Luke Horneck Pleads Not Guilty To Federal Sex Crime Charge

A Casper man accused of driving to Santa Rosa, Calif., to pick up a teenage girl and bringing her to Wyoming pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday.

Luke Horneck, 22, entered the plea to the sole count of “travel with intent to engage in illegal sexual conduct,” during his arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Shickich in federal court in Casper.

Horneck initially was charged in Natrona County, and his case was bound over to district court. But a federal grand jury returned an indictment on him last week.

Shickich released Horneck on an unsecured $10,000 bond, and ordered him to have no contact with the alleged victim or her family.

The judge also limited his travel to Natrona and Converse counties; limited him to one Internet access device; ordered him to home detention except for work, religious and medical purposes; ordered him to wear an electronic monitoring device; ordered him to comply with a 9 p.m. to 6 p.m. curfew; ordered him to have no unsupervised contact with minors; and ordered him not to possess, send or receive sexually oriented or sexually stimulating images or sounds.

His trial is set for Dec. 7 in Cheyenne before U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson.

If convicted, Horneck could spend up to 30 years in prison and five years to lifetime probation.

The case began when Casper police responded to a call from a California man who told them a 14-year-old girl had run away, and she might be with Horneck in the Casper area.

Police later found Horneck and the girl at a hotel.

When interviewed, Horneck and the girl told detectives and an FBI agent they had been friends for more than a year, and put together the plan to leave California in August.