By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

A Jasper County judge assessed an Illinois man two years in prison Friday for sexual misconduct with a child over the Internet.

Circuit Judge David Mouton gave Kelly J. Williams, 25, of Stonington, Ill., the maximum time permitted under a plea agreement with the Jasper County prosecutor’s office. Williams accepted the plea offer and changed his plea to guilty in September. Sexual misconduct with a child under the age of 15 carries up to five years in prison in Missouri.

Williams recently received two four-year sentences in Newton County Circuit Court on convictions for another count of sexual misconduct with a child and a count of enticement of a child. The three sentences will run concurrent by orders of the judges in the two cases.

The convictions stem from online sting operations conducted in 2008 by Detective Ed Bailey of the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department and by former Diamond police Chief Jim Murray, who investigates child-predator activities on the Internet as a liaison officer with the Diamond Police Department.

Bailey had online contact with Williams in March and April of 2008 posing as a 13-year-old girl. A probable-cause affidavit states that Williams sent Bailey two adult pornography photographs and tried to persuade Bailey’s online persona to have sex with her 8-year-old brother.

Murray reported similar online behavior of the defendant to the Newton County court