Palmer man arrested on child porn charges

PALMER — Alaska State Troopers have arrested a Palmer man, alleging he photographed neighborhood girls from his house and kept the images amidst an extensive collection of child pornography.

Randell Ellis Rowton, 44, was charged in Palmer District Court Friday with four felony counts of possessing child pornography and one of distributing child pornography, according to court records.

In a sworn statement, Alaska State Trooper Investigator Nathan Bucknall reports troopers received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children via Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Rowton had uploaded child pornography to Yahoo! Photos and Photobucket.com accounts.

Troopers found the images and traced Rowton to his Edinborough Drive home, Bucknall reports.

At the home Thursday, Rowton denied using the Web sites but handed authorities a stack of 13 pornographic pictures depicting girls ages 5 to 8, according to Bucknall’s statement.

“Along with the photographs, I observed approximately 39 photographs printed out on 8-by-10-size pages, which were of local neighborhood girls around the area,” Bucknall says in his statement. Rowton told Bucknall he took the pictures and printed them out.

The investigator wrote that the girls appeared to be 6 to 10 years old and were playing at a pool in bathing suits or walking to school in shorts and bathing-suit tops.

“Most of these pictures appeared to have been taken from within or just outside of Rowton’s residence,” Bucknall reports.

In addition to the photos, Bucknall wrote that he found 50 CDs with labels indicating they likely contained child pornography.

“Rowton stated that he has been looking at children and taking photographs of them for about a year,” Bucknall says in his statement. Rowton was arrested and jailed following their conversation.

Afterwards, troopers, still searching through Rowton’s things, told Bucknall they’d turned up six boxes containing several hundred VHS tapes labeled with terms suggesting they contained child pornography.

Rowton was booked into the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, where he remains jailed on $100,000 bail, according to jail records and Bucknall’s statement.