‘Imma bad person i know it’: Delaware detective’s online life as sexual predator of teen girls comes crashing down

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A 31-year-old man in Delaware spent several months in 2021 persuading a teenage girl in Ohio to send him sexually explicit photos through Snapchat.

Using vulgar and degrading language with the 16-year-old, the man, whose username was “jasonkyle221,” kept pestering the girl to go further on the instant messaging app.

“You going to make daddy that vid?” he wrote during one exchange. After she sent more provocative photos and agreed to keep their correspondence private, he praised her as a “good girl.”

But when the teen balked at continuing their illicit chats, the man threatened to post her sexual photos online, the girl told authorities. She eventually blocked him.

The man, however, continued using Snapchat to solicit other minor girls and share child pornography with men.

He told one Snapchat user he had a “kink” for girls as young as 14, writing: “Imma a bad person i know it.”

The man behind the keyboard, the FBI revealed in 2023, was Michael Anthony Kealty, a churchgoing police officer.

Kealty was a detective and rising star on the police force in Smyrna, a town of 13,000 people in central Delaware, where he was named officer of the year in 2019.

Kealty and his wife lived with their infant son in the nearby rural enclave of Magnolia.

He is a U.S. Army veteran who spent four years as an explosives disposal technician and was still in the Army Reserves.

But Kealty’s depraved online behavior has blown his promising life to pieces.

For the next several years he’ll be locked in a federal prison for coercing and enticing the Ohio girl to engage in sexual behavior.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Briana Knox, who prosecuted Kealty, told WHYY News that the disgraced cop and vet is yet another example of a deviant sex criminal who led an exemplary life in public but committed dark deeds in the shadows.

“That’s what you see with a lot of predators,” Knox said. “They are charming. They are successful in the community. But they’re doing other things behind closed doors.”

Knox said the fact that Kealty was a cop only compounds the criminality.

“There’s more types of harm to the community because the trust in the criminal justice system is shattered when you have someone abuse their position like that,” the prosecutor said.

‘You good with these pics,’ Kealty wrote after sending child porn

Kealty’s swift and dramatic fall began in August 2023 — four months after his son was born.

That’s when Snapchat reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that an account contained what is classified as an “A1” image of child pornography, according to U.S. District Court files from Delaware that WHYY News reviewed.

The center followed up with a CyberTip report to the FBI that included the photo showing a “prepubescent” girl performing oral sex on a man, court records show. The girl in the photo, whose face was clearly visible, was a known victim of child sexual abuse whose images have circulated around the internet, an FBI agent wrote.

Snapchat shared information about the account’s owner, including his phone number and  internet protocol address.

The FBI contacted Comcast, which identified its internet customer as Kealty, and provided his address and phone number, which matched those on the Snapchat account.

In September 2023, the FBI raided Kealty’s home and vehicles. During the search, he confirmed his phone number was the one on the Snapchat account, court records show.

Agents also obtained a search warrant for the contents of the Snapchat account, which contained selfies of Kealty and the child porn image that triggered the investigation. Two phones were on the account: Kealty’s personal phone and the one issued to him by Smyrna police.

The FBI also found an image Kealty had sent to another Snapchat user in August 2023. The photo showed another “prepubescent” girl, naked except for American flag socks, being violated by a naked man.

“You good with these kinds pics?” Kealty asked.

“What you think. We into the same s…,” the other user answered.

“Haha just making sure,” Kealty said.

Kealty even offered to send photos of girls from an upcoming high school football game where he was working an overtime shift for Smyrna police.

“These girls are such flirts and I’m not an ugly dude and not too old so I def think I could get a few but it’s so so so risky!!!” Kealty wrote.

‘Well I appreciate you showing off like you did!!’

The FBI also found solicitous exchanges with several teenage girls, including the 16-year-old from the Cincinnati area.

Kealty acknowledged her youth and encouraged her to show him her “teen body.”

The girl was reluctant to participate but Kealty persisted, writing: “Just try if ya don’t like it we will stop.”

She eventually complied.

“Ohhh damn!!! Well I appreciate you showing off like you did!!” he wrote.

Kealty also told one fellow Snapchat user he “loves” rape, the FBI agent wrote without elaboration.

And he made racist, derogatory remarks about Black and Latino people, once writing he would “rape [a Black female] like my ancestors did in NC back when America was great,” according to the agent.

The FBI had seen enough, and charged Kealty in October 2023 with distribution and possession of child pornography.

