A federal inmate in Michigan has pleaded guilty to being one of three people to attack and kill the leader of a child pornography ring.
On Thursday, inmate Adam Wright, formerly of Springfield, Illinois, confessed to killing Christian Maire, who had been placed in a detention center in Milan, Michigan, in 2019.
The government will recommend that Wright, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, get no more than 27 years in prison as part of the plea deal.
Charges are pending against two other men accused of killing Maire.
Maire was killed at a detention on the grounds of a federal prison. Men are often housed at the center while awaiting trial, sentencing or a permanent prison assignment.
Maire was killed following an altercation with other prisoners that involved seven inmates, according to an AP News report on January 4, 2019.
Maire had been sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to a child exploitation enterprise. Prosecutors had said that Maire was the leader of an “egregious crime syndicate.”
“They hunted girls. They lied to girls. They manipulated girls,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Mulcahy said in a court filing.
He continued: “They did so repeatedly for years, victimizing more than 100 girls, only a fraction of whom have been positively identified.”
Maire disputed the claim that he was the ringleader of the operation but did admit that he had “shattered so many lives.”
“I never thought I could sink this low, I apologize to all of my victims,” Maire said.
After Maire’s death in 2019, Newsweek reported the details of his crimes and the investigation into him and other members of the child exploitation ring by the police.
Prosecutors said Maire was the head of a group of seven American and Canadian men who lured more than a 100 underage girls into private online video chat rooms between 2012 and 2017.
Once on camera, the men would manipulate the young girls into stripping and performing sex acts on camera. In some instances the girls were convinced into harming themselves with sharp objects, according to court documents.
Videos of these incidents were recorded and shared among members of the group.
The men were known as the “Bored Group” by investigators as their online names often contained the word “bored.” They would set up fake accounts on social media and teen dating sites and pretend to be teenage boys.
With the help of one of the victims, the FBI was able to bust the group in 2017.
The other seven men from the group involved in the trial have all been sentenced to more than 30 years in federal prison.
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