A Jacksonville man on probation for secretly videotaping three young girls lost a bid to get out of jail Tuesday because his probation officers had found a picture of one of those girls, topless, on a computer in his home.
Richard Edward Wells is scheduled to stand trial in December on a charge of failure to register as a sex offender, a Class C felony that carries up to 10 years in prison.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims denied the 43-year-old Wells' request for bail and ordered him to be jailed until the latest criminal charges are resolved.
Defense attorney Colleen Barnhill asked the judge to set bail at $5,000, telling the judge that Wells has a job he can return to if he is released.
She pointed out that authorities have had the questionable photographs of the girl for almost two months but have not charged Wells with anything related to the pictures. The girl is now 17, and will turn 18 within a month, her mother testified.
Barnhill also asked the judge to consider that Wells was not the only one in the house who had access to the computer.
Wells became a registered sex offender in April 2013 when he pleaded guilty to possession of print media depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child and three counts of video voyeurism for recording the three sisters. The charges together carry a potential 28 years in prison.
In exchange for his guilty plea, Wells, who was living in Sherwood at the time, was sentenced to six years on probation. Authorities said the photographs were taken between between January 2012 and May 2012.
Jacksonville police arrested him in June on the failure-to-register charge, and he was released on his own recognizance that same day. Sex offenders are required to register anew when they move.
Prosecutors had Wells arrested in July on a probation-revocation petition based on the new charge, and he spent about 2½ weeks in jail before posting a $1,500 bond in August, court records show.
But prosecutors had him arrested a third time on Sept. 28 after receiving a report from his probation officers that they had found the potentially illegal photographs on a computer in his home during a check of his housing, court filings show.
At Tuesday's bail hearing, deputy prosecutor Luke Daniel used a computer to show one photograph to the judge, saying it was one of three possibly illegal images found during the Sept. 1 search. None of the pictures was shown in open court. Daniel told the judge he did not print them because they appear to be illegal.
Probation officer Tiffany Brevard testified that she and another officer found the photographs while conducting a search in response to the failure-to-register charge.
She told the judge that Wells was arrested after Jacksonville police found that he had changed homes in Jacksonville without reporting his new address to authorities as he's required to do.
During the search, Brevard said, the officers found a laptop computer with Wells' name on it in a closet.
The computer was locked under Wells' user name. When he provided the password for them to examine it, they found the questionable photographs, with provocative photographs of the girl, the youngest of the three video-voyeurism victims, Brevard testified.
The girl, her fiance and her mother, who is Wells' girlfriend, were living with Wells when officers arrived to search the residence, Brevard told the judge. The girl's mother confirmed the topless photograph was of her daughter and estimated that it had been taken at least a year earlier, Brevard said.
Probation officers found three other computers, one of them damaged, in the home, but only searched the one that had Wells' name on it.
Wells denied knowing photos of the girl were stored on the computer, and he offered to delete the images, Brevard testified. She said she turned the photographs over to police.
Questioned by the defense, the probation officer said the topless photograph shown to the judge appeared to be a "selfie," a photograph the girl had taken of herself.
Wells testified that members of his family shared the computer for several years. He said he did not know the photograph, had never seen the picture before it was discovered, had not taken it himself and did not know it existed.
The girl's mother also testified, confirming that the photograph was a selfie of her daughter and the teenager's age. The woman described the computer as one used by all members of the household. She said their regular practice was to use the computer to store cellphone photographs in a single folder on the device.
The 43-year-old woman said she had never seen the photo before, did not know it existed before it was discovered and had never seen Wells looking at it.
Metro on 10/29/2016