Three elderly brothers arrested in a shockingly depraved child porn case may hold the key to an eight-year-old missing girl case that left cops baffled.
Octogenarian Charles Emery stayed part-time in an isolated farmhouse in Shelton, Washington, just half an hour from the home where Lindsey Baum went missing.
Charles Emery 82 (above) along with brothers Thomas Emery, 80, and 79-year-old Edwin Emery were charged Monday with two counts of possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexual conduct
Emery, who is suffering from dementia, and his brothers Thomas, 80, and Edwin, 78, are currently in jail on $500,000 bond after a ‘disgusting’ stash of child porn was discovered in their home on a quiet street in Seattle.
The items were ‘littered, floor to ceiling,’ prosecuting attorney, Daniel Satterberg, said.
Many of the items involve pictures of little girls being raped and murdered and cops believe all three of the brothers may have spent their entire lives living out their twisted fantasies.
Among the items found are used children’s underwear, used condoms, dozens of penny loafer shoes and soda bottles laced with vodka.
A hand-written manifesto detailing ‘ritualistic and satanic sacrifices’ of young girls was also discovered, along with descriptions of how the girls should always wear penny loafers before their murders.
The three brothers, all bachelors without children, each face two charges of possession of child pornography.
Detectives from Washington’s Gray’s Harbor Sheriff’s Department probing the Lindsey Baum case have asked to be on hand for any searches of the Emery property in Shelton, which is in neighboring Mason County.
‘Because of the proximity of the property to where the young girl went missing we are looking to see if there is any possibility of the Emery brothers’ involvement, Gray’s County Under Sheriff David Pimentel told DailyMail.com.
Police continue to search the Emery brothers’ home on Wednesday afternoon, as a tow company removed vintage cars from the shed on the property. Police say they discovered an immense collection of child pornography, girls’ clothing and disturbing writings about raping and murdering children inside their cluttered home
The findings have led authorities to ask detectives from Washington’s Gray’s Harbor Sheriff’s Department probing the Lindsey Baum case to be on hand for any searches of the Emery property in Shelton, just half an hour from the home where she missing. The 10-year-old went missing in 2009 in McCleary, Washington
A flyer about the Baum case was found inside the Shelton home, where Charles Emery, 82, a former janitor at Seattle Children’s Hospital, lived part-time with his brother Donald, who died last October. She disappeared while on a 10-minute walk home from a friend’s house
A flyer about the Baum case was found inside the Shelton home, where Charles Emery, 82, a former janitor at Seattle Children’s Hospital, lived part-time with his brother Donald, who died last October.
Pimentel said that at present there is no concrete evidence to link the missing girl to the three alleged pervert siblings. ‘But we are going to ask for our detectives to be there for the searches although it is not our investigation,’ he said.
Lindsey went missing on June 27, 2009 from McCleary, Washington, where her mother Melissa had moved from Tennessee after her divorce.
‘McCleary felt like a nice, quiet, safe town,’ Melissa Baum told NBC’s Dateline last year. ‘The kids were making friends and doing well. Everything seemed to be smoothing over for us finally.’
The fifth grader and her brother Joshua were visiting a friend after a day swimming. Lindsey and her brother had a fight and the boy went home early. She left the friend’s house for the 10-minute walk home alone and was never seen again.
The case gained nationwide publicity, with Lindsey’s face appearing on the cover of People magazine the following year. No-one has ever been arrested in her disappearance although at least 40 people have come under suspicion.
The latest to fit that description is Charles Emery, who is now in a home for dementia sufferers. Prior to that he had lived with his younger brothers in the Meridian section of Seattle.
Neighbors in Seattle tell DailyMail.com that they would often see Charles walking up and down their street looking for his truck, which, due to his befuddled state of mind, he believed had been stolen.
‘I would see him regularly, probably once a month,’ said one neighbor, who declined to give her name. ‘He would always ask if I had seen his truck because it had been stolen again.
A Packard Super Eight, from the late 1930’s and a Ford Model A have been removed with one more car scheduled to be removed on Thursday August 24
It is understood the vehicles will be searched for DNA evidence. Thomas and Edwin Emery both insisted they never went inside the garage where many incriminating items were discovered
‘I understand his relatives had taken it because he clearly wasn’t fit to drive.’
‘What upsets me more than anything else is that I thought he and his brothers were just harmless old men — and I think I have a pretty good ‘creep radar,’ ‘ added the woman.
‘Nothing about them raised my alarm.’
Two vintage cars, a ramshackle World War II-era Packard Super Eight convertible and a tan-colored Model A Ford built around 1930, without an engine, were towed from the house’s garage on Wednesday. A third car was due to be removed on Thursday.
