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Man Charged For Having A Secret 'Gingerbread House' Full Of Child Porn
Washington authorities found an elaborate treehouse deep in the forest and full of pornographic images.
An urban legend in the remote Washington woods has turned into charges of child pornography. A forest employee in Seattle discovered a structure resembling a cute "gingerbread house" in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Inside, he discovered a building filled with food, bedding and child pornography, as the Seattle Times reports.
For years, rumors about an illegally built cabin circulated. A staffer at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) decided to search Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to find out if the building indeed existed. He looked and failed on five different tries. On his sixth search, on November 18, 2016, he stumbled upon the treehouse.
The structure itself was impressive. It stood about 8 feet off the ground and featured a wraparound porch and glass windows. Inside, the employee found framed photos of naked young girls and an envelope with sexually explicit images of children.
“It was shocking and disturbing,” said trail steward, Christopher Jones, upon discovering the house, according to Q13 Fox. “I’ve worked in the woods for 11 years and never seen anything quite like that.”
Local authorities and then the FBI came in to conduct an official search.
“On all four walls were framed pictures of fairy-like figures or what appeared to be young girls,” with two in particular featuring “what appeared to be young girls, approximately 8-12 years old,” an FBI agent wrote in the charging papers, according to the Seattle Times. As for the images in the envelope, the agent wrote, “Some of these appeared to be fictional, but there were several that contained images of young girls naked or scantily-clothed."
This incited an investigation by authorities into the owner of the gingerbread house. Authorities used eyewitness accounts to match the suspect's license plates to a car seen at the treehouse. DNA found on items inside the house was also matched to a DNA sample from a discarded paper cup and 56-year-old Daniel Wood was named as a suspect. They searched the suspect's home and reportedly found thousands of additional images of child pornography.
Wood is now facing child pornography charges. He is slated to appear in court on March 26, according to Q13 Fox, and is ordered not to have any contact with minors. It's not clear if Woods or someone else built the cabin illegally on federally-owned land, as WQAD shares.
[Photo: King County Superior Court]
