HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - State prosecutors say they are “confident and satisfied” that Carl PhilipHerold, accused of holding a child captive, sexually torturing him and producing child pornography of the torture, will show up for trial after a judge here raised Herold’s bond to $1 million cash today.
Herold spoke to reporters outside the district courtroom saying, “I love and miss my son very much” and disputing a police investigator’s testimony describing a trip Herold took to Disney World with the boy as at least in part about sex. Herold said the boy stayed with his grandmother during the trip and “turned 9 on Space Mountain.”
Defense attorney Sam Dixon III argued in court that raising Herold’s bond to $1 million was essentially holding his client without bond, which the Supreme Court says is unconstitutional. Assistant DA Jason Scully-Clemmons said after the hearing that Herold’s attorney is being paid for by his employer, who might have the means to make a $1 million bond.Herold, 32, faces charges of producing child pornography, distributing child pornography, allowing his child to be depicted in pornography, sodomy, sexual abuse and aggravated child abuse. He is in the Madison County Jail and was before District Judge Alison Austin today on the state’s bond increase petition.
Austin issued a similar order Monday raising to $1 million the bond against Charles Dunnavant, identified as Herold’s domestic partner and suspected partner in the alleged crimes. Dunnavant faces charges including sexual torture, sodomy, aggravated child abuse and transmitting or exposing a person to a STD,
The judge told Herold Tuesday that “you do represent a threat and a risk of flight” as she raised the bonds on each of multiple charges against him to a total of $1 million cash. She ruled from the bench after a hearing that lasted just over 15 minutes and featured only one witness, Huntsville police investigator Chad Smith. The defense did not offer testimony.
Smith gave no graphic details from the stand but concentrated on evidence that Herold has lived in Huntsville less than nine months, has no ties to the community and has a history of moving around the country. The ability to flee and the possibility of flight are one part of the two-part legal test for higher bond. The other part is whether the defendant is a threat to the community, and Scully-Clemmons said Herold “is a special kind of threat.”
One of the charges against Herold is holding the alleged child victim “captive,” but Scully-Clemmons clarified that the reference was to keeping the boy under constant surveillance, not actually locking him up. The boy was never enrolled in school, never received normal immunizations and never had unsupervised play or outings, Smith testified.Herold appeared alert and engaged before and during the hearing, conferring with Dixon and reacting to Smith’s testimony. “That’s not true,” he told Dixon at one point, but he nodded to Smith that the investigator was right that Disney World was the destination of one trip out of state.
Smith testified that the boy’s mother lives in Wyoming. She is separated, at least physically, from Herold, Smith said. Other sources said she “is not in the picture” as far as parenting.
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