Trial begins in Las Vegas toddler video sex case

The same graphic video that helped end a frantic manhunt for a man accused of taping himself while he molested a 2-year-old girl will be the key piece of evidence in his trial.
Chester Arthur Stiles, who is also accused of molesting a 6-year-old, faces 22 felony charges, including 21 that carry a life sentence.

The haunting video hasn’t been shown publicly, but authorities took photo images of the girl and a man’s face from it and distributed them to the media to help find the child and her attacker during a two-week nationwide search.

“You like that? Feel good?” Stiles asks the toddler in the video, according to a Las Vegas police report filed after Stiles was arrested on Oct. 15, 2007. Police said Stiles can be seen adjusting the camera as he sexually assaults the child.

Stiles, 38, is on trial in Las Vegas on charges he sexually assaulted the two girls in 2003. Jury selection began Tuesday and is expected to take several days.

Stiles has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of sexual assault with a minor under 14 years of age, 10 counts of lewdness with a child under 14, and one charge of attempted sexual assault with a minor under 14.

“I’m done,” Stiles wrote in letters to his girlfriend from the Clark County jail, where he has been held for the past 16 months. He refers to himself as a monster with no defense facing “forever” in prison for “a crime that happened once.”

“No weapon was used; no drugs, no violence, no blood, no tears, no threats,” he said in one of his letters, with an apparent reference to the younger girl having “no memory of it.”

“Coercion used for some touching, and they have turned it into the crime of the century,” he wrote.