John Hogan

WZZM13.com

GRAND RAPIDS — A man convicted of tying an 18-month-old girl to a motel bed and raping her as a video camera rolled is "truly an evil individual’" who deserves to spend the rest of his life locked up, a judge told Eric Devin Masters before sentencing him Thursday to 200 years in prison.

"This incident is one of the most egregious things that I’ve ever had to deal with in dealing with criminal cases for 31 years," Kent County Circuit Court Judge Mark Trusock said during Thursday’s sentencing hearing. "You are truly an evil individual and we need to make sure that you are never allowed in society."

He sentenced Masters, 29, to between 50 and 200 years in prison for raping the child at a motel off U.S.-131 in southern Kent County.

Masters apologized for what he concedes are horrible crimes.

"Something horrible was done to me and numbed my emotions to others," he read from a prepared statement. "And then I committed the same horrible thing to others. With God’s help we can both be healed.

"God is my refuge and salvation and through Him I can be redeemed from these tragedies," Masters added. "I’m sorry for committing this horrible crime."

His victim, now 5, remains traumatized, her mother told the judge.

"This man has given my daughter a life sentence that she will never forget," the woman said through tears. "My daughter is the strongest little girl I know and sometimes I look at her and wonder how she does it.

"I beg you, your Honor, don’t let him get out," the woman pleaded. "He doesn’t deserve to be in the outside world."

Courtroom spectators were visibly disturbed as the judge reviewed facts of the case.

"You took an 18-month-old little girl, an innocent little girl, to a motel with the specific intent, with a camera, with straps," Trusock said. "You stripped this little girl down, you tied her arms and legs to the bedposts. You proceeded to rape this child.

"And when you were done, you urinated on this child. I can’t imagine a human being doing that. There is just no justification, there is just no excuse for this."

The lengthy sentence all but assures that Masters will spend the rest of his life in prison.

"I want to send a clear message to the Parole Board that when you are first considered for parole, and that won’t be until you’re 79 years old, that I don’t want you out," Trusock said. "We’re done. Take him to prison."

Masters is already serving a 50-year federal sentence for making sexually explicit videos of children from Grand Rapids to the Upper Peninsula.

Michigan man raped toddler in motel, shared recording

Investigators learned of the motel rapes during the federal investigation. The former Belding man admitted to assaulting the girl at a motel near U.S. 131 in Kent County’s Byron Township in 2012.

Detectives were notified of the assaults by an FBI agent investigating Masters for sexually exploiting children in Ionia, Muskegon, Kent, Grand Traverse and Mackinac counties between 2011 and 2013.

A Grand Rapids federal judge in March 2015 sentenced him to 50 years for sexual exploitation of a child. In that case, he admitted to producing sexually explicit material of children and posting it to the Internet.

One of the videos was made on Christmas, Masters' birthday, in 2011. Investigators found 21 videos and images depicting sexual exploitation of a child, federal court documents show.

Masters doesn't appear to stay in one place too long; he has addresses listed in several Michigan cities, including Belding and Lowell.

His older brother, 33-year-old Timothy Matthew Masters, was sentenced last fall to 27 years in prison for assaulting a 10-year-old girl and then bragging about it to his younger brother. He’s at a federal prison in West Virginia and isn’t eligible for release until 2038.

"Good night last night,'' was the subject line in an October 2013 email he sent to Eric Masters, which included a pornographic image taken of the victim while the girl slept.

The Kent County brothers traded child pornography and discussed sexual abuse of children with the same nonchalance other brothers might have when discussing a football game, investigators said.