A man has pleaded guilty to faking his own death in an attempt to avoid going to prison for repeatedly raping and ultimately impregnating a 14-year-old girl.
Jacob Blair Scott was 40 when he sexually abused and impregnated his victim in Mississippi.
Scott’s victim told the court that he had abused her at least 30 times beginning in 2016 and ending in 2017 when she found out that she was pregnant.
In July 2018, while facing 14 sexual abuse charges, Scott sent a false distress call off the coast of Alabama.
“The Orange Beach Police Department responded to a call for assistance and found a small boat in the Gulf of Mexico, about a mile away from shore, with a gun tied to it. The dinghy was empty except for a suicide note,” CBS News reports.
For over a week, rescuers and law enforcement searched for his body in the Gulf of Mexico, before giving up and presuming that he was dead. Local station WLOX reports that the search cost the Coast Guard $17,165.
“According to Scott’s written plea agreement, he left several suicide notes in Mississippi, including one that told family members not to change their phone numbers for a year. He also withdrew $45,000 from his bank account before he disappeared, according to the plea document,” WLOX reports.
In January 2020, Scott was found living in a mobile home park in Antlers, Oklahoma under the fake name Lucas Marty Walding.
In June, Scott was convicted by a jury of sexual battery and child abuse charges and sentenced to 85 years in prison.
Now, the sexual abuser has also pleaded guilty to sending a false distress call, transportation of a firearm across state lines by someone under indictment and false information and hoaxes.
“Prosecutors have agreed to recommend a punishment within advisory sentencing guidelines, concurrent with the 85-year sentence he received in the Jackson County child sexual exploitation case in June. The statutory maximum for the federal charges is five years in prison. A judge scheduled Scott’s sentencing for November,” the WLOX report says.