A man who has refused to reveal the whereabouts of his children to his ex-wife and authorities for almost two years was sentenced Friday to 38 years in prison for kidnapping.
The children have been missing since June 2004, when Daniel Porter picked them up from his ex-wife for a weekend visit.
Since then, investigators have searched the Kansas City suburbs of Independence and Sugar Creek and the area around Porter’s hometown of Trenton in northern Missouri, but they have come up with nothing.
Porter has given varying accounts of what happened to Sam and Lindsey — that they were sold for $6,001, that they were strangled and thrown in a river, even that they had become part of a pornography ring. The children were 7 and 8 when they disappeared.
Porter, 43, was convicted in February of two counts each of parental kidnapping and parental kidnapping with intent to terrorize. Jurors rejected the defense’s argument that Porter’s only goal was to protect his children from an abusive childhood like his own.
He already was serving a 10-year sentence on a federal weapons. Besides receiving the maximum sentences on four kidnapping charges Friday, he also was sentenced to three years in prison for parole violations. The sentences are to run consecutively.