Pimp Pleads Guilty to 'Selling' Girl for $250 Weeks Before She Was Murdered
At times, it seems like the worth of human life is at an all time low.
People can truly be evil.
Charles McFee expected to be paid a $250 “finder’s fee” when he brought a 16-year-old girl he’d met on Facebook to a pimp in December 2016.
But the pimp, Joseph Hazley, never paid McFee the money, claiming the girl was costing him too much in clothes and makeup — not to mention the gas money needed to drive her around meeting people for sex, according to federal prosecutors.
Less than a month later, on Christmas Eve, Hazley took Desiree Robinson to meet a man who had answered an online sex ad. The girl was killed while Hazley waited in the car, according to prosecutors.
In a federal courtroom Tuesday, Robinson’s mother, Yvonne Ambrose, wiped tears from her eyes as McFee, 26, pleaded guilty to one count of sex trafficking conspiracy for recruiting the girl into a life that ultimately led to her slaying.
The charge carries a maximum of life in prison, but in a deal with prosecutors, McFee agreed to testify against Hazley at his upcoming trial in exchange for a recommended prison term of up to 7 ½ years.
“This is as serious as it gets,” U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman told McFee.
Prosecutors alleged that Hazley trafficked Robinson — who had recently run away from home — for a month before her slaying, arranging multiple dates for commercial sex each day through the classified ad website Backpage.com.
Facebook records obtained by the FBI show that Robinson wanted out. In a private message sent to a longtime friend on Dec. 15, 2016, she wrote, “I’m in a situation where I’m (being) pimped,” according to prosecutors.
Robinson’s slaying has become a focal point in a recent effort to hold websites like Backpage accountable for alleged criminal use of ad space.
After her daughter’s death, Robinson’s mother filed a lawsuit against the website alleging the company knowingly facilitates sex traffickers.
McFee pursued his finder’s fee but was told by Hazley that Robinson “was not making as much money” as Hazley had hoped and that he could not afford to pay at that time, according to the plea agreement.
“Hazley also told McFee ... it was expensive to pay for (Robinson’s) clothing, makeup, hair, and gas to drive her to the dates,” the plea agreement said.
On Christmas Eve morning, Hazley and an undisclosed female dropped off the teen at a home in Markham to meet with a sex buyer, according to the charges against Hazley.
The pair fell asleep in Hazley’s vehicle while waiting for Robinson to return from her sexual encounter, only to awaken about two hours later with Robinson nowhere to be found. Hazley then went looking for Robinson and found her badly beaten body inside a garage, according to the charges. An autopsy determined she had been beaten and strangled and that her throat had been slit. -(Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune)
Credit: WorldStarHipHop