Huddleston said he did not recall Youngers ever being a volunteer. If he made such a comment, it was meant to be a compliment, he added.

Bill Smith, co-host and co-founder of the popular “Trek Geeks” podcast, contributed a small sum to one of Huddleston’s Kickstarters and featured him on his show. Smith pulled the episode off his archives after Huddleston’s conviction and issued an apology to fans.

A Kickstarter update that said Sci-Fi World was about to open alarmed him. On May 9 he wrote to the museum, asking whether Huddleston was still involved.

“Hi, not for years. John Purdy has been boss since 2018,” read the reply reviewed by The Times.

“People donating money, especially through a crowdfunding campaign, expect some level of transparency,” said Smith, who added later: “It does feel like they’re trying to just sort of sweep it under the rug and say, ‘There’s nothing to see here.’ How many fans are gonna go through this thing? How many families are going to go through this thing with kids?”

Kasey Shafsky, a co-producer and unit production manager for the TV show “Star Trek Continues,” worked with Huddleston when he co-wrote an episode of the show in 2014, and was aware of his conviction. When Shafsky learned of the museum’s opening, he posted directly to the organization’s Facebook page asking whether Huddleston was still involved.

“Not for about six years as we have said numerous times, and online and on our website and on Google etc,” said the response, reviewed by The Times.

Shafsky pulled up the organization’s most recent publicly available tax return, which lists Huddleston as president in 2022. Smith sent a screenshot of the return in response to Sci-Fi World’s denial, asking why the tax form told a different story.

The museum’s reply: “Okay sending it to our ceo, it’s obviously a mistake.”

A ‘knock and talk’ with the FBI

In September 2013, after being tipped off by a volunteer who claimed to have found questionable material in Huddleston’s social media messages, the FBI conducted a “knock and talk” at Huddleston’s home. During the visit Huddleston “admitted to communicating online with minor females, asking them for nude photos and receiving some photos,” according to a disposition report from the office of the L.A. County district attorney.

Huddleston said a hard drive that he gave to the FBI was found to have illegal images but that he had no idea how they got on the drive. He said he had just retrieved the drive after about two months during which time it had been in many people’s hands, including at various post-production houses that were editing and mixing trailers for the museum. (A representative for the FBI said the bureau does not comment on evidence given to it.) The disposition report said the loss of the computer that contained the hard drive could create reasonable doubt among a jury over who downloaded the child pornography onto the hard drive.

A longtime volunteer named Alana Evans, an adult film actor and president of the Adult Performance Artists Guild, said she had seen Huddleston’s laptop passed around between many volunteers on multiple occasion. She called the conviction ridiculous.

“When I see a creep, I know a creep, let’s be real,” Evans said. “Huston’s not one of those guys.”

According to court documents, Huddleston was eventually charged with three counts, including “contact with minor for sexual offense,” “using minor for sex acts” and “possession of matter depicting minor engaging in sexual conduct.” He was convicted of the last count and accepted a plea deal that reduced it to a misdemeanor offense, so he did not have to register as a sex offender.

Jessika Lange, a Trekkie who volunteered as the Hollywood Science Fiction Foundation’s social media manager from 2015 to 2017 but remained part of a group chat with other volunteers, heard that Huddleston could not be reached for a period because he was out of town.

Lange, a paralegal by trade, became suspicious, and after a bit of sleuthing, she discovered that Huddleston was in jail. Volunteers quit, Lange said, and since then some have tracked Huddleston’s social media accounts, noting with increasing concern that he appeared to be heavily involved with the museum.

“It bothers us because we put a lot of effort into this, and it is important to our fandom, and I feel like he really just abused that. He abused our passions for his benefit,” she said. “That’s why we’re real frustrated about it.”

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.