Memphis man gets 10 years for Sex Trafficking

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A 53-year-old Memphis man has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for driving a teenage girl to Arkansas to have sex for money at a truck stop.

Charles Kizer pleaded guilty in August to violating the Mann Act by transporting the girl, 18, across state lines for prostitution in August 2010 after using threats of force and violence.

U.S. Atty. Ed Stanton called such human trafficking "modern-day slavery" and vowed to pursue and prosecute offenders.

According to court papers, Kizer brought the young woman to Memphis from Knoxville, forced her to engage in prostitution and kept her high on illegal drugs.

He also told her he slept with a gun under his pillow and that he had an axe under the seat of his truck that he would use to cut her head off.

Kizer also showed the girl the funeral of a woman named "Mocha," including video of the woman in her casket, and said her family blamed him for her death when her body was found on a roadside in Ohio, authorities said.

The body was that of Kim Vaughn, who had been working as a prostitute for Kizer in Nashville and Knoxville and at trucks stops in Ohio, according to a federal complaint.

The truck driver who dumped her body in July of 2010 told police she had a seizure. A coroner ruled she died of an accidental cocaine overdose.

The complaint said several other women told officials that Kizer was their pimp and that he threatened and physically abused them and, in some cases, told them he would kill them if they tried to leave him.

"From the beginning, (Kizer) created a climate of fear that kept (the 18-year-old victim) under his control," federal prosecutor Jonathan Skrmetti said in court papers. "This climate of fear pervaded the Defendant's parasitic relationship with (the victim) and secured her compliance over their entire time together, including during the trip to West Memphis."

U.S. Dist. Court Judge Samuel Mays Jr. sentenced Kizer Friday to the statutory maximum.