Pvt. David Andres Mayoral, who used the online name “ghoulishclown,” was sentenced Friday to 32 years in federal prison for possessing more than 3,000 photos and videos of child sex abuse material. (U.S. Army)
A soldier in Alaska who used the online name “ghoulishclown” was sentenced Friday to 32 years in federal prison for possessing more than 3,000 photos and videos of child sex abuse material.
Pvt. David Andres Mayoral, 21, assigned to Fort Wainwright near Fairbanks, was charged in March 2025. He pleaded guilty and, as part of the agreement, if he is ever released from custody he will spend the rest of his life under supervised observation. He also must register as a sex offender.
A search warrant of Mayoral’s electronic devices in 2025 found more than 2,500 photos and 680 videos, according to the federal indictment.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott Oravec at the time ordered Mayoral held in federal custody pending trial to ensure “the safety of the community, including that of minor victims.”
Court records list U.S. public defender Gary George Colbath as representing Mayoral. He did not release a comment Friday.
Michelle McCaskill, spokeswoman for the Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel at Fort Belvoir, Va., which handles most sex crime prosecutions within the service, said last year that the Army could have prosecuted Mayoral under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or had the case filed by federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court of Alaska.
“The accused faced similar maximum punishments — hundreds of years confinement — in both military and federal court,” McCaskill said. “However, there is no mandatory minimum sentence for child pornography in the military. In federal court, there is a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years for child pornography.”
The investigation into Mayoral began in 2024, when he was stationed at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia.
The Army Criminal Investigation Division office at Langley-Eustis received a tip on Sept. 11, 2024, from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that Mayoral had possibly illegal images that he had uploaded to an online platform.
CID officers reviewed the images and found they depicted “child sexual abuse material” of “prepubescent female children.”
The device used to upload the images was traded to Mayoral.
Mayoral used the online name “ghoulishclown” in some internet communications involving child sex abuse images, according to the indictment.
The soldier also had sexually explicit online conversations with minors in which he asked them to take lewd photos of themselves and directed how to send them to him through the online platform Discord.
Army records show Mayoral was stationed at Joint Base Langley-Eustis from May 15, 2024, to Oct. 11, 2024, when he was transferred to Fort Wainwright.
Reagan Zimmerman-Hartzheim, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska, said the charges could be filed in Alaska instead of Virginia because Mayoral had brought the images with him when he transferred to Fort Wainwright.
