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SALT LAKE CITY — A Taylorsville businessman has been charged with making child pornography and enticing teens to send him sexually explicit photos.
Spencer McDougal, 54, vice president of McDougal Funeral Homes, was arrested Tuesday and charged in U.S. District Court with production of child pornography and coercion and enticement for illegal sexual activity.
In May, a local church leader notified the Division of Family Services that an anonymous person had seen child pornography on McDougal's personal computer, including video of a child walking around a bedroom wearing only a towel, a federal complaint states.
When questioned by Taylorsville police, McDougal admitted to buying a "nanny cam" and hiding the small camera in a room where a minor was regularly changing clothes or was naked, the complaint states. He allegedly downloaded video from the camera to his computer.
Investigators say McDougal — who works at McDougal Funeral Home in Taylorsville and is listed by the Utah Department of Commerce as its vice president — met at least two 16-year-old girls on Facebook while posing as a 17-year-old boy from Idaho named "James Zupo Marsden." After chatting online and texting for a few months, he asked the teens to send him sexually explicit photos, which they did, the complaint states. He never met the girls in person, but was allegedly communicating with them as recently as August 2011.
Investigators served a search warrant Tuesday on McDougal's home and at the funeral home. Following an examination of his computers, thumb drives and cellphone, investigators discovered "several hundred sexually suggestive photographs of minor females," including nude photos of one of the girls he met on Facebook.
A woman who answered a call to the funeral home said she was instructed not to provide information and said no one was available who could.
McDougal is being held in the Davis County Jail.
Email:mfarmer@ksl.com
