MONTVILLE, Conn. — A Connecticut man, already on probation for a sex offense, was formally charged with possession of child pornography on Monday.
Gregory Butts, 52, was charged after probation officials searched his home in Baltic this past March.
Butts was previously convicted in June 2016 for illegal sexual contact with a victim under the age of 16. Following a period of incarceration, in December 2018, Butts was ordered to serve 15 years of probation with the State of Connecticut Office of Adult probation.
While on probation, Butts was ordered to follow certain conditions, including submitting to searches when the probation officer has reasonable suspicion. Butts was also not to possess a camera, camera phone, camcorder, videocassette, DVD, or any device that can record or playback visual images without the approval of a Probation Officer.
On March 3, 2022, the Probation Officer conducted a home visit at Butts' home in the town of Baltic and conducted a reasonable suspicion search. The probation officer located a zippered pouch in Butt's detached garage which contained seven smartphones with battery life remaining, indicating they had been recently charged.
The pouch also contained a notebook with loose paper that had usernames written on them with terms or references to young girls. Many of the user names had numbers in parenthesis that appeared to be their ages, ranging from 13 to 15 years old. There were also girls' names, street addresses, cities, and states with the suspected age in parenthesis next to the address. All of the ages were under 16.
After seizing the smartphones, the parole officer manually reviewed some of them and discovered nude images, as well as videos of Butts' neighbor.
On March 4 Butts was taken into custody for violation of probation. Following the arraignment in court, Butts was held on a 1,000,000 court-set bond. The devices seized from Butts' residence were submitted to the State of Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection Division of Scientific Services Computer Crimes Unit for forensic examination.
The parole officer was provided data extraction reports on March 15, 2022, on two of the submitted smartphones among the seven seized from Butts' home. Both of the smartphones contained voyeurism of Butts' neighbor and one contained evidence of child pornography.
In April, forensic examinations revealed that several smartphones seized from Butts' home contained suspected child pornography. According to the computer crimes reports three of the seven smartphones seized from Butts' home contained evidence of suspected child pornography. Police contacted Butts' attorney in an attempt to interview Butts, but the attorney stated that it was not in Butts' best interests to participate in an interview.
The examination revealed 10,528 videos and images of suspected child pornography.
Based on the evidence recovered from the two initial examined devices, an arrest warrant was obtained and Butts was arrested for two counts of voyeurism on May 18, 2022. On October 31st, Butts was also charged with possession of child pornography, and was arraigned in New London Superior Court.
Copies of the suspected child pornographic images and videos were sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to be reviewed and compared against their Child Recognition and Identification System. According to the NCMEC report, 3,502 of the submitted images were identified as known child victims.
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