A Vancouver investigator uncovered child pornography cases that led to the arrest of two men living in Tennessee and New York.
Maggie Holbrook, one of four computer forensic investigators with the Vancouver Police Department’s Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit, was investigating local child pornography cases when she made the long-distance discoveries.
On Dec. 18, police served a search warrant at a Battle Ground man’s house in the 900 block of Northeast Second Avenue, seizing digital evidence of child pornography. Among the evidence was an image of a girl that Holbrook believed had been recently created. Sgt. John Chapman, who supervised the Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit for three years, explained that tens of thousands of the same images are widely circulated. When a new one pops up, it points to a new case of abuse.
Using a digital fingerprint of the image, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children determined that the image was, indeed, new.
Holbrook linked the image to an IP address belonging to Damion Faulkner in Hermitage, Tenn. She packaged up the evidence and sent it to the Nashville Police Department, which launched an investigation of Faulkner.
They served a search warrant at his house, finding evidence of child pornography, and arrested him Jan. 3. He is accused of circulating images of a 5-year-old girl — a daughter of one of his relatives — around the Internet. He is in jail with a $300,000 bond.
Holbrook “saved kids’ lives in the sense that they were being victimized at the hands of this sex offender,” Chapman said. “We’ve certainly stopped the abuse right now. That’s a credit to her.”
The ongoing investigation led to the discovery of other out-of-state email addresses where investigators believe Faulkner sent images.
Holbrook launched another case in December that had out-of-state ties. Earlier in the month, the parents of a 13-year-old Vancouver girl told police they had discovered images of their daughter that had been sent to Brewster, N.Y.
A 42-year-old man, posing as a teenage boy, talked to the girl online and coaxed her to send the images. When she realized she had been duped and refused to continue sending him pictures, he threatened to distribute them online. New York police later arrested the man.
Vancouver’s Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit often works cases that have connections crossing state borders, Chapman said. “I don’t think people get the enormity of the problem.”
