Proposed agreement calls for up to 30 years in prison

Ending one of the region’s biggest child sex cases — a scheme a judge called “a pit of horror” — a former Oldham County minister will plead guilty Tues­day to federal charges of aiding and abet­ting sex trafficking with a minor.

Howard Key Chambers, who adver­tised online that he wanted to fulfill a “granddaddy babysitter fantasy,” will admit that he had allowed a 10-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him seven or eight times as another man looked on and took pictures.

Chambers, who led a youth choir at DeHaven Baptist Church in La Grange, will be sentenced to between 15 and 30 years in a prison under a plea agreement that was still being negotiated Monday afternoon. He is also charged with using the Internet to entice a minor into sexual activity, according tocourt records.

The U.S. attorney’s office announced Monday that Chambers will appear Tues­day before Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Simpson III to change his plea.

The ringleader — Christopher Kos­icki, 33, a former softball coach in Louis­ville who admitted sexually abusing 10 girls, including the 10-year-old and friends she had over for sleepovers — was sentenced Feb. 1 to 50 years in pris­on.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jo Lawless, who specializes in prosecutor child sex trafficking cases, said in court papers that she was aware of only one case ever in the Western District of Kentucky with more victims. 

She said Kosicki, even after he pleaded guilty, bragged in a letter to another inmate about his exploits with one girl, using her name, and said he never “got charged with half my crimes.” Investigators first got wind of the operation when a Washington, D.C., police detective, working undercover, met a Seymour, Ind., man online who sent him several images of child pornography. 

Raymond Shadburn was arrested in September 2014 as he returned from Louisville, where he said on several occasions he had sex with the girl while another man watched and took photographs. 

A search of Kosicki’s home found that the girl in one picture lived there as well as photographs of Kosicki placing his naked penis next to the face of sleeping girls during a sleepover. He admitted to producing pornographic images involving 10 different children. 

Kosicki contacted Chambers through Craigslist and invited him to his home to fulfill his fantasy, according to court records. 

Chambers, 64, later told police he thought he was going there for what he thought would be “role play” and that when the man demanded money — saying he was short on funds for rent and other needs — Chambers thought he was “shaking people down.” 

He said he considered calling a friend who’d retired from the FBI but didn’t, instead returning numerous times for oral sex, for which he paid Kosicki $100 or more multiple times. 

On one occasion, he said he gave money to the girl, for her birthday. 

Asked by investigators why he kept going back, he said he was worried Kosicki would turn him in for what he’d done. 

Chambers has no prior criminal record, and church members described him as a good man who’d done a great job. None of the charges involved the church or members of the youth choir. 

Charges against Shadburn are pending in federal court in Indiana. 

Kosicki is serving his time at a federal penitentiary in Tucson, Ariz. With credit for good time served, he could be eligible for release in his late 70s, Chambers’s trial was set to begin Tuesday; Lawless said in court papers that she was prepared to produce the girl’s journal as evidence against him. 

He has been in custody since his arrest in October 2014, when Magistrate Judge James Moyer refused to release him. 

“This is the pit of horror,” Moyer said. “This the worst kind of abuse I can imagine.” 

By Andrew Wolfson
The Courier-Journal