Horrors come from child porn case

Jul. 13—A child pornography case starting in Pauls Valley is expanding in a big way, first to a second defendant and now two other states and even outside of America's borders.

Officials in Garvin County's district attorney and sheriff offices say the case against Warren Gilbert, 58, arrested at his Pauls Valley apartment in April, led to the recent arrest of a Maryland man, Neal Garith, 39, and is now stretching out to a whole network of child porn and even pedophilia that most would find horrifying.

An investigation into this network has even led to the discovery of parents who held their two young children captive in their Baltimore area home and essentially rented them out for sex acts with adults.

It's a case that has an assistant district attorney here fuming over the horrors committed on the three- and five-year-old children in Maryland.

"The miracle of this story is if we had stopped with Gilbert those kids would still be in the basement," said Cory Miner, as he praised investigators like those in the sheriff's office here.

"This investigation led to Garith, other co-conspirators and these parents," he adds.

"They are evil incarnate, demons walking among children. It's like they have their own pedophile league.

"I will do whatever I can to make sure these people die in prison."

This ever expanding case started with Gilbert, who waived his right to a preliminary hearing last week as he now faces 14 criminal charges.

"On one of the electronic devices found after Gilbert's arrest was a Zoom meeting that showed three other co-conspirators in at least three other states," Miner said.

"There are other co-conspirators and more arrests are expected."

One is Garith, who Miner says was the "sponsor" of an online group view of nothing but child porn. In all there were two such online Zoom meetings, one on Feb. 23 and the other March 5.

"I did the research and case law showed me having venue for someone out of the county who has committed a crime in Garvin County," he said as Gilbert's case led to Garith's arrest in Maryland, where evidence was found showing there was way more going on here.

Just last week Garith appeared in a Garvin County District courtroom, where he was given a $1 million bond on the multiple charges he now faces here.

"When Garith was arrested Maryland officials found he's loaded up with child porn on his devices. One of the devises found shows three- and five-year-old children were being raped and sodomized in a basement," Miner said.

"Gareth admitted he was either involved with the two children or negotiated with the parents for the kids. They were tied up in a basement and rented out by the parents to be raped."

Those parents have since been arrested and the kids found safe at the residence in the Baltimore area.

According to Miner, it was an email found on one of Gilbert's computers that helped authorities track down Garith and more recently the two parents and their children.

"They're tracking down the leads of who contacted these parents to rape their kids."

All of this began with an investigation by deputies in the Garvin County Sheriff's Office.

"This is excellent work by our deputies," Sheriff Jim Mullett said.

"Their investigation led to Garith and then he gave information that led to these child victims. They will take all the information and do the same thing in these other states. Hopefully there's no children involved."

The deputy leading the investigation here is Athena Miles.

"Our investigation with Gilbert led to Garith and that led to the parents and saving the kids," Miles said.

"It's a network of people that are somehow getting in touch with each other and sharing files of child pornography."

Miles says those involved are using encrypted links to images and videos of child porn shared through a cloud-based system.

"In the second Zoom meeting there were at least 10 other people participating," she said.

"There's suspects from other states and even other countries. We're coordinating with other states and also working with Homeland Security on a lot of this."

Currently Garith is facing six formal charges here, while a hold has also been placed on him by Maryland officials.