Two Walton County men will spend the rest of their lives in prison for sexually abusing two young boys at their home and producing homemade child sexual abuse material, prosecutors said Monday.
The couple, Zachary and William Zulock, were convicted recently on charges of sodomy, child molestation and incest for abusing the boys in their residence, which prosecutors deemed a “house of horrors.” On Thursday, the men were each sentenced to 100 years in prison followed by life on probation, District Attorney Randy McGinley said.
“Because of the nature of the offenses, the defendants will not be eligible for parole for the entire 100 years,” McGinley said.
On July 22, 2022, the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit received a “cyber tip” from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about suspected homemade child sexual abuse material that was uploaded to a Google account with a Walton County IP address. The sheriff’s office was contacted and searched the home, where they arrested Hunter Lawless, who admitted to receiving pictures and material from “Zach Zulock,” according to the DA’s office.
That led authorities to search Zachary and William Zulock’s home, located in the 800 block of St. Regis Way in Oxford, where the couple had lived with the two boys, whom they had adopted a “few years” earlier, McGinley said. That evening, the men admitted to abusing the boys “over a period of time,” prosecutors said.
The county’s Division of Family and Children Services was notified and took the kids into protective custody at the same time as their adoptive parents were arrested, authorities said.
Inside the home, investigators seized electronic evidence and examined 14 days worth of surveillance footage from inside the house, which contained more than seven terabytes of video, according to the DA’s office.
“A thorough analysis found videos of multiple incidents of the defendants committing sexual abuse in different parts of the house,” McGinley said. “Cellphones were analyzed, which contained graphic images and videos of the abuse as well as graphic text and social media messages about the sexual abuse.”
According to the DA’s office, evidence taken from one of the cellphones showed that another man, Luis Vizcarro-Sanchez, had been sent messages from Zachary Zulock regarding sexual abuse of one of the victims. Afterward, Vizcarro-Sanchez pleaded guilty to pandering for a person under 18 and to several counts of computer theft after he stole from a Loganville Kroger where he worked, prosecutors said.
Vizcarro-Sanchez was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Lawless pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of children and was sentenced to 12 years behind bars. They both agreed to cooperate in any prosecution of the Zulocks, and Vizcarro-Sanchez was required to testify “in any proceeding or trial.”
On Aug. 20, William Zulock pleaded guilty to six counts of aggravated sodomy, three counts of aggravated child molestation, two counts of incest and two counts of sexual exploitation of children.
Two months later, on Oct. 21, Zachary Zulock pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sodomy, three counts of aggravated child molestation, two counts of sodomy, three counts of sexual exploitation of children and three counts of pandering for a person under 18. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of incest, but a judge found him guilty after a brief bench trial “on a purely legal issue,” McGinley said.
In a statement, McGinley thanked law enforcement for their assistance in the case and hoped the sentencings would help the victims continue to heal without having to worry about their abusers being free.
“It cannot be stressed enough how important it is for our society to have individuals willing to adopt children in need. But anyone who does so and then abuses those children deserves extremely harsh consequences and decades in prison. The sentence imposed not only appropriately punishes these defendants for their repeated selfish actions, but also sends the message to the public that such actions will never be taken lightly,” McGinley said.
“Those involved with the investigation and prosecution of this case will never forget what they had to see and hear in this case. These two defendants truly created a house of horrors and put their extremely dark desires above everything and everyone else. However, the depth of the defendants’ depravity, which is as deep as it gets, is not greater than the resolve of those that fought for justice and the strength of the victims in this case. The resolve I have seen from these two young victims over the last two years is truly inspiring.”
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