Child Sex Texts On Plane Lead To Arrest Of Man And Woman

A passenger's quick thinking on a plane Monday led to the arrest of a man and woman involved in a child sex scheme. An unidentified woman on a Southwest flight from Seattle to San Jose spotted the man in front of her exchanging suspicious texts relating to child molestation.

The man was reportedly using a very large font and holding his smartphone close to his face — directly in front of her. The woman, a preschool teacher, quickly snapped photographs of the text messages as evidence. She then presented them to the plane's crew, who notified police at the Mineta San Jose International Airport where the plane was to land.

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"It was in large font and she sees certain words and starts contemplating there's something bigger there," San Jose sex crimes detective Nick Jourdenais told Mercury News Friday. "Then the conversation transitions to children. That's the moment when she decided to preserve the evidence as best she could."

The texts ranged from sexual fetishes to other explicit topics, Jourdenais said.

Fifty-six-year-old Michael Kellar of Tacoma was promptly arrested when the plane landed in San Jose. Kellar allowed authorities to search his phone but said the texts he sent were purely fantastical and that he was "role playing." FBI agents, in conjunction with Seattle detectives, however, were able to use the texts to get the exact location of the person with whom Kellar was corresponding.

That led them to the home of 50-year-old Gail Burnworth. Inside the house were two children, ages 5 and 7, who were being sexually abused. Burnworth was reportedly babysitting the children and Kellar was accessing the kids through her, the San Jose Press Democrat reported.

"It's kind of mind blowing," Jourdenais told the Mercury News. "She gets on a plane, a normal citizen minding her business. A couple of hours later, she's intervening on quite possibly the most traumatic thing children can go through. This was life altering for them."

Both Kellar and Burnworth were arrested. Kellar was being held without bail at the Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of two felony counts of attempted child molestation and solicitation of a sex crime. Burnworth was being held at Pierce County Jail in Washington on suspicion of felony counts of sexual exploitation of a child, dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit content and rape of a child.

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Authorities praised the unidentified passenger and said without her, those children would likely still be in danger.

"Kudos to this young lady," said Sgt. Brian Spears, commander of the San Jose Police Department's Internet Crimes Against Children task force. "Without us responding right away, he would have been lost."

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