165-year sentence for man convicted of child sex abuse, rape in Prince George's County
PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, Md. (7News) — A man who is known for his involvement with the local go-go music scene was sentenced Thursday to 165 years in prison after being convicted in January of child sexual abuse and rape charges in a Prince George's County courtroom.
Cleophus Canton, 60, was convicted on nine counts with charges ranging from sexual abuse of a minor, rape, and second-degree sex offense.
Canton abused four victims spanning over a decade, from the late 1990s to approximately 2008. Court documents reveal one victim was abused from the ages of 8 to 16.
All four victims testified against Canton during trial.
For victims like Brittany Simms, Canton's lengthy prison sentence allowed her to breathe a sigh of relief after decades of dealing with the emotional fallout from her abuse.
"I never thought I would have justice or anything. Excuse these raw emotions, but it just took 25 years and it feels so good to finally get justice," Brittany Simms said as she tried holding back tears.
Shawntia Simms said she vividly remembers what Canton looked like as he was facing his punishment.
"When I see him today, he looked very sick. He was stressed out. This stuff ate him up. Everything he put us through is getting him back, too," Shawntia Simms said.
Keisha Spencer also described the feeling of being able to move forward while Canton is in prison.
"I am one of the victims who finally got justice," Spencer said. "I'm not drowning anymore."
Prince George's County State's Attorney Tara Jackson stood side-by-side with these victims during a press conference after Thursday's sentencing hearing.
"Sexual assault is a deeply personal crime that profoundly impacts its victims, usually resulting in long-term emotional and physical impacts. Today, we heard from each of the defendant's victims, as they talked about the pain that it has caused them for so many years," Jackson said. "Today, a judge sentenced Mr. Canton to 165 years in prison for his actions. He was held accountable."
All four victims knew Canton through his relationships with their family members.
They said they tried reporting him when they were teenagers.
"We actually told our parents at 13. We told them, and nothing changed. Mr. Canton was still living in the home with Brittany. I was in Atlanta, but when we would come to family events, holidays, he was still there. Everybody treated him like family," Shawntia Simms said.
Brittany Simms added, "After 25 years, I decided to take my abuser to court because I was speaking up for the child in me: a child that wasn't seen, the teenager that wasn't heard. It took me 33 years to actually fit the pieces in that was just missing, and I didn't understand why. It was because of this trauma that happened to me. Please, please, please listen to your kids. Protect your kids."
Jackson underscored the challenges with reporting family members for sexual abuse and assault, but urged the public to take those accusations seriously.
"We understand that, oftentimes, there are different family dynamics that make reporting complicated, reporting of child sex abuse complicated. However, your child should be heard, and if they are being harmed or hurt I urge you not to ignore it," Jackson said.
Jackson added that Canton has another case already pending.
Both Jackson and the victims are now urging anybody else who may have been attacked by Canton to come forward.
"Please, please, please speak up if you are going through anything that is heavy on you, you feel like no one is going to listen. The team is here. They're here. They're going to get justice for you," Shawntia Simms said.
Spencer echoed this plea, and said, "Just please come forward because you'll get justice just like we did. 160 years is probably not enough for me."
Brittany Simms added, "We are speaking up. We are protecting our kids. No more. My daughter is safe. I am safe now."
Victims of sexual abuse and assault are asked to call the Prince George's County Police Department's child and vulnerable adult abuse unit at (301) 772-4930.
If you or someone you know is a victim of sexual assault or abuse, the National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 by calling 1-800-656-4673 or text HOPE to 64673.
New Orleans child molester questioned on unsolved killings takes the fifth 700 times
Stanley Burkhardt, convicted abuser and ex-investigator of sex crimes against children, gives deposition in civil case
Burkhardt’s decision to remain silent came when faced with questions about the killings during a deposition in a civil lawsuit by an alleged sexual abuse victim of his – a case aimed at him and the New Orleans police department (NOPD) which used to employ him.
