Nicholas Anfin Nesdahl, 29, from Williston, ND, went to Federal court to be sentenced by District Court Judge Daniel M. Traynor.
He was there because he was facing seven counts of producing or attempting to produce images and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of minors in the District of North Dakota and two counts of producing or attempting to produce and receiving images and videos of minors in the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Nesdahl was given 30 years in federal jail for the charges in North Dakota and 20 years for the charges in Pennsylvania. These sentences will run consecutively and he will be closely watched for life after he gets out.
Nesdahl’s behavior included adding children as friends on a number of online social networking sites. As soon as the teens said yes to his friend request, Nesdahl started to get them to make pictures and movies of themselves naked or having sexual encounters.
The first person to report the behavior to police was the parent of two victims in Pennsylvania. This led to a search of Nesdahl’s home in Williston, North Dakota. After that search, it was found that Nesdahl had harmed at least seven other people, who were found in North Dakota, Minnesota, Maryland, Texas, and New Jersey. People between the ages of 6 and 15 were killed.
The case began to be looked into in October, when the teen’s mother called the police to say she was worried after seeing disturbing videos on her daughter’s cell phone.
Police said the 13-year-old did several sexual acts with her stepsister, who is 6 years old, and then sent videos of them to Nesdahl as reported by CBS News.
Police said that Nesdahl contacted the 13-year-old girl through Snapchat and started talking to her last year. He would ask her for videos, at first of her doing sexual acts on herself. Then, police said he wanted and asked for videos of the teen and the 6-year-old child together.