Former Sprague Man Sentenced For Child Sexual Exploitation

Saturday, April 26, 2025, 6:15 A.M. ET. 3 Minute Read, By Art Fletcher: Englebrook Independent News, 

BRIDGEPORT, CT.- On Wednesday, a 54-year-old Sprague, Connecticut, man and convicted child sexual predator was sentenced to two decades in federal prison on a child exploitation offense in a bizarre extortion scheme involving two Colorado missing teens. 

    On Wednesday, April 23, 2025, Gregory Butts, 54, formerly of Sprague, Connecticut, appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Kari A. Dooley to 240 months in federal prison, to be followed by fifteen years of supervised release for his previously entered guilty plea.

     Butts, who has been detained in federal custody since his initial arrest on March 4, 2022, previously appeared in Federal Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on January 17, 2025, and pleaded guilty before Judge Dooley to one count of Possession of Child Pornography.

According To The U.S. Attorney’s Office

     According to Acting U.S. Attorney Marc H. Silverman and charging documents filed with the District Court in April 2016, Butts was convicted in the Connecticut State Court of Illegal Sexual Contact with a Child.

     In November 2020, family and friends of two missing teen girls in Colorado posted information about the missing teens on social media platform pages and included a phone number asking the public to call with information. Butts, with his own phone number blocked, called the number and spoke to a female friend of the missing teen girls, who recorded the conversation.

     During the conversation, Butts stated that he was with the missing teens and had had sexual contact with both of them. He threatened to harm the girls if the conversation was recorded or if law enforcement agencies were contacted. He also threatened the female friend who answered the call. Butts then said that he would return the missing teens if the female friend would engage in sexual intercourse with him. Shortly after the teens had been reported missing, they returned home. They were not harmed and had not been kidnapped.

     During the ensuing investigation, investigators determined the call to the friend of the missing teens came from a lightly populated area in Sprague, Connecticut, and that Butts was a registered sex offender living in the area who was on probation following a state conviction for illegal sexual contact with a minor. After a Connecticut probation officer identified Butts’ voice in the recorded phone conversation, probation officers searched Butts’ residence and another residence where he also had been staying and seized multiple electronic devices, including a computer, storage devices, numerous cellular phones, and other items.

     Forensic analysis of the seized items uncovered over 10,000 digital images and video files depicting the sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of prepubescent and pubescent children and downloaded sexually explicit conversations Butts had with minors on Snapchat and other social media applications. In the chats, Butts also would receive sexually explicit photographs of the minors and then would threaten the minors so they would send additional sexually explicit images to him.