Valley Grande man charged with child porn

Published 7:10 pm Wednesday, April 5, 2017

A Valley Grande man was arrested Tuesday and charged with three counts of possession of child pornography.

Daniel Bender

Daniel Bender, 56, was arrested following last week’s countywide compliance check by the sheriff’s department, the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Berger was compliant, but investigators found some files on his computer that didn’t look right, according to Lt. John Hatfield with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department.

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A search warrant was executed Tuesday and investigators found he was going to child pornography websites and had photos of underage children on his computer. Hatfield said it was important to get Bender in custody.

“We actually worked overtime yesterday to make sure that we got him in custody,” Hatfield said. “We didn’t want to leave him out another day.”

On March 30, the sheriff’s department, marshals service and U.S. Attorney’s Office checked the compliance of all 61 registered sex offenders in their jurisdiction. Bender was among those checked on that day.

Bender was arrested, interviewed by Hatfield and Captain Mike Granthum and booked into the county jail by 7 p.m. Tuesday evening. The Clanton Police Department assisted in the search warrant and has a unit that does computer forensics so the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department turned the computer over to them.

“We found multiple pictures of nudity of kids on there, so we expect there to be a lot more charges than what we charged him with,” Hatfield said. “We need to wait on them to finish the computer forensics, but it could be up to 90 counts of child pornography.”

Randy Pugh, Scott Haskell and Alston Scott Rouse also played a role in Bender’s arrest.

Bender is a registered sex offender listed in the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency database. He was arrested in May 2005 for sexual abuse of an underage victim.