Las Cruces sex offender dad who kidnapped sons to Mexico gets 35 years in prison

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico — A previously convicted sex offender father who admitted taking his two young sons from a Las Cruces daycare and fleeing with them to Mexico was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison for international kidnapping and child pornography, prosecutors said Friday.

52-year-old Clarence Michael Ransom pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors to kidnapping 3-year-old Maverick Ransom and 4-year-old Orion Ransom in October 2019 in violation of a custody agreement. He was later arrested and the boys taken into protective custody in Cabo San Lucas by Mexican authorities.

As part of the same plea deal, Ransom also admitted having ten online conversations in 2019 "using extremely sexual and coercive language to try to obtain sexually explicit photographs" of someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl. But it turned out, that person he solicited was actually an undercover police officer.

Authorities said Ransom had previously been convicted in 1991 of sexually abusing a minor and repeatedly failed to register as a sex offender.