From staff reports
A Seneca man is facing numerous charges for possessing and creating child pornography over the past eight years.
A criminal complaint filed by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office says the office’s child predator section received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that an IP address later found to be associated with William Show, 52, had “accessed and/or uploaded/scanned” two images of child pornography last September.
During an investigation, 12 more tips linked to the same IP address were also generated, the complaint said.
Each image had a distinct file name and date and time attached to it, according to the complaint.
On Thursday, after getting a search warrant from district judge Patrick Lowrey, agents from the attorney general’s office as well as Pennsylvania state police searched Show’s house on Autumn Haze Lane where they also located Show and interviewed him, the complaint said.
Show admitted to police that he had been looking at child pornography regularly since he last got out of jail and would have saved some images on his computer, the complaint said.
When Show was shown the 50 images from the tips police had, he admitted to possessing a majority of the images and using them to search for more child pornography online, according to the complaint.
Show also told police he had committed sexual offenses against three very young girls since 2016 or 2017, the complaint said.
Show described inappropriately touching a three-year-old girl multiple times when she had been staying with him and his wife “numerous times since July 2023,” the complaint said. The identity of the girl was confirmed and her parents were notified, the complaint notes.
Some of the images found on Show’s devices appeared to be homemade and produced in 2018, the complaint said.
The girl’s parents were notified and interviewed by state police during which time the girl’s mother confirmed the child had spent time at Show’s house during the timeframe he had mentioned, the complaint said.
Show also told agents during a second interview Thursday that he had also sexually abused a girl living out of state who had come to visit him several times in 2016 and 2017 when she was between the ages of five and seven, the complaint said.
Numerous digital files of homemade child pornography and the two cameras used to produce it were found in his home, according to the complaint.
Show also identified all three girls in numerous digital files of pornography, the complaint said.
Show told police he was a pedophile and that if he had not been caught Thursday, “he would have sexually offended on a child again at the next opportunity to do so,” the complaint said.
Show is a lifetime registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent assault of a minor in 2010 and of attempting to lure a child into a vehicle in 2018, according to the Pennsylvania State Police Megan’s Law website.
Show has been charged in this case with 28 felony counts of photograph/film/depict on computer sex act-knowingly or permitting child, two felony counts of indecent assault person less than 13 years of age, two felony counts of corruption of minors and a felony count of criminal use of a communication facility.
He was arraigned Thursday and placed in the Venango County jail with bail denied because “defendant is a safety risk to children.”
Show’s preliminary hearing is Feb. 14 in Central Court.
