Ex-Jared Foundation leader agrees to plead guilty in child porn case

INDIANAPOLIS — Russell C. Taylor, the former director of Jared Fogle's charitable foundation, agreed to plead guilty Tuesday to 13 criminal charges for his role in a child pornography case that also ensnared his former boss and friend.

The plea agreement was filed Tuesday afternoon in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

Taylor, 44, will plead guilty to 12 counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of distribution and receipt of child pornography. Court records show Taylor knew all 12 of the child exploitation victims through family and personal associations. All were known to him by their real names, court records show, and some of them were related to him.

Each of the exploitation charges carries a potential prison sentence of 15-30 years. The child pornography charge carries a potential penalty of five to 20 years.

According to the plea deal, the government will not ask for a combined sentence of more than 35 years, and Taylor's attorney will not ask for less than 15 years. Under federal court terms, a person must serve at least 85% of their sentence before they can be released.

The judge in Taylor's case, however, is not bound by the agreement and can sentence Taylor to more or fewer years than recommended in the plea deal.

The plea deal also does not protect Taylor from prosecution on additional charges if more crimes are uncovered in the future.

"Protecting those who cannot protect themselves will always be a priority of this office," U.S. Attorney Josh J. Minkler said in a statement. "Adults who sexually exploit children by producing child pornography knowingly cause vast harm to their victims and should expect appropriately strong punishment."

Taylor's attorneys issued a statement later Tuesday.

“Mr. Taylor is agreeing to a plea that contemplates the possibility of him doing a very lengthy amount of time in prison,” his attorneys said. “Mr. Taylor accepts whatever punishment that is handed down by the court and hopes that his admission of responsibility will help the victims and his family start to heal and move on in a positive direction.

“Mr. Taylor has also assisted the government by providing information that played a substantial role in the charges and pending convictions that are facing Mr. Fogle.”

Prosecutors were facing a deadline of Thursday to bring formal charges against Taylor, or seek a third extension of that deadline. Taylor agreed to two earlier extensions while prosecutors worked on the case against Fogle.

Taylor was arrested in April on preliminary charges after a search of his home turned up more than 500 videos with images of child pornography. In May, Taylor unsuccessfully tried to kill himself while in the Marion County Jail. He is now being held in federal custody in Kentucky.

Taylor was the executive director of the Jared Foundation established by former the Subway spokesman and Hoosier icon to fight childhood obesity and promote a healthy lifestyle.

Fogle, 37, agreed to plead guilty last month to federal charges of distribution and receipt of child pornography and traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, crimes that will land him in prison for at least five years and possibly much longer.

The shocking criminal case against Fogle grew out of an investigation into Taylor, who was arrested April 29 after a search of his Indianapolis home. Authorities said information developed in the federal case against Taylor, including the images of nude children Taylor allegedly secretly filmed in the home, led them to Fogle.

Taylor left a job at the American Heart Association in 2007 to head the Jared Foundation. He was the Indianapolis-based foundation’s only paid employee, earning about $40,000 a year, according to federal tax documents.

His role in the organization is unclear, but news reports indicate Fogle made hundreds of school visits on behalf of his foundation. Promoted as “The Subway Guy,” he spoke to students about the need for a healthy diet and exercise, and he sometimes gave away Subway products. Taylor was photographed at some of the events.

Life for Taylor — and Fogle — began to unravel when a woman who knew Taylor and his wife approached Indiana State Police Master Trooper Patrick Etter in September.

The woman, identified in court documents only as Jane Doe, told Etter that Russell Taylor offered to send her images or videos of young girls through text messages, according to an affidavit in support of a search warrant filed in April in federal court in Indianapolis.

That report was passed on to an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Cybercrime Unit detective, and an investigation was launched.

“Russell Taylor made this offer during a series of text messages that included discussions of sexual matters, including bestiality and sadistic or masochistic abuse,” the detective wrote in the affidavit.

Investigators from several law enforcement agencies participated in the probe, which ramped up after an interview with Jane Doe in early October. The woman told police she had not deleted the messages from Taylor “which concerned her” and gave them access to her cellphone.

The women told police she had become friends with Taylor and his wife through her husband, who had died in 2013. “During the course of that friendship,” the affidavit said, “text messages concerning sexual matters were exchanged between Jane Doe, Russell Taylor” and his wife, who has not been charged with any crime. She could not be reached for comment.

After interviewing Jane Doe and examining the contents of text messages and images on her phone, the investigators obtained a warrant to search Taylor’s residence in Indianapolis.

“The purpose of the search,” the affidavit said, “was to look for evidence of bestiality, including images or videos.”

The probe did not turn up images of bestiality, according to the affidavit, but did reveal a shocking trove of child pornography. The images were of boys and girls, some as young as 9, including several videos that appeared to have been made at Taylor’s home at that time and at former homes. There is no indication any of the victims had been involved with the foundation.

Those videos included separate images of three young girls, between the ages of 11 and 16, in a bathroom. The girls were nude, the affidavit said. Another video depicted a young boy in the bathroom, also nude. There were other videos of some of the same children nude in a bedroom.

When detectives interviewed Taylor, he admitted using a clock-radio containing a hidden camera to record activity in his homes.

In all, the court document said, police reported recovering from computers and digital storage devices “over 500 videos,” which were produced between about September 2012 and January 2015. They also recovered text documents containing “stories about bestiality and incest.”

“The content is consistent,” the affidavit said, “with the purpose of the original investigation of bestiality and with a sexual interest and attraction to children.”

In the affidavit, the investigating detective described a drive in which “videos of child pornography and child erotica were recovered.” On that thumb drive, investigators also found “documents related to (Taylor’s) employment as director" of Fogle's foundation.

Some of the evidence used against Fogle came from the case against Taylor. Building the case against Fogle, prosecutors said, involved examining more than 235,000 text messages, emails, images and videos — more than 5,700 gigabytes in all. Some of that was "commercial" child porn.

But some of the pornographic material Taylor allegedly produced also was shared with Fogle. Court documents say Fogle and Taylor even discussed some of the children in the images by name.

Prosecutors said that when Fogle first learned about Taylor's secret video recordings, in 2011, he chose his own illicit desires over the fate of the victims.

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