East Haven man charged with having child porn

GUILFORD — An East Haven man recently was arrested after technicians told police they found pornographic images and videos involving children on his computer, according to court records.

Anthony Bruno, 67, was arrested Dec. 21 by Guilford police and charged with first-degree possession of child pornography.

The affidavit detailing the case, written by Officer Cassandra Lall, was released Tuesday by the Connecticut Judicial Branch and Guilford police in response to a Freedom of Information request to the police department.

In the affidavit, Lall said another officer was dispatched to Nerds To Go on Boston Post Road June 29, 2021. The manager and a technician told police a customer had come into the store saying his computer would not turn on. Staffers tested the device, moved files temporarily onto a separate hard drive, reinstalled Windows and began to move the files back onto the original computer.

The technician said standard operating procedure is to open the files to ensure they were transferred properly.

“(He) said that once the computer was powered back on, he observed a file on the ‘Desktop’ that was titled ‘Funtimes Folder Copy’ that contained a video or MP4 file. The file had a thumbnail of what looked like a male penis,” Lall said in the affidavit. “(The technician) said that he then observed a second thumbnail of what looked like a small child, possibly 11 years old, and that he believed the file was labeled ‘11 YO’.”

The technician and his manager watched a few seconds of the video, then called police, Lall said.

Police allegedly found 730 unique videos and images of child pornography on Bruno’s computer and the separate hard drive used by Nerds to Go, Lall said.

Bruno was arraigned and released on a $20,000 surety bond, according to judicial records. He has not yet entered a plea in the case and is next due in court Feb. 3.

Patch first reported on Bruno’s arrest.

Bruno