceutical executive - a family man who owned properties around the world.

Now, Hesketh, 61, is an admitted child pornographer, unemployed and headed to federal prison for at least five years. He had been living a secret and sordid life on the Internet, trading sexually explicit images of young children, many of them engaged in sadistic or masochistic acts.

The former director of global patents at Pfizer Inc., who has been held without bond since he was arrested in March, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport Tuesday to receiving and distributing child pornography.

When marshals led him into the courtroom, Hesketh, tall and thin in prison scrubs, smiled and nodded to his wife of 39 years and his son and daughter-in-law. He sat with his attorney, Jonathan J. Einhorn, and answered a series of questions about his crime before he was asked to enter a plea.

”Guilty,” he told the clerk.

The judge scheduled the sentencing for Oct. 17. Hesketh offered his slim wrists for handcuffing before the U.S. marshals led him away. His wife politely declined to speak to a reporter from the London Daily Mail before leaving the courtroom. The Heskeths have four grown children, all living in England, and are grandparents.

Federal agents arrested Hesketh at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on March 26 after determining he had posed as “Suzibibaby,” a 28-year-old New York City woman, while trading child pornography with a man from Buffalo, N.Y. The agents found 1,981 images of child pornography on a portable “thumb drive” that Hesketh carried with him and an additional 315 images on his laptop computer. Agents who searched his home at 202 Montauk Ave. in Stonington after his arrest did not find any additional child pornography.

His admitted crime carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, and under federal sentencing guidelines Hesketh would be subject to a 10-to-12.5-year sentence based on his lack of a criminal record and other factors. Judge Warren W. Eginton noted from the bench that he is bound only by the five-year mandatory minimum. Eginton said he may impose supervised release of five years to life, and that the U.S. probation officer assigned to the case “will become a very important person in your life.”

Since Hesketh is a British citizen - he had been living in the United States under a work visa - he faces possible deportation. If not, the likely conditions of his release would include registering as a sex offender and undergoing mental health treatment. During his supervised release, the government would be able to search, at any time, his home, automobile, computer and workplace and to subject him to polygraph examinations.

Judge Donna F. Martinez had refused to set bond following Hesketh's arrest because Hesketh owns properties overseas - including residences in England and the Isle of Man - and has the resources and connections to flee the country. At the request of Hesketh's attorney, Judge Eginton agreed to hear a new bond argument on Monday. Einhorn said outside the courtroom that he would be asking the judge to release Hesketh to house arrest in Stonington until sentencing.

Gregory Nadolski, the Buffalo man whose arrest led agents to Hesketh, was released to home confinement after signing a promise to appear in court. His case is pending.