Seattle man accused of raping 13-year-old girl in Pierce County
A 36-year-old Seattle man has been accused of raping, extorting and catfishing a 13-year-old girl in Bonney Lake.
Records show the man, Jacob Spicknall, was booked into Pierce County Jail at 11:51 p.m. Thursday. He has been formally charged with second-degree child rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, communicating with a minor for immoral purposes and second-degree extortion.
Spicknall made his first appearance in court Friday afternoon, where a plea of not guilty was entered on his behalf.
Court commissioner Barbara McInvaille granted him $100,000 bail. If released, Spicknall is forbidden from having any contact with the victim for five years or be within 1,000 feet of any location where minors are “known to congregate or patronize.”
He would also not be allowed to use any electronic device with internet access except to contact his attorney, court documents say, or travel outside of Pierce, King, Kitsap and Thurston counties.
Court documents say Spicknall and the victim were in contact from May 5 — when Spicknall sent his first text message — to May 25. The victim’s parents contacted Bonney Lake police on May 26.
How did it start?
According to court documents, Spicknall first texted the victim on May 5, saying she had been texting his friend, who had given him her phone number.
He then allegedly asked her: “Yk [You know] I’m a lot older, right?”
She said she was aware, and less than an hour later, he sent her sexually explicit photos, the documents say. Later that night, the victim started texting a different phone number that listed in her contacts as “The Guy.”
Taylor Graham, a Bonney Lake Police Department investigator, wrote in a police report that the victim sent sexually explicit pictures to “The Guy” several times. “The Guy” would respond by sending explicit pictures and video of a Hispanic man in his late teens or early 20s.
“Through this text thread, The Guy asks [the victim] for other kids at her schools [sic] name and phone numbers so he can ‘sext’ with them too,” Graham wrote.
As the month passed, the victim allegedly started to believe she was dating both Spicknall and “The Guy,” documents say. “The Guy” allegedly started threatening her, saying if she stopped sending him explicit pictures, he would release everything she had already sent him.
Graham later found text messages from a third number in the victim’s phone. The person at that number claimed she was Spicknall’s 10-year-old daughter, documents say. In those texts, the alleged daughter asked the victim for advice on how to masturbate, according to documents, then said “The Guy” had had sex with her.
On May 15, Spicknall allegedly texted the victim: “Getting back in the car, are you sure there’s enough time? I really want you but I can’t get caught with a minor.”
The Meet-Up and the Report
On May 18, “The Guy” allegedly pressured the victim into having sex with Spicknall, documents say.
“This indicated to me that The Guy, who [the victim] appeared to have a lot more interest in, was convincing [her] that in order for them to have sexual intercourse, [she] needed to have sex with Jake,” Graham wrote.
Spicknall went to the victim’s house the next day, documents say, and had sexual intercourse with her while recording several videos of the encounter. He sent the videos to her the next day.
On May 26, the victim’s mother called the police department, saying she had gone through her daughter’s phone and found inappropriate pictures, videos and messages.
“I asked [the mother] how she discovered what she had found. She stated that [the victim] had a different attitude lately and had been on her phone a lot,” Graham wrote. “This led [her] to looking through the phone.”
When the mother confronted the victim about the texts, the victim allegedly told her mother she had been forced to send them, the documents say. The mother was “adamant” with Graham that the victim’s meet-up with Spicknall happened while she wasn’t home.
Graham interviewed the victim and used a search warrant to go through the victim’s phone, documents say. Later, he used phone records to track down Spicknall.
As the investigation went on, it became clear that Spicknall was “The Guy,” documents say. Spicknall had allegedly been sending her photos of another man who was “more attractive” than himself from a second phone number.
“When [the victim] began to become disinterested in Spicknall, he utilized the second number … posing as the younger and more attractive male in [her] opinion to get [the victim] to agree to have sexual intercourse with Spicknall,” Graham wrote.
The documents said the victim had been in contact with four adult men. The News Tribune reached out to Mark Berry, chief of the Bonney Lake Police Department, to ask if the other two men were also catfish profiles from Spicknall, but did not receive an immediate response.
The Arrest
Graham wrote he shared this case with a sergeant, who reached out to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC). ICAC told the sergeant they had three tips related to Spicknall’s two phone numbers, documents say. Two of the tips were for unsolicited obscene material sent to a child and one was for online enticement of children for sexual acts.
Later in the investigation, Graham found Spicknall’s address through the King County Sheriff’s Office, the documents say. Spicknall lived there with his children, the documents say, and there had been two Child Protective Services (CPS) referrals: one in December and one in March.
Police arrested Spicknall on June 4, documents say, then searched the apartment, which was allegedly filthy.
“When I entered the apartment, I immediately observed a strong odor of garbage and expired food,” Graham wrote. “After entering the front door, I observed that the living room was extremely messy and dirty, the floor was sticky in numerous places, and there was a clear negligence for the cleanliness of the apartment.”
There was a mattress in the dining room, Graham wrote, and four beds in one bedroom for the children who lived in the apartment. Each bedroom was covered in garbage and cockroaches, the documents say.
“While searching through two computer towers in the living room, investigators observed dead cockroaches in one of the towers and live cockroaches in the other,” Graham wrote. “...There was little to no room to walk in the apartment without stepping on clothing, garbage, or other miscellaneous items.”
The investigation is ongoing, documents say.
