L.A. Times August 15, 2000 Belgian Porn Scandal Leads to Florida Raid WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.--Police investigating Belgium's most notorious pedophile murder case traced a collection of child pornography to a Florida man who was arrested on Tuesday on charges of operating an on-line child pornography site, Customs agents said. Belgian police notified U.S. authorities they had "electronically traced" pornography seized in their investigation to a home in the Palm Beach County town of Lake Worth. Customs and other federal agents obtained a warrant to search the home, seized a computer and numerous videocassette tapes and arrested occupant Wayne Camolli on child pornography charges, Customs spokesman Steve Wunderlich said. The home was filled with so much rotting garbage, trash and cat feces that the agents had to borrow oxygen masks and hazardous materials suits from the county fire department to carry out the search, Wunderlich said. "In some rooms it went to the ceiling," he said. "The accumulation of garbage and waste was so deep and nasty...when you opened the door you were hit with it." Acting on information from the Belgians, U.S. investigators e-mailed Camolli and were given access to an on-line bulletin board allegedly run from Camolli's home computer and containing "a large amount of child pornography," Wunderlich said. The child porn that the Belgians traced to Florida was seized from Felix De Coninck, a suspect in the kidnapping and molestation of a 14-year-old girl, Wunderlich said. De Coninck in turn had links to Marc Dutroux, a convicted child rapist who is awaiting trial on charges of abducting, raping, torturing and murdering four young girls in Belgium in 1996, U.S. officials said. Two other victims were found drugged and abused but still alive in a makeshift dungeon in one of several houses he owned. Dutroux, dubbed the "Belgian Beast," briefly escaped from police during a 1998 visit to a court in the southern Belgian town of Neufchateau. He grabbed a gun from the lone policeman guarding him, hijacked a passing car and disappeared but was arrested again a few hours later. The security lapse caused such an outcry that Belgium's Justice and Interior Ministers were forced to resign. U.S. officials could not elaborate on the connection between De Coninck and Dutroux, but said they were part of the same "child pornography, molestation and murder investigation" in Belgium. Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one. News
