SALT LAKE CITY — A Herriman man charged with communicating with a 15-year-old girl who went missing for several weeks before being located in Colorado made his first court appearance on Wednesday.
Samuel Teancum Mitchell, 41, appeared remotely in Utah Third District Court, where a detention hearing was set for June 12. During that hearing, Mitchell will learn if he will be released from jail.
Mitchell, 41, was arrested on May 28 and later charged with five counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor and one count of Enticing a Minor, a first-degree felony.
After the teen's disappearance in April, a search located a secret iPad in her home, where detectives found an online conversation with an account named 'samitch,' which was later connected to Mitchell.
Messages between the teen and Mitchell were exchanged approximately eight days before she went missing.
According to court documents, the teen asked Mitchell to "kidnap her," and provided him with locations where she was going to be. She referred to him as "daddy" multiple times, the documents show, and that conversations between the two were "sexual in nature."
As the two spoke via the Discord app, they brought up "coupls twister" and "sex monopoly."
Despite the sexual conversations, no child sex abuse material (CSAM) was found on Mitchell’s accounts.
The two had planned to meet up before Mitchell became sick, with final contact coming from the teen on April 19 when she said, "I'm running away, please don't contact me."