Smyrna Police Chief Torrie James, who had suspended Kealty after the search warrant was executed, immediately fired him and expressed his disgust at the alleged actions of his decorated officer.

“I am saddened, heartbroken, disappointed, and downright appalled by these allegations,” the chief said. “The fact that one of my own officers has tarnished the reputation of our town and department is sickening.”

Kealty hired NYC lawyer from ‘Inventing Anna’ fame

Kealty, who was held without bail at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, hired New York City attorney Todd Spodek, a celebrity in legal circles.

Spodek handles federal criminal cases in several states but rose to prominence in 2019 while defending Anna Sorokin, whose crimes were chronicled in the Netflix series “Inventing Anna.”

Sorokin is the glamorous Manhattan woman who defrauded banks, hotels and investors by posing as European heiress Anna Delvey. Spodek, who was portrayed by Emmy- and Tony Award-nominated actor Arian Moayed in the Netflix series, had argued unsuccessfully at trial that Sorokin didn’t defraud anyone because she fully intended to pay them back.

Sorokin received a sentence of four to 12 years in prison but was released in 2021 and last year appeared on the ABC reality show “Dancing With The Stars.”

With the Kealty case, Spodek decided the best strategy was to resolve the case without a trial because a conviction could bring a possible life sentence. Spodek also had Kealty undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Meanwhile, prosecutor Knox pursued a more serious felony charge. In October — a year after Kealty’s arrest — a grand jury indicted him for coercion/enticement of the Ohio girl. The child porn charge was abandoned.

The new charge carried a minimum penalty of 10 years behind bars — twice the minimum of five years for a federal child porn conviction.

Two weeks later, Kealty pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Richard G. Andrews in Wilmington.

Defense cites PTSD in appeal for lower sentence

While Kealty faced a maximum penalty of life in prison, under federal sentencing guidelines for someone like him with no criminal record, the range was 10 years behind bars to 11 years and three months, court records show.

Knox sought the full 135 months for “grooming” the girl for nearly six months and “ultimately persuading her to produce child sexual abuse material for his benefit,” she wrote in her sentencing memo.

The prosecutor pointed out that as a detective, Kealty had “worked” every type of case, including sex crimes against both adults and children.

Kealty “was sworn to protect the community and bring perpetrators of heinous crime to justice. Instead, he became a perpetrator himself, betraying his oath, his badge, and his community by exploiting the very people he was sworn to protect,” she wrote.

She asked Judge Andrews to pronounce a sentence to “reflect the seriousness of the offense, send a strong message, and promote respect for the law; and the need for just punishment.”

Kealty’s wife, parents, siblings, neighbors and friends countered in letters to the judge that despite his crime, he was a decent man who deserved leniency. Spodek included those pleas in his sentencing memo, and also argued that his client suffered from previously undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder that led to porn addiction that ultimately fixated on children.

Kealty’s mental issues, the lawyer wrote, stemmed from watching an Army “buddy” suffer severe injuries in an explosion and from work as a detective.

“Michael Kealty was living a double life,” Spodek wrote to Judge Andrews while seeking the minimum sentence. “His loved ones saw one version of him, an idealized version: a patriot, a distinguished soldier and police officer/detective, a family man, and a man of faith.”

“Secretly, he was struggling immensely with trauma, insecurities, and addiction. Regrettably, Michael relied on a combination of pornography and risk-seeking to self-medicate instead of seeking professional help or alerting the people in his life,” Spodek wrote.

Spodek included multiple citations Kealty had won during his policing career, including one from former Attorney General Matt Denn’s office for excelling at the 2017 police academy, and the award as top Smyrna cop.

He also portrayed Kealty as a model prisoner who has earned several certificates, such as for “successfully living with a co-occurring disorder.”

Judge Andrews sided with Spodek’s proposal, and gave Kealty a 10-year sentence this month.

Spodek told WHYY News the sentence was appropriate, despite his client’s “reprehensible” conduct.

“It’s important to realize in cases like this where you have an individual who by all accounts was living a law-abiding life and then went down a path of very destructive behavior, you have to backtrack and try and analyze what happened,” he said. “Kealty, by all accounts, was suffering from an undiagnosed and untreated PTSD diagnosis along with some other destructive behaviors, and I believe that the confluence of events led him down this unfortunate cycle and led him down to the path of sending and receiving these images.”

Knox saw it differently, though.

“Michael Kealty had everything: a stable career, loving parents, a loving wife, a newborn son, and a home,” she told the judge. “And instead of cherishing these things and being grateful for his fortune in life, he took to the internet to unleash his frustrations with life on young girls.”