PORN BEAST HAD SECRET GUN BUNKER
Cops find 2 MILLION vile images at farm
A MAN who amassed more than two million indecent images and stored weapons beneath his home has been jailed for 12 years and eight months.
Geoffrey Crossland, 70, was being investigated by child abuse officers who found guns and ammunition in an underground bunker when they raided his farmhouse in Harrogate, N Yorks.
He pleaded guilty to making indecent images and 11 firearms charges.
Judge Andrew Stubbs said the “scale of the depravity” was hard to understand.
At York Crown Court, the judge added: “Your criminality was unearthed, almost literally, on October 18 last year, when officers searched your house for images of children.
“One issue which is not forgotten is that these images capture real life people, and at the same time, real life sexual abuse being carried out on them.”
The “scale of the depravity” that the images depicted was hard for the public to understand, Judge Stubbs added.
Extreme
Crossland, of Padside Green Farm, previously admitted three counts of making indecent images between January 2011 and October 2018.
The images found at his home – 34,612 of which were in the most extreme category A – were described by the Crown Prosecution Service as one of the largest known collections in England and Wales.
Officers executed a search warrant of his home and found SD cards, USB sticks, DVDs, SIM cards, floppy disks, laptops, tablets and mobile phones containing the images.
He “painstakingly categorised” the pictures and some dated as far back as 1988.
His underground bunker was fitted with a shooting range and had an area for making ammunition.
Crossland’s wife had answered the door when officers arrived, while he was on a shooting holiday in Argentina. They found an “arsenal of weapons” and about 24,000 rounds of ammo.
He was arrested at Heathrow Airport on his return.
Crossland pleaded guilty to six charges of possessing prohibited firearms, two charges of possessing firearms without the relevant certificate, two charges of possessing ammunition without the relevant certificate, and one of possessing a shotgun without the relevant certificate.