LOGAN — A 50-year-old Logan man has been sentenced to prison for downloading more than 7,500 images of child sexual abuse material. Brady Lynn Thurston cried and wiped tears from his eyes, as a judge said what he did was “disgusting, sick and legally wrong.”
Thurston was sentenced Jan. 28 in Logan’s 1st District Court. He previously accepted a plea deal, pleading guilty to 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony.
According to prosecutors, Logan City Police officers received a cyber-tip in September 2024 from a cloud-based storage provider for Verizon wireless. They reported a user had uploaded files to their servers containing depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
The company provided officers initially with 79 files believed to be child sexual abuse material. Officers reviewed the pictures and found all but one was child pornography.
Police were able to determine Thurston was the owner of the user account by tracking his phone number and IP address, according to court documents.
Officers were able to secure a warrant to obtain the rest of the material saved to the account. They received additional folders from the company, with hundreds of images of child sexual abuse material.
During Wednesday’s sentencing, Cache County Deputy Attorney Dane Murray clarified how investigators found more than 7,500 images in total, including 65 of children under the age of 2 years old. He read graphic depictions of the files, calling them “some of the worst material out there.”
Earlier, defense attorney Ryan Holdaway said Thurston has a problem that needs to be addressed. He blamed his client’s actions on post-traumatic stress disorder, and asked the court to consider a sentence of probation and treatment instead of prison.
Murray disagreed, calling Thurston extremely evil, and noting the case was one of the most depraved he has seen during his career as a prosecutor. He asked the court for a prison sentence to protect the community and send a message of deterrence.
Judge Angela Fonnesbeck talked about the magnitude of the case and remarked that every picture showed a child victimized for Thurston’s sexual gratification. She said child sexual abuse material shouldn’t exists in our society but still does because of people like the defendant.
Judge Fonnesbeck sentenced Thurston to the maximum term of one to 15 years in the Utah State Correctional Facility for each of the 10 counts. However, she ordered the sentences to run concurrently, meaning he could be eligible for parole within a year.