2nd Kansas City-area man charged in porn case

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Federal investigators are hoping the arrest of a second Kansas City-area man charged with molesting children as part of a massive international child porn investigation will prompt more victims to come forward.

Robert Poe III, 38, of Kansas City, Kan., was arrested Aug. 10 in Laredo, Texas, on three counts of traveling to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. A federal judge unsealed his case last week.

Poe is charged with molesting three boys in a child porn investigation that started in Massachusetts and has led to 46 arrests in seven countries. Poe was scheduled to appear in federal court in Kansas City on Tuesday for a detention hearing. His attorney didn't return phone messages left over Labor Day weekend seeking comment.

Poe came to the attention of law enforcement after a young man came forward and said Poe had molested him and his brother when they were minors more than a decade ago.

Gary Hartwig, special agent in charge of the Homeland Security Investigations Chicago region, said publicity about the arrest in May of Roeland Park resident Michael Arnett -- a close friend of Poe's -- prompted the accusers to go to police.

"This case is significant for us," Hartwig said. "This is not the worst, but one of the worst organizations in my 25 years in law enforcement."

According to a federal affidavit, a 24-year-old man came to the HSI office in Kansas City in late July to say that he and his brother were molested by Poe when he was 10 to 12 years old. The young man told investigators a year after he met Arnett, Poe started showing up in 1998 and began molesting him. He said Poe held a gun to his head and forced him to perform a sex act.

A third boy also claimed