Child pornography bust in Morrisville

The maximum sentence on each count is five years in prison. No trial date has been set yet.

According to an affidavit filed with the court by Robert Snetsinger, a criminal investigator with the attorney general’s office, Hess was identified through his gmail account by a “cybertip” from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The cybertip included files of suspected child pornography that had been uploaded to Hess’s email account: two images of girls, as young as 4 years old, engaged in graphic sexual acts.

Snetsinger was able to track down Hess after he subpoenaed Comcast Cable Communications for information, and then obtained a warrant to search Hess’s Morrisville apartment on Westside Court.

That search was conducted last Thursday; Hess was arrested immediately, based on evidence found on his personal laptop computer.

Hess told investigators he lived in the apartment with his girlfriend and 2-year-old daughter. The affidavit says Hess told police he used pornography, but not child pornography. He said he was uploading the sexual images of very young children to impress a group on Kik, an instant messenger smartphone app, “so he didn’t get kicked out. He advised that he started with incest groups and that eventually led to child pornography.”

Hess told investigators he had between 50 and 100 password-protected files in a computer folder he labeled “squeaky,” his Kik username. He said the youngest child was 4 years old.

After a forensic computer analyst searched Hess’s computer, the affidavit said, investigators found “several” files, including images of adult males raping girls between ages 5 and 8.

Hess told police his girlfriend did not have access to his private account, and did not know about the child pornography files.