A registered sex offender, who was living at a home with his elderly mother in Ocala, was arrested after several hundred files of child pornography were allegedly found on a flash drive outside of his bedroom window.
Earlier this year, in late January, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The tip indicated that a Microsoft user had uploaded a file of suspected child sexual abuse material on two occasions, according to the arrest report.
The Microsoft user’s Internet Protocol (IP) address was traced to a home located on SW 88th Terrace in Ocala, in the Pine Run subdivision. The report stated that the home had two occupants: an elderly woman and her son, identified as 43-year-old Aaron Michael Wernle.
Wernle was a registered sex offender who had previously been convicted of child molestation in the state of Missouri in 2010.
A search warrant for Wernle’s home was obtained, and it was executed by law enforcement on Wednesday, March 26. Inside the home, MCSO personnel located Wernle and his elderly mother, and they were both brought outside. A corporal noted in the report that Wernle refused to provide any information aside from his first name.
During a thorough search of Wernle’s bedroom, investigators did not find any child sexual abuse material on his desktop computer or other electronic devices. When investigators searched outside the home, they found a red Altoids container less than 30 feet from Wernle’s bedroom window, according to the report.
The corporal stated in the report that a flash drive was found inside the red container. While reviewing the contents of the flash drive, investigators located over 16,000 files that included pictures and videos. Specifically, nearly 14,000 of those files were determined to be “child erotic material,” which showed “teenage or prepubescent children in provocative or sexually suggestive depictions,” but the corporal noted that these files did not violate existing Florida Statutes.
However, the report stated that around 300 of the files found on the flash drive contained child sexual abuse material that depicted children as young as toddlers.
Due to the flash drive being found near Wernle’s bedroom window, the corporal mentioned in the report that Wernle had likely thrown the flash drive out of his window in an attempt to conceal its contents from law enforcement.
Wernle was arrested and transported to Marion County Jail, where he is currently being held on a $105,000 bond. He is being charged with 20 counts of possessing child pornography and one count of tampering with evidence in a second-degree felony investigation.
A court date for Wernle has not been scheduled yet, according to jail records.