Police accuse Mark Anthony Turner of spending as many as eight hours a day online trolling for sex with underage children.
"He came online and approached a couple of our local, undercover operatives. He sought them out on multiple occasions and was aggressive in his sexual chats," said Ken Wallentine, the chief of law enforcement for the Utah Attorney General's Office.
Now, authorities are looking for more possible victims that they say Turner may have met both on and off line.
Turner was arrested in the parking lot of a Sandy gas station last week after police said the 45-year-old man traveled from Twin Falls, Idaho, to an arranged meeting with a 13-year-old girl named "chantel2009_." The girl was really an undercover agent with the Utah Attorney General's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
According to a complaint filed in federal court in Salt Lake City, Turner told the officer in an Internet chat session, "some times I wanna come steel u." He then laid out a plan for her to run away from her family and not return until she was 18, according to the complaint.
"He asked what color she would dye her hair. He also asked if she had written a 'runaway' letter. He instructed her to write a note that she had run away with two friends," Utah Attorney General's investigator Jessica Eldredge wrote in a probable cause statement filed with the complaint. "He also asked her to bring any money she had with her. He asked if she had her bags packed."
Turner was indicted by a federal grand jury late Wednesday on a single charge of coercion and enticement for illegal sexual activity.
"Not guilty, sir," Turner told a federal magistrate judge during a brief court appearance on the charge. He was ordered to remain in jail until a detention hearing on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Utah Attorney General's Office issued a public plea for other possible victims to come forward.
"We have strong evidence that he has been in Utah on at least two occasions in the last two months. We have some reason to believe that he's come to Utah for purposes of sexual liaisons," Wallentine said. "What we don't know is who he's meeting with and what his activities are in the last couple of months."
Wallentine told the Deseret Morning News officials have identified one person they believe is a victim, but he would not say how the two met. He said detectives have questioned some single women they believe Turner had also met in the area.
On Wednesday, investigators were reviewing Turner's background and whom he may have contacted under the screen name "mark_2424t."
Wallentine said he was disturbed that the suspect allegedly tried to encourage someone to run away from home.
"We were going to have a kid that would go missing and we would never find the kid," he said. "That's the scary thing."
Although there is no evidence of it, investigators were also looking into whether Turner had any possible links to other missing children, Wallentine said.
E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com