A 70-year-old registered sex offender arrested last week in Sierra Vista on suspicion of possessing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in violation of probation previously spent seven years in state prison for recording sexually explicit images of young girls in 2007.
Allen William Wheeler was taken into custody Aug. 4 at the Cochise County Adult Probation Office and booked into the county jail on a no-bond order. He faces a return to prison if his term of lifetime probation is revoked in the old case, or if he is convicted of new felonies for possessing CSAM, formerly referred to as child pornography.
Wheeler was designated upon his release from prison in 2014 as a Level 2 offender, meaning he was considered a heightened but not highest risk of reoffending and of presenting potential threats to the public. He was required by his probation officer to be outfitted with an ankle monitor and to undergo polygraph tests about his activities.
Another condition of Wheeler’s probation was a prohibition on using computers, electronic devices, or the internet without permission of his probation officer. It is that probation officer who came to suspect Wheeler of violating various probation rules.
Wheeler went on to make some admissions as to violations, which recently led the probation department to seize several digital media items from Wheeler’s residence just outside the Sierra Vista city limits.
On July 31, a probation supervisor asked a Sierra Vista police detective to conduct a forensic examination of the devices. The detective obtained a search warrant signed by a Cochise County judge before engaging in a detailed exam.
“I created a forensic evidence file (FEF) of one of the hard drives from the laptop of Wheeler,” SVPD Det. Thomas Ransford noted in one of two probable cause statements he authored. “I processed the FEF using forensic software that locates and displays all videos and other digital photographs located on the hard drive.”
Ransford added that the software further categorizes known images of CSAM. What he discovered among the images was something peculiar.
“It should be noted that many of the thousands of other illicit images appeared to depict morphed images containing the heads of other individuals being attached to the bodies of children or the heads of children being attached to adult bodies,” Ransford noted.
Ransford also reviewed the case file involving Wheeler’s old conviction. He learned Wheeler had been found in November 2007 to be in possession of numerous CSAM images, “with an age range between 8 and 12 being the focused theme,” Ransford noted. Some of the images were from a hidden camera Wheeler installed in a residence.
After Wheeler’s Aug. 4 arrest, he told Ransford during a post-Miranda interview about receiving “numerous boxes” from someone upon his release from prison. The boxes, which had been in storage while Wheeler was incarcerated, included DVDs and a USB thumb drive containing images of child sexual abuse, Wheeler admitted.
Those images were what Wheeler had been viewing prior to being sent to prison many years ago, he told Ransford. Wheeler stated he later destroyed the DVDs but kept the USB thumb drive for purposes of sexual gratification, the detective noted.
Wheeler also described to Ransford how he eventually broke the thumb drive and took steps to delete the illegal files from his hard drive.
“He stated he used wiping software, but obviously missed items,” Ransford added.
Wheeler also reportedly admitted to accessing the internet to search for CSAM even though he knew doing so was a probation violation.
Court records show Wheeler was arraigned on the petition to revoke probation earlier this week at the Cochise County Superior Court in Bisbee. He can be reinstated to probation or sent back to prison on the original charge.
Wheeler is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Aug. 15 at the Sierra Vista Justice Court on the new felony charges.