Police supervisor arrested in FBI child porn investigation

CUMRU TOWNSHIP >> A Cumru Township police supervisor was arrested on child pornography charges Tuesday morning at his Spring Township home after an almost nine-month investigation.

Lt. Timothy C. Woll is charged with transportation of child pornography and accessing with the intent of viewing child pornography.

Woll is no longer on active duty in Cumru pending an ongoing federal investigation, Police Chief Madison Winchester said Tuesday.

“We immediately turned the information we had over to District Attorney John Adams’ office and the DA sent it to the FBI,” Winchester said.

Winchester declined to say if Woll was suspended or fired because it is a personnel matter.

“In the interest of parents and residents of the township, I can say he is not patrolling the township at this time,” Winchester said.

Adams said his office also was notified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC, that child pornography had been downloaded from a known child porn site to a computer registered to Woll.

According to federal court papers filed in support of Woll’s arrest:

The investigation started Jan. 14, one day after Woll downloaded eight graphic images of a prepubescent girl and a man.

Microsoft Corp. submitted eight CyberTipline reports to the NCMEC, reporting that a user downloaded numerous images of child pornography Jan. 13 at about 1:30 a.m.

The images of the female victim were compared with images of known child pornography victims and matched

those of a girl previously identified in a Child Victim Identification Program database.

FBI agents conducted an investigation into Woll and learned he was a police lieutenant in Cumru. On March 8, the FBI obtained a search warrant for Woll’s residence and seized an external hard drive and Woll’s desktop computer. The hard drive was connected to Woll’s computer.

Later that day, the agents went to the Cumru police department and Woll agreed to speak to the agents. Woll told them he lives alone and has access to the internet account identified by Microsoft.

When questioned about the child pornography on his home computer, Woll said it must have accidentally been downloaded onto his equipment while he was erasing the hard drive of a laptop computer seized in a 2006 child pornography case that has since been completed.

Woll denied ever taking home any computers or hard drives in evidence at the police station. He admitted he could have accidentally “dragged and dropped” child pornography files onto his work laptop.

An analysis of Woll’s computer equipment revealed evidence of more child pornography.

About 300 thumbnail images on the external hard drive appeared to be from deleted video files with titles indicative of child pornography that were previously contained on the device. Many of the thumbnail images also were depictions of child pornography with titles containing obscene language and lurid descriptions of the contents.

Nine of the thumbnail images of child pornography contained the same female name and depicted the same victim as the eight images found on Woll’s computer.

“In the interest of parents and residents of the township, I can say he is not patrolling the township at this time.” — Police Chief Madison Winchester