His silence couldn’t be held against him if the context were a criminal proceeding. But in the context of the lawsuit, a jury is allowed to presume that the ex-cop availed himself of his fifth amendment right rather than answer honestly because he would have incriminated himself, said civil attorney Kristi Schubert, who deposed Burkhardt for four hours in late April.
“Are you afraid to answer these questions because you don’t think you’re smart enough to answer without incriminating yourself?” Schubert asked Burkhardt at one point.
“Fifth,” he replied, a curt indication that he was pleading his fifth amendment right to that question.
Burkhardt laughed when Schubert remarked during a separate exchange, “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen somebody so afraid to answer questions.”
Though Burkhardt pleaded the fifth about every 20 seconds during the proceeding, his deposition by Schubert is significant because it was one of the rare times someone has been able to ask questions of him for so long, including about the decades-old murders, while he was sworn to tell the truth.
Investigators have always stopped short of describing Burkhardt as a suspect in the strangulation murders of three teenagers with ties to New Orleans in the late 1970s. But there have been numerous clear signs that he has been considered of interest to investigations into those slayings, along with the 1982 death of a teen whose body was recovered from the Mississippi River.
Notably, a retired NOPD officer, Frank Weicks, who was deposed months earlier by Schubert in her client’s lawsuit, testified that he recalled his own agency had looked at Burkhardt as a possible suspect in the 1982 death of teenager Eddie Wells as far back as the mid-1980s.
Schubert specifically asked Weicks whether one particular officer had indicated to him “that he suspected … Stanley Burkhardt of being responsible of the murder of some boys”.
Weicks, who had previously spoken about Burkhardt in the ongoing true-crime podcast New Orleans Unsolved, replied: “That’s correct … in particular, Eddie Wells.”
The plaintiff in the lawsuit that produced the depositions of Weicks and Burkhardt, Richard Windmann, in October 2018 publicly accused Burkhardt in the news media of once having claimed responsibility for the death of 17-year-old Wells. Windmann back then was speaking out for the first time about his experiences enduring childhood sexual abuse at the hands of various adults growing up, among them Burkhardt.
Authorities shortly thereafter announced they were re-examining Wells’s death – deemed a drowning. They would also later confirm they were giving fresh looks to the slayings of Dennis Turcotte, 19, and 17-year-olds Raymond Richardson and Daniel Dewey, who investigators have long suspected were all murdered by the same person or people over a 21-month span beginning in February 1978.
The subsequent release of New Orleans Unsolved delved into links among Burkhardt; a sexually abusive Boy Scout troop leader whose victims included Windmann; and the deaths of Turcotte, Richardson, Dewey and Wells. It also documented how Burkhardt would suspiciously insert himself into certain investigations and attributed to him various acts of brutality.
Gaining the scarce opportunity to question him under oath, Schubert bluntly asked Burkhardt whether he had murdered Turcotte, Richardson, Dewey and Wells while he was on the police force and they were in his proximity.
He pleaded the fifth each time.
As it pertained to Wells, that slightly changed an answer that he gave during much briefer questioning in a February 2020 court proceeding, when he described the teen as a “homicide victim” who had been sexually abused, though not by him.
Burkhardt was asked then if he murdered Wells, and he answered, “No.”
Furthermore, in a striking moment during his deposition with Schubert, he twice said, “No, thank you,” when she asked him to look at a picture of Turcotte.
“Are you afraid to look at the child? … Does it bring up too many memories?” Schubert asked him.
“Fifth,” Burkhardt replied. “Fifth.”
He offered the same answer when Schubert asked him whether – as her client maintains – he instructed an underage Windmann to subject himself to sexual abuse as a kind of informant for Burkhardt to catch child molesters to either arrest or blackmail.
Schubert asked him for his take on some of the most alarming testimony about him from Weicks, whose tenure at the NOPD overlapped with that of Burkhardt, a civilian communications clerk at the agency’s communications center from 1970 to 1972 and then an officer there until 1987, when he was unmasked as a child molester.
