A former Wasatch County Sheriff's Office administrator pleaded guilty this week to a single felony sex charge involving a teenager, closing out a case that began with 10 felony counts, including human trafficking of a child and forcible sodomy. Mitchell McKee, 61, entered his plea to one count of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, and Fourth District Court Judge Anthony Howell immediately revoked his bail and ordered him taken into custody.
From 10 Felony Counts to One Guilty Plea
McKee's case had been headed toward a four-day trial that was originally set for February 2026 before prosecutors and defense attorneys mutually agreed to push it to October, according to KPCW. Instead, as reported by The Park Record, McKee pleaded guilty this week to the reduced third-degree felony charge, and the majority of his original charges were dropped as part of the deal. Those original charges included two first-degree felony counts of human trafficking of a child, two first-degree felony counts of forcible sodomy, one first-degree felony count of enticing a minor, two second-degree felony counts of forcible sexual abuse, two second-degree felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, and one third-degree felony count of dealing in materials harmful to a minor, per the same outlet's reporting.
Judge Howell told the courtroom that accepting the plea did not come easily, saying he knows comparatively little about a case until the parties provide details or it goes to trial, and that it is the prosecuting authority's decision what kind of plea offer to make. He noted that prosecuting authorities carry a statutory obligation to take cases to trial when proof exceeds a reasonable doubt. Prosecutor Kristin Zimmerman told the court a plea deal represented the state's best option for justice, saying there was no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the actions between McKee and the now-18-year-old victim were nonconsensual.
Conflicting Accounts Complicated the Case
Zimmerman pointed to inconsistencies between the teen's Children's Justice Center interviews as a key evidentiary problem. The first interview recorded that the victim did not know the defendant's name and described the encounter as consensual, the outlet's report notes, while the victim also reported difficulty distinguishing fantasy from fact. Zimmerman said the teen acted as a legal adult in Discord conversations with McKee, and that the two had identified safe words together. McKee reportedly questioned in court filings whether the teen could have freely left his parents' house while claiming to be 18, and Zimmerman argued the victim should not be cross-examined line by line about the Discord messages.
The investigation traces back to a Heber City police traffic stop on January 4, 2024, when a 15-year-old passenger disclosed he had engaged in sexual encounters with adult men in exchange for nicotine vape pens and alcohol, according to KSL.com. Investigators determined McKee had communicated with the teen using the online alias Doug Gentry and met him at public locations, including near the Soldier Hollow Golf Course and the Heber Valley rodeo grounds, the station reported. Internet Crimes Against Children agents later executed a search warrant at McKee's home and uncovered age-difficult nude photos on his electronic devices, per the Park Record's account, and Heber City police identified him as a suspect in the investigation around December 2023.
A Sheriff's Office Insider With a Second Career
McKee served 20 years as an officer with the Utah Highway Patrol before taking the civilian role of administrative services director at the Wasatch County Sheriff's Office, according to FLOODLIT. Outside that job, he ran a private mental health counseling practice in Provo, working as a licensed marriage and family therapist and sex therapist, KSL.com reported. Following his arrest in March 2024, the Wasatch County Sheriff's Office said it had no prior knowledge of the allegations and described the severity of the alleged offenses as impossible to overstate, according to KPCW.
Because McKee held a position within the sheriff's office, his case was transferred out of Wasatch County to the Fourth District Court in Utah County, with prosecution handled by the Utah Attorney General's Office to avoid conflicts of interest, KSL.com reported at the time. McKee was originally held in Davis County jail before the case moved forward. At a preliminary hearing in April 2025, Judge Shawn Howell ruled that prosecutors had established probable cause on all 10 original felony counts based on testimony about digital chat logs found across gaming and hookup platforms, according to KPCW's earlier coverage. McKee had pleaded not guilty to all 10 charges that May before the case eventually resolved in a plea.
Mandatory Registry and Sentencing Ahead
The third-degree felony McKee pleaded guilty to carries up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, and requires sex-offender registration. Under Utah Code § 53-29-205, an adult offender more than 10 years older than a minor victim who is convicted of a third-degree felony for unlawful sexual activity must remain on the state's Sex, Kidnap, and Child Abuse Offender Registry for at least 10 years after completing a sentence before petitioning for removal, according to the Utah State Legislature. Utah Code § 76-5-401 classifies unlawful sexual activity with a 14- or 15-year-old minor by an adult over 21 as that same third-degree felony offense.
McKee is scheduled to be sentenced November 10 at 1:30 p.m. at Fourth District Court, and he will remain in custody until that hearing. The teen involved, now 18, was 15 years old at the time of McKee's 2024 arrest.
