Former Centre County journalist gets lengthy prison term for soliciting sex with teens
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A former Centre County journalist was sentenced Thursday to a decade in federal prison for repeatedly attempting to have sex with an undercover FBI agent whom he believed to be a 14-year-old girl.
Christopher Z. Morelli, 55, of Spring Township, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann to five years of supervision once he is released from prison. Brann recommended Morelli serve his time at a federal prison as close to Pittsburgh as possible.
Morelli must also register as a sex offender.
He was first arrested in December 2023 on charges that accused him of attempting to arrange meetings for the purposes of sex with the undercover agent he believed to be a 14-year-old girl.
Morelli was also accused of sending indecent images of himself and attempted to solicit sexual images over the course of nearly 18 months. He expressed a preference for younger girls in some of the messages, Spring Township police wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.
After he posted $250,000 bail through a bondsman, he was arrested about two weeks later on charges that accused him of soliciting sex in 2011 with a 14-year-old girl who was on a youth soccer team he coached.
Morelli provided the girl and her friend alcohol in 2011 while they went swimming at his house when no one else was home, police wrote. He was 42 at the time.
The woman came forward after Morelli’s first arrest said he began messaging her a month after the swimming incident. He asked about her sexual experience and described sexual acts he hoped to do with her, police wrote. After confirming her age, police said Morelli responded with a message that read “so young.”
She stopped communicating with him after the conversations became “even more inappropriate,” police wrote. He pleaded guilty in September to one count of attempted enticement of a minor.
Morelli repeatedly apologized and expressed remorse before he was sentenced Thursday, PennLive reported. The publication also reported that Morelli described the texts as a “work of fiction.”
At the time of his initial arrest, Morelli worked as the managing editor of the Centre County Gazette. He was placed on indefinite suspension from the weekly newspaper and has since been replaced.
He previously worked as a reporter or editor at publications across Pennsylvania, including at the Centre Daily Times in the late 1990s.