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A Monroe County judge sentenced a Florida Keys woman to 13 years in prison this week, closing an investigation into a child pornography, abuse and incest case that seasoned investigators and prosecutors rank among the worst they’ve ever handled.
The probe began with an FBI online sting operation in 2023, focused on a man living with his wife and five children on a sailboat moored off the Middle Keys city of Marathon. The husband, Eric Edward Cadogan, 40, chatted with a man on a shadowy app who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent about the sale of hundreds of child porn images.

In some of the explicit images of children that Cadogan sold to the agent, court documents reveal a man was wearing a bracelet identical to one investigators found in Cadogan’s bedroom in the Wisconsin home, where he was arrested in December of that year.
“This is one of the most horrifying cases we’ve prosecuted,” Monroe County State Attorney Dennis Ward said. “The level of betrayal and abuse is almost unimaginable.”

Cadogan was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison last year after pleading guilty to distributing and producing child pornography.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and State Attorney’s Office also opened its own investigation following his FBI arrest and he’s charged locally with sexual battery, lewd and lascivious conduct, child neglect, child cruelty, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
The sheriff’s office probable cause affidavit details multiple instances of Eric Cadogan raping children, encouraging them to engage in sexual acts with each other and filming the crimes on his cell phone. His county case is pending.

But further investigation revealed it wasn’t just Eric Cadogan abusing children on the family’s boat and elsewhere. His wife, 37-year-old Kia Lynn Cadogan was also taking part in the horror, investigators say.
“This wasn’t just child abuse — this was a calculated, sustained campaign of sexual exploitation within what should have been the safest place: a child’s own home,” Chief Assistant State Attorney Joseph Mansfield said in a statement.

That revelation came to light the day FBI agents raided the Cadogan’s home in Wisconsin. After arresting Eric Cadogan, Kia Lynn Cadogan, 37, told agents that she had sex with one of their young children.
She pleaded guilty this week to sexual battery, incest and child neglect, and, Circuit Judge Mark adjudicated her guilty and sentenced her to prison
She told agents that her husband forced her to molest the child. But, Sheriff Rick Ramsay, when he found out about the federal case against Eric Cadogan and what Kia said to agents, ordered his detectives to begin their own investigation since the crimes happened in Monroe County.
Ramsay told the Herald when detectives arrested Kia Cadogan in January 2024, that he did not buy her excuse that she committed the abuse out of fear from her husband. Ramsay also said that even if she was being threatened by Eric Cadogan, Kia had ample opportunity to report his actions because she regularly visited land from the family’s boat.
“Our job is to protect people. If people come forward, they get protected,” Ramsay said at the time. “She was equally a co-conspirator.”
Assistant State Attorney Colleen Dunne, the lead major crimes prosecutor in Monroe, led the state’s case. The State Attorney’s Office and sheriff’s office also worked with federal agents and law enforcement agencies in LaCrosse County, Wisconsin, where the Cadogans moved from the Keys in 2023.

Jones also sentenced Kia Cadogan to two concurrent five-year sentences for her convictions on incest and child neglect. She will have to serve eight years probation when she’s released and will be subject to court-ordered supervision and be required to register as a sex offender.
“Kia Cadogan’s actions were depraved, and her willingness to expose multiple children to trauma is nothing short of evil. Our job is to stand between predators like this and the children they target — and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” Mansfield said.