Child-Molesting Lake Tapps Pilot Gets 25 Years In Prison

A Lake Tapps pilot who used money, alcohol and manipulation to molest more than a dozen boys has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

“It's a guy who has spent the last two decades of his life finding and molesting and raping children, and doing it on camera so he can relive it as often as he can,” said U.S. Attorney Roger Rogoff.

Weldon Marc Gilbert, who worked as a pilot for UPS, received the maximum sentence Monday from U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma.

Gilbert, 49, pleaded guilty last spring to molesting numerous teenage boys and videotaping them. He was arrested in Georgia and brought back to Tacoma two years ago.

The government accepted a guilty plea to spare his victims.

“This way they get closure and they get an opportunity to see justice done without having to go through this,” Rogoff said.

Three of the victims testified about the damage done to them by Gilbert. Then Gilbert faced them and apologized. Still, Judge Settle sentenced Gilbert to a quarter century in prison, something Gilbert's attorney said was no surprise.

“We were realistic. We saved him from a life, life sentence, which is what would have happened if we went to trial,” said Gilbert’s attorney John Henry Browne.

Before his sentencing, prosecutors said Gilbert remains "incapable of real remorse" for the damage he did to at least 17 boys as young as 10, and that he repeatedly described his actions as "harmless fun." He even wrote a letter to the parents of two of his victims, saying he had fallen in love with their sons.

Gilbert's assets, which Brown estimates to be close to a million dollars, will be sold and the proceeds will be given to his victims.