An investigation by the Pike County Sheriff’s Office has led to the arrest of a Kansas man on multiple sex crimes.
According to a release by Pike County Sheriff David Greenwood this afternoon, his office was contacted by the parents of a child under the age of 13 after they had discovered their daughter had been communicating with an adult male via social media for several months.
Pike County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Zack Orr, who is a member of the Illinois Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, took over messaging between the victim and the suspect.
According to Greenwood, Orr was able to identify the suspect who still believed he was messaging the minor victim. Via the ICAC database, numerous open cases were discovered involving the suspect for possession and dissemination of child pornography in the State of Kansas.
After obtaining an arrest warrant, Orr and Deputy Zach Hardin traveled to Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas, where along with the Kansas ICAC Task Force, the US Department of Homeland Security, and the Wellington, KS, Police Department,, tracked the suspect to an apartment in Wellington.
On Wednesday of this week, at approximately 9:15 am 22 year old Justin Lee Howard Richards-Olby was taken into custody. Additional warrants were obtained for the apartment where additional electronic devises were located and seized.
Richards-Olby waived extradition and was transported to the Pike County Jail. He is being charged with five counts of class 1 felony indecent solicitation of a child, and two class X felony counts of possession of child pornography, according to the report.
No information on Richards-Olby was available in online Pike County Court records as of press time.
In a statement included in the press release, Chief Deputy Orr says the suspect communicated to the victim he would “kidnap” and “force impregnation” on more than one occasion.
He says in the release, “The messages sent from the suspect to the victim were some of the most disturbing, horrific, and vile messages I have seen in my twenty-five (25) years of law enforcement.”
Richards-Olby currently remains held at the Pike County Jail.