Beside mentioning the scrutiny Burkhardt had drawn with respect to Wells decades earlier, Weicks testified that Burkhardt once offered to kill a domestic abuse suspect with a gun meant to be untraceable while they were both NOPD officers during that same era.
“No, not on my watch,” Weicks recalled telling Burkhardt.
Weicks is a voice on New Orleans Unsolved. He additionally testified that – years before Burkhardt’s unmasking – he was approached by an FBI agent who was investigating “sexual abuse of children” complaints filed with the bureau against Burkhardt.
He swore that he reported both the offer to murder the domestic abuse suspect as well as the FBI agent’s overture to his and Burkhardt’s commanding supervisor without any substantial consequence for Burkhardt.
Asked why he didn’t report Burkhardt to any outside watchdog agency, Weicks retorted: “Ma’am if I may comment … I arrested six police officers [before retiring]. How many cops can say that? Four … were pedophiles. One … was [for] theft. One … was a drug dealer. I think I paid my dues trying to seek out dirty cops.”
Burkhardt pleaded the fifth when Schubert asked him a series of questions about each of those aspects from Weicks’s testimony.
The first time Burkhardt was sent to prison was in 1987 – for mailing sexual abuse imagery depicting juveniles to undercover agents despite a career investigating child abuse cases. He has since been released and reimprisoned a half-dozen times, including on 15 July 2025 on state charges of alleged parole violations, for which he is being held in custody in lieu of $100,000 bail.
Among the crimes for which Burkhardt has served time were molesting his nine-year-old niece. During one of his myriad arrests, federal agents who searched his home found a 12-year-old boy inside, though he never faced charges related to that child.
US justice department prosecutors eventually resorted to a federal law allowing lifelong, involuntary commitments for people whom judges deem to be “sexually dangerous”. A judge ruled in 2011 that Burkhardt met those conditions and imposed an indefinite commitment. But he was conditionally freed after four years of treatment.
His repeated reincarcerations center on allegations that he violated his strict parole conditions by, for instance, secretly using cellphones and the internet. He allegedly accessed social media and commented on photos of children with an account whose password was “boyz4me!”.
Meanwhile, Burkhardt has also grappled with the still-pending lawsuit from Windmann. It demands damages from Burkhardt and New Orleans city government over abuse that Windmann alleges was inflicted on him in his youth by Burkhardt after the defendant met the plaintiff while on the job as a police officer.
Windmann, as Weicks confirmed in his testimony to Schubert, was molested as a child by the abusive leaders of New Orleans’ infamous Boy Scout troop 137. Weicks was one of the investigators on the case.
The case netted a number of convictions with testimony from Windmann when he was still a child, as chronicled in the 2023 Netflix documentary Scouts Honor.
Windmann met Burkhardt after that case. And the lawsuit Windmann eventually filed set the stage for Burkhardt’s and Weicks’s depositions.
An attorney for Burkhardt didn’t immediately respond to an email offering the opportunity to comment on his deposition, which was conducted and recorded at the New Orleans jail – while he was handcuffed and in an orange detainee’s jumpsuit. Weicks didn’t reply to an opportunity to comment either.
A trial in connection with Burkhardt’s July 2025 parole violation arrest is tentatively set for 13 July.
During the February 2020 court proceeding, which happened ahead of one of his various releases from custody, Burkhardt admitted in court to having molested Windmann – although his attorneys later sought to establish that Burkhardt actually meant he engaged in consensual sexual activity with Windmann when Windmann had turned 17, Louisiana’s age of legal consent.
Schubert asked Burkhardt during his deposition in front of her: “You were telling the truth when you admitted that you had sexually abused Mr Windmann while he was a child under 17, correct?”
Burkhardt answered, “Fifth.”
WWL Louisiana’s Danny Monteverde contributed reporting
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