2 jailed on sex trafficking charges after teens, newborn boy, sex toys found in hotel room

Authorities booked a man and woman on sex trafficking charges Tuesday after discovering two 16-year-old girls and a newborn boy at an Uptown hotel in a room packed with the tools of the sex trade, according to an arrest report.

Pierre Smith, 36, of Jackson, Mississippi, and Angela “Cleopatra” Cagnolatti, 38, of New Orleans, were both booked on counts of trafficking children for sexual purposes. The two girls in their care, as well as the four-month-old boy that Smith was said to have fathered with one of them, were all taken to Children’s Hospital for examination.

Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell set bond for Smith and Cagnolatti at $100,000 each after a Tuesday morning court hearing.

Their public defender argued that the sex toys may have been for their own personal use and that the case against them was based on “suppositions.”

“These minor children are being treated like livestock,” Assistant District Attorney Michael Henn shot back. “It’s blatantly obvious what’s going on with these minor children. They’re being exploited for money.”

For more on this story, visit the New Orleans Advocate’s website.

The investigation into the girls’ disappearance appears to have begun in May, when one of them was reported missing and the other as having run away, according to a probable cause affidavit sworn by Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office Sergeant King Tao.

Philip Stelly, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, said that after filing the missing person report, the mother of one of the girls contacted the Department of Homeland Security for help.

U.S. marshals, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies serving on a marshals task force all took part in a joint investigation that led them to the Historic Streetcar Inn, near St. Charles Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard, around 6:30 p.m. Monday.

Both girls were spotted on a street corner near the hotel, according to Tao. The investigator said one girl told him that Smith and Cagnolatti would drive the girls to various places in the city, but she refused to explain why.

This story was originally published July 13, 2016 at 2:23 PM with the headline "2 jailed on sex trafficking charges after teens, newborn boy, sex toys found in hotel room."