It's definitely a case you law folk can follow in your spare time:
Girl found; ‘Skirtman’ of UALR is charged
By Jacob Quinn Sanders
PERRYVILLE — The University of Arkansas at Little Rock computer-system programmer known as Skirtman got his first surprise when he answered the door of his house on Wye Mountain wearing nothing but a bathrobe and saw two men in uniform.
The uniformed men - at least one was a Perry County sheriff’s deputy - were there Saturday looking for a 16-year old girl whose parents had reported her missing. The car the girl drove to Dale Owen Miller’s house was in the driveway, next to his own, the one with the license plate carrying a phonetic spelling of “Skirtman.”
This was just the beginning. By Tuesday afternoon, Miller would be fresh out of jail, hunting for a lawyer to avoid a prison sentence of a decade or so and wondering aloud whether Arkansas law allowed for a difference between having child pornography knowingly and unknowingly.
Right then, all he knew was somebody in uniform needed to ask him a few questions.
Miller is 51. He is proud of the nickname Skirtman, earned because of his choice to wear skirts rather than shorts or pants at almost every opportunity. His personal Web site, his Facebook page, his Flickr photo collection - all depict him in skirts. He used to wear them to work at UALR but stopped about 10 years ago after some alumni and trustees complained, he said.
The teenage girl was indeed at Miller’s house. He had corresponded with her on Facebook and over e-mail, he said, and they had talked on the phone a few times. On Saturday, she showed up hours earlier than planned, Miller said. He was planning to take her to a choir concert in Little Rock, one in which he would perform, he said.
“It was a nighttime thing and she showed up quite unexpectedly at noon,” Miller said in an interview.
He was naked when she arrived and so had time to throw on nothing save the bathrobe, he said. Miller said he wore the same robe with nothing underneath when the Perry County deputy sheriff arrived about 4 p.m.
He missed the concert, spending the night in the Perry County jail. Sheriff Scott Montgomery charged Miller with contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, a misdemeanor. Montgomery issued Miller a citation but kept him locked up through the weekend anyway until he could see a judge so bail could be set.
“It was intimated to me that I should have assumed that she was there without her parents’ permission,” Miller said. “But I never asked. I never assumed anything one way or another.”
At the bail hearing late Monday afternoon, Miller got his second surprise. The Arkansas State Police, which Montgomery requested take over the investigation, accused Miller of possessing two images of child pornography, found when they searched a computer in his home. Each image resulted in a felony charge, carrying a possible sentence upon conviction of three to 10 years in prison.
“I figured they were looking for child pornography,” Miller said. “I mean, why would an adult man even talk to a 16-year-old young woman, let alone have one in his home, right? But I didn’t think there was any to find. That’s not my thing.”
He posted a $45,000 bond and was released from jail Tuesday morning.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jonathan Ross said the investigation is continuing.
Judy Williams, communications director at UALR, said the university is gathering information and determining its next step regarding Miller. Miller does not teach classes and in his job as a program and project manager would interact with students only rarely, she said.
All three charges were beyond unexpected, Miller said.
“I was in a state of shock,” he said. “There is no other way to describe it. There’s nothing that can prepare you for that moment. I’m still not sure I comprehend what it all means for me.”
Montgomery said he gave Miller the misdemeanor citation at about 2 a.m. Sunday, though the time written on it is 4:10 p.m. on Saturday. Montgomery said the time reflected when a deputy first took Miller to jail.
“In the meantime, there I am handcuffed to a desk most of the time,” Miller said. “It was two hours before anyone even spoke to me.”
State police Special Agent Joe Carter finally talked with Miller. He asked consent to search Miller’s house, in particular four computers Miller kept there.
“I explained to him that I wanted to take them from his home and have them imaged to which he responded that he thought that I meant that I wanted to copy the hard drives, which is exactly what I meant,” Carter wrote in an affidavit for an arrest warrant filed Monday in Perry County District Court.
Miller sounded almost amused at the thought of Perry County sheriff’s office officials and state police investigators rummaging through his house.
“I do have some things at my home that you normally don’t see in the house of a single heterosexual male living in the woods,” he said, referring to his clothing collection.
A preliminary search of the computers found two images on a Compaq desktop computer, both of which a forensic examiner found to be “likely” matches to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s database of child pornography, according to Carter’s affidavit.
“My suspicion is,” Miller said, “since I certainly never knowingly downloaded child pornography, that one of my computer programs picked up something I didn’t know about.”
Miller said he uses a computer program to search public Internet user groups for pictures of exhibitionist pornography.
“That’s my fetish,” he said. “I’d rather that not be in the paper, but it’s part of the explanation of what happened. I can’t hide from that.”
He checks through the photos the program culls every month or two, he said, throwing out the vast majority - ones he doesn’t want to keep.
He said Tuesday afternoon that he had not yet talked to a lawyer, nor had he read the statutes describing his charges.
“I’m worried,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me from here.”
― •--• --- --- •--• (Pleasant Plains), Wednesday, 25 March 2009 16:16 (fifteen years ago) link
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