Whatcom man suspected of sharing child porn allegedly says he was trying to ‘hide it away’
A 2019 Homeland Security investigation into the sharing of internet child porn led to the arrest of a Whatcom County man for allegedly possessing and dealing sexually explicit images and videos of children.
During interviews with investigators, the man said he was trying to remove the images and video and that he was “attempting to hide it away from the world and not ever let anyone see it again,” Whatcom County Superior Court records state.
The Bellingham Police Department booked Phillip E. Lacefield Jr., 51, into Whatcom County Jail Tuesday, Dec. 15, on suspicion of two counts of first-degree dealing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and four counts of possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Jail records show he was released without bail later Tuesday.
A Homeland Security Investigations agent was looking into the sharing of child pornography files being exchanged on a sharing network May 20-21, 2019, according to Whatcom County Superior Court documents, when he identified a computer that had at least one file he could download. The agent found that the file had recently been deleted, but he reportedly was still able to download it and found that it included a child involved in sexually explicit conduct.
On July 3, 2019, agents were able to track the computer’s IP address to a Whatcom County address north of Ferndale, court records state, and on Aug. 21, 2019, investigators were granted a warrant for the address, which was served on Aug. 27.
During the search, agents questioned Lacefield, according to documents, and he stated that he understood how peer file sharing programs, such as uConnect, eMule and others, worked and that he had seen child pornography because it had come up in searches. But Lacefield said he did not care for child porn and did not trade it.
“I look at these things out of a morbid curiosity the same way ... I would look at videos of plane crashes or what have you — not because ... I find some attraction to it,” Lacefield told agents, according to court records. “It horrifies me, and for a while, I was convinced that if I could take them all down off the internet, nobody would see them again and none of these kids would get hurt, so for a while I did pull them down and save them and hide them away ... But I’m naive, apparently.”
Lacefield also admitted to storing the images in a hidden file on the hard drive of his computer, court records state.
Inspection of Lacefild’s electronic devices revealed approximately 1,006 image files and 201 video fields of children, some as young as 2, engaged in sexually explicit conduct, documents state.
On Feb. 12, 2020, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children identified 526 child victims on images and nine more on videos.
Lacefield turned himself in at the jail on Tuesday, Bellingham Police Lt. Claudia Murphy told The Bellingham Herald in an email, and Bellingham detectives worked with Homeland agents on investigating the case.
Lacefield is scheduled to make his preliminary appearance in Whatcom County Superior Court on Dec. 31.
This story was originally published December 18, 2020 at 12:24 PM.
