HELENA — Connor Andrew Jones, a former Carroll College student, admitted on Thursday to rape and illegally video recording women on campus.
Jones appeared via video from Colorado in Lewis & Clark County District Court.
He pleaded guilty to four felony charges, including aggravated sexual intercourse without consent, sexual abuse of children, burglary, and surreptitious visual observation or recording.
Court document say in February 2020, a Carroll faculty member contacted police in Helena after finding "unusual files" on one of their Department’s SD cards. The files were dated from 2018 and upon opening showed a young woman using the bathroom. In their initial investigation, detectives found a clip on the SD card that appeared to show a man they believe to be Jones setting up a camera in a bathroom.
Carroll faculty confirmed to police that Jones would have had access to the SD card, and the bathroom could have been in his apartment on campus.
On March 24, 2020, detectives executed a search warrant of the apartment which was still occupied by Jones. Law enforcement seized four iPads, three video cameras, 17 cell phones, 19 external hard drives, and 60 memory cards. Files on the devices are alleged to contain videos of 16 women police could identify using the bathroom in Jones’ apartment, sexual videos of women on campus, and videos of a passed-out woman who appears to be being raped.
The women in the videos told police they had no knowledge of being filmed at the time and did not give their consent to do so. One of the women told police about another incident in which she accuses Jones of sexually assaulting her.
A Montana Division of Criminal Investigation agent also found more than 700 files on the devices seized from Jones that are alleged to contain child pornography, with some depicting a child under the age of 10.
Sentencing for Jones is scheduled for February 16.