It is understood the vehicles will be searched for DNA evidence. Thomas and Edwin Emery both insisted they never went inside the garage where many incriminating items were discovered.
Anyone with information about the Emery brothers case please contact MARTIN.GOULD@DAILYMAIL.COM
Cops have been combing through the Emery house in the Meridian section of Seattle for two weeks. What they have found hoarded in nearly every room has disgusted them.
Among the items discovered on the property include thousands of ‘images of minor female children both clothed and nude and engaged in sexually explicit conduct and lascivious display,’ according to a criminal complaint filed in court in Seattle.
They also found several miniature vodka bottles. One of them contained the initials of their great-niece with the inscription that her ‘first half ounce of liquor came from this bottle.’
Also discovered were: ‘dozens of pairs of children’s shoes, most of which are penny loafer style shoes with pennies inserted in the front of the shoes; several pairs of minor female children style underwear containing stains and indicia of use; children’s socks; dozens of books and articles related to child homicide, child sexual assault, and missing and murdered female child victims to include both local and national cases,’ according to the complaint.
Police officers and federal agents in hazmat suits descended on the home on August 19, more than a week after getting a tip from the Emery siblings’ relative. They found thousands of ‘images of minor female children both clothed and nude and engaged in sexually explicit conduct and lascivious display’
Cops were alerted to the horrific contents of the house, by a niece of the brothers who had been appointed legal guardian to Charles Emery as she is his closest healthy relative. The search also turned up alleged evidence of sexual exploitation of young girls, children’s clothing, underwear, shoes, toys and movies
‘Of note, law enforcement discovered a pink child’s hat partially buried next to a burned handwritten letter (similar to those letters discovered in prior searches in which the sexual abuse and homicide of female children was contained) in a dirt crawl space,’ the complaint states.
Cops were alerted to the horrific contents of the house, by a niece of the brothers who had been appointed legal guardian to Charles Emery as she is his closest healthy relative. She was trying to get Charles’s property in order.
The niece told police that she had been molested by at least two of brothers when she was a child as had her mother. She said Charles made her dress in shoes and socks similar to those found in the house before the abuse.
The niece told cops she had burned some of the material before she realized just how awful it was.
But on August 9 she took ‘several large trash bags’ full of child porn and clothing to the cops. The images were so disturbing that Seattle Detective Daniel Conine would only describe two of them in detail in the complaint.
One of them, Conine said, was a full-frontal picture of a girl estimated to be between 8 and 10, wearing only pink and orange hairpins, with an electric drill in her hands.
‘The image is designed to look like the cover of a magazine, and the word ‘Builders’ is headlined at the top of the photos,’ wrote Conine. The words ‘Put yourself in the hands of these absolutely astonishing and gifted builders. These tireless workers will build a castle of joy for you,’ are printed along the photograph.
The second picture of a naked girl appeared to come from a now-defunct website called ‘vestalgirls.com’.
A a tan-colored Model A Ford built around 1930, without an engine, was towed from the house’s garage on Wednesday. Cops have been combing through the Emery house in the Meridian section of Seattle for two weeks
A hand-written manifesto detailing ‘ritualistic and satanic sacrifices’ of young girls was also discovered, along with descriptions of how the girls should always wear penny loafers before their murders
Officers who arrived on the property reportedly found it crammed ‘floor to ceiling’ with a staggering trove of child pornography, including photographs, videos and related materials
‘It’s very clear that these three individuals have an obsession with young female children,’ Capt. Mike Edwards of the Seattle Police Department told reporters Monday. ‘They’ve had this obsession for most if not all of their lives and in some cases acted out on that obsession against family members.’
Edwin, the youngest of the Emery brothers, told detectives he was the only one who used a computer and he often downloaded child porn for his brothers. He was investigated in 2013 after taking a computer to Office Depot for repair. Workers there discovered 20 images of child porn and reported it to police.
However, cops said there was not enough evidence at the time to gain a conviction against him so he was not prosecuted. None of the brothers have any criminal record.
During interviews, police say both Thomas and Edwin Emery ‘remained nonchalant and relatively unconcerned about the serious nature of the investigation.’
Edwin, cops say, ‘confirmed that he is sexually attracted to females who are at the beginning of puberty, and usually around the age of 12.’
Thomas ‘denied having any sexual interest in children, or anybody for that matter.’ When asked why his brother had said he regularly gave him pornographic pictures, Thomas said Edwin must have misunderstood him, because he was asking for ‘information about model houses.’