PANAMA CITY — The man who apparently faked his death in Georgia and fled to Colorado to escape prosecution in Bay County pleaded Thursday to charges he came here to have sex with a minor last year.
Nathan Wilkins, 19, entered a straight-up plea of no contest in front of Judge Michael Overstreet on Thursday, which means he has no deal with prosecutors when he is sentenced Aug. 5. His plea means he faces up to 20 years for traveling to meet a minor for sex and computer pornography and child exploitation.
Wilkins recently had hired attorney Al Sauline, who had a filed a motion to suppress his client’s statements to investigators after he was arrested as part of Operation Riptide, a multi-agency sting targeting people interested in sex with minors.
Thursday’s hearing was scheduled to be for Sauline to argue his motion with prosecutor Christa Diviney, who filed a response to the motion. In that motion, Sauline argued his client was so high on the hallucinogen C-2I when he waived his Miranda rights that his consent shouldn’t be considered to have been made knowingly.
In her response, Diviney, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, pointed out that Wilkins has no evidence to support his contention he was high on hallucinogens that night, and if he were to offer evidence through his own testimony it would contradict his own argument.
“If the defendant provides evidence of this ‘intoxication’ by testimony today, then this is an admission that defendant has a conveniently selective memory which is remarkable to some events of the evening but not others,” Diviney wrote. “Additionally it appears based on the content of his recorded post-Miranda statement that the defendant did not have any trouble recollecting the events of the day on the evening in question.”
Wilkins traveled to Bay County after answering an ad on Craigslist purportedly posted by a father seeking a sex partner for his 11-year-old daughter. It actually was police who posted the ad, and it was the police waiting for him when he arrived.
Wilkins was out on bond in April when a fisherman found a pile of clothing and a suicide note on the banks of the Little River in Brooks County, Ga. Authorities there began to search for Wilkins, who turned up alive three days later in Colorado.