TOWN OF BEAUFORT – District Attorney Scott Thomas announced that David Duane Moore, age 67, of Marshallberg was sentenced to a minimum of 69 months up to 84 months in prison, plus five years of post-release supervision, after pleading guilty as charged in Carteret County Superior Court last week to sixteen counts of Second Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor for possessing child sex abuse material.
Child sex abuse material is the photographic or video evidence of a criminal sexual act against infants, children, or young people. Moore will also be required to register with the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry for 30 years.
In the course of preparing for litigation related to the discovery of the shipwreck of Blackbeard’s flagship ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’ off the coast of Beaufort, a representative who was assisting the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (the state agency that oversees the North Carolina Maritime Museum) discovered an image of suspected child sex abuse material on a laptop that had been issued to Moore in the course of his employment at the North Carolina Maritime Museum.
The agency contacted the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, which began an investigation resulting in the discovery that Moore conducted numerous searches for child pornography and possessed 29 images of child sex abuse material on his state-issued laptop and another 284 images on his personal devices. Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Joshua W. Willey sentenced the defendant. The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Irene C. Finney.
