Verdict on 26 molestation counts: Guilty

PHOTOGRAPHER: Steven Cook

A Schenectady County Court trial jury took only about 35 minutes Monday afternoon to convict a city man on 26 separate counts in a child molestation case that was as horrifying in its details as it was bizarre in its unraveling.

The verdict was read shortly after 3:30 p.m. Defendant Harold Vandebogart showed little reaction when the jury foreman read “guilty” 26 times, in charges related to sexual abuse of two girls, then 3 and 12 years old.

Vandebogart now faces up to 75 years to life in state prison — 25 years to life on each of three counts of the gravest charge, predatory sexual assault against a child.

It’s a maximum prosecutor Jessica Lorusso said afterward that she intends to ask the judge to impose.

“In order for society to be safe, we have to put him in jail as long as we can,” she said.

Vandebogart, 31, was represented by attorney Kent Gebert, who after the verdict said there was little for him to work with. Vandebogart turned down a pretrial plea offer that would have brought him 22 years to life in state prison, Gebert said.

“The evidence was overwhelming,” he said.

Included in that evidence were photos, clothing, text messages and letters, all of which prosecutors said pointed to Vandebogart’s guilt.

The jury found it was Vandebogart who abused the two girls, taking photos of the sexual abuse of the younger one.

In a bizarre series of events, he then text messaged the photos to a woman who turned them over to police and helped them build their case.

Lorusso showed jurors the photos during the trial but, in her closing Monday, she refused to show the graphic images again, telling the jury she believed Vandebogart “likes reliving it.”

The comment drew an objection from Gebert and was stricken by acting Schenectady County Court Judge Richard Giardino.

But she did hold up two of the 3-year-old’s shirts.

One of them, Lorusso said, was the shirt worn by the child as she was abused by Vandebogart. The other was in another photo he took.

The shirts, tiny in Lorusso’s hand, also appeared to be stark evidence for those in the courtroom of the horrific nature of the accusations.

Though she didn’t show the pictures, Lorusso referenced them in her closing arguments.

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words,” Lorusso told the jury. “Those pictures … tell it all.”

It was only after the investigation began that authorities learned of the abuse of the 12-year-old.

Lorusso said the 12-year-old showed “raw emotion” as she testified that she feared she would get in trouble if she told of the abuse.

In his own closing, Gebert argued that prosecutors failed to prove that it was Vandebogart who originally sent the photos to the woman and that it was Vandebogart himself in the photos abusing the child.

Lorusso, though, argued that the text messages had the same misspellings unique to Vandebogart.

“We know who the sender is,” she said.

There is other evidence, Lorusso said, including an electronic storage device found belonging to Vandebogart and data embedded in the photographs themselves linking them to Vandebogart’s type of phone.

There were also identifying marks on Vandebogart’s genitals that showed it was him in the photos, Lorusso said, not someone else.

In court for the verdict was a woman whom Lorusso described as instrumental in getting the case to police — she convinced the woman who initially got the text messages to carry on the conversation to get more evidence on Vandebogart, and give that to police.

The woman hugged Lorusso afterward.

As for the two girls, Lorusso said they are doing well, including the now 4-year-old. The 12-year-old had been doing poorly in school before telling family of the abuse. But she is now doing well again, and testified at the trial.

“She’s a lovely girl,” Lorusso said.