Catherine Stubblefield Wilson
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Catherine Stubblefield Wilson (born 1939) is an American woman who operated one of the largest
child pornography Child pornography (also abbreviated as CP, also called child porn or kiddie porn, and child sexual abuse material, known by the acronym CSAM (underscoring that children can not be deemed willing participants under law)), is Eroticism, erotic ma ...
distribution networks in history. Beginning in 1963, Wilson was active in the adult pornography business. From 1977 to 1982, she ran an enterprise called B.B.C. Star Inc., which controlled up to 80 percent of child pornography circulating in the United States, earning her the label of America's "Kiddie Porn Queen". Prosecutors did not accuse Wilson of producing any child pornography herself.


Personal life

Wilson was born in 1939. At the time of her final arrest, she was a divorced mother of five and grandmother residing in a two-story mansion in the affluent
Hancock Park, Los Angeles Hancock Park is a neighborhood in the Mid-Wilshire, Wilshire area of Los Angeles, California. Developed in the 1920s, the neighborhood features architecturally distinctive residences, many of which were constructed in the early 20th century. Ha ...
. Her daughter Delina described her as "a very good mom". Through the wealth accrued from her operation, Wilson's children were attending a private school, and she owned a luxury car collection, which included a 1981
BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Th ...
, a
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, a
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, a
Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to simply as Mercedes and occasionally as Benz, is a German automotive brand that was founded in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a subsidiary of the Mercedes-Benz Group, established in 2019) is based in Stuttgart, ...
, and a
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. She also owned real estate and fraudulently received
welfare benefits Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance pr ...
between 1980 and 1982, collecting over $600 a month ().


B.B.C. Star Inc.

Following a nationwide crackdown on child pornography throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wilson's business filled a vacuum as adult bookstores stopped selling the material. To build a base of customers, Wilson bought mailing lists of
softcore Soft core or Softcore may refer to: * Softcore microprocessor, microprocessor implemented using logic synthesis and perhaps other circuits * Soft core (synthesis), a digital circuit that can be wholly implemented using logic synthesis * Soft roc ...
adult pornography, then sent advertisements offering pornographic films of "young" people for $30 a piece. To avoid apprehension, Wilson used pseudonyms to open bank accounts and
post office box A post office box (commonly abbreviated as P.O. box, or also known as a postal box) is a uniquely addressable lockable box located on the premises of a post office. In some regions, particularly in Africa, there is no door-to-door delivery ...
es in several countries, including Denmark, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands. To obtain the material, customers would send orders to a front company in Denmark, where one of Wilson's accomplices would code the orders and send them back to Wilson. Customers would then be mailed 8 mm reproductions of pre-existing child pornography films from a network of mailboxes in the
Southwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...
, which Wilson drove to and filled each month. The operation was headquartered out of Wilson's mansion in Hancock Park and catered to over 30,000 customers worldwide. In her last two years of business, she netted over $1,000,000, though police alleged that she made over $5,000,000 in total.


Investigation and sentencing

In April 1980, Wilson was sentenced to three years' probation on one count of conspiring to distribute child pornography, to which she pleaded
no contest ''Nolo contendere'' () is a type of legal plea used in some jurisdictions in the United States. It is also referred to as a plea of no contest or no defense. It is a plea where the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge, serving as an ...
. On May 5, 1982, Wilson and her accomplice, Richard Eugene Trolio (1939–1989), were arrested on charges of felony distribution of child pornography. Trolio was arrested at his home in Woodland Hills, and Wilson was arrested while driving near her home in Hancock Park. Shortly after, they were both released on $5,000 bail. On the day of their arrests, six locations were searched by police, including a warehouse in Chatsworth where the duo housed their child pornography collection, which included ''Kinder Orgy'', ''Little but Lewd'', and ''Randy Lolitas'', among other films. The investigation into identifying Wilson had allegedly been ongoing since 1972. During a search of Wilson's home, police discovered what they called a "golden list" hidden under her youngest child's crib, which contained the contact information of 7,000 individuals who subscribed to the most extreme material she offered, such as bestiality and pornography involving children as young as six. Seventy films were found stacked beside a child's bicycle in her home. On top of the child pornography charges, Wilson was charged with one count of welfare fraud and five counts of perjury. She was re-arrested on May 11 for violating her probation conditions set in 1980. Wilson did not bring a lawyer to her arraignment and was therefore given a
public defender A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Belgium, Hungary and Si ...
and a new bail set at $500,000. She pleaded innocent. In August 1983, Wilson's bail was reduced to $125,000. In February 1984, Wilson pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography and was sentenced to four years in prison. On July 20, under the Child Protection Act of 1984, she was sentenced to an additional 10 years in federal prison, three years' probation, and two $10,000 fines. She did not show remorse at trial, comparing her activities to selling everyday products, such as "toothpaste or cigarettes". Also in July, Wilson was sentenced to five years in prison for welfare fraud, to which she pleaded no contest. According to postal inspector Bill Anderson, the
mail-order Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as: * Sending an order form in the mail * Placing an order by telephone call ...
pornography market "virtually dried up overnight" following Wilson's apprehension. In ''Beyond Tolerance'' (2001),
Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins (born April 3, 1952) is a professor of history at Baylor University in the United States, and co-director for Baylor's Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also the Edwin Erle S ...
claimed that the fall of her operation marked the end of the "liberal era" of the child pornography trade in the United States, as she was the last major commercial supplier in the country before pedophiles moved to
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in the 1980s.


See also

*
John David Norman John David Norman (October 13, 1927 – May 22, 2011) was an American pedophile and sex offender convicted numerous times between 1960 and 1998 on charges of child molestation and child pornography. Throughout his life, Norman operated various d ...


References


Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Catherine Stubblefield 1939 births American people convicted of child pornography offenses Businesspeople from Los Angeles Female sex offenders Living people