15 arrested in child porn case

More than a dozen men were arrested this month as part of a law enforcement blitz on child pornography trafficking in the Pikes Peak region, police said Tuesday.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Peerless Summer, involved investigators from 15 agencies and focused on Internet users who rely on peer-to-peer networking to store and trade illegal images and video.

The effort identified as many as 25 men, of whom 15 have been arrested, Colorado Springs police spokesman Lt. David Whitlock said. Those suspects range in age from 18 to 70. Two are convicted sex offenders. Four are active-duty military.

Arrested in connection with the investigation were Aaron Holt, 24; Ryan Walker, 18; David Aardal, 70; Charles Osborn, 48; Frank McCrea, 20; Michael Bunte, 24; Kevin Gauthier, 48; Stephen Skelly, 24; James Wardwell, 66; Phillip Sheffield, 18; and John Hass, 29. The four military suspects are: David Allen, Nicholas Beach and Kyle McGuire of Fort Carson, and Andrew Evans of Peterson Air Force Base.

No evidence exists that any of the images involved local children, and the only thing linking the suspects was their method of storing and trading the material, said Sgt. Bill Dehart, supervisor of the Colorado Springs police Internet Crimes against Children unit.

Investigators used a special computer program that searches peer-to-peer networks, Dehart said. The program zeroes in on "hash values," or computer coding, contained in computer files that have been tagged as illegal by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

"We're looking for something akin to DNA or fingerprints," Dehart said.

After finding the material, police obtained warrants and seized suspects' computers and other evidence during back-to-back sweeps that culminated Friday.

The probes could have taken months, but police brought in support from other members of the statewide ICAC to speed the process and shine a light on child porn trafficking during Internet Safety Month, Dehart said.

"We're always looking for ways to be innovative, understanding that there's budget constraints," he said.

Colorado Springs police were assisted by law enforcement officers from El Paso, Douglas and Eagle counties and from Parker, Fort Lupton, Fort Carson and Peterson. An advantage of such wide-ranging collaboration is training officers from across the state how to conduct similar investigations in their own jurisdictions, Dehart said.

As many as 9,600 children have been exploited for child pornography but haven't been identified, Dehart said, not including the material that is being introduced to the Internet all the time.

"The reality is, it is the memorialization of child abuse," he said. "The more people we have actively investigating, the more chance we have to actually find a child."

Fort Carson spokeswoman Dee McNutt said soldiers are warned against the dangers of Internet child pornography during routine briefings. Those Friday safety briefings cover everything from preventing rape to avoiding drinking and driving, but regularly cover child porn, too, she said.

"Commanders do talk about that subject at times," she said noting there has been no special emphasis, though, even after allegations against two Fort Carson soldiers last month that they swapped child pornography with others on the Web. "We have had relatively few incidents."

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Tom Roeder contributed to this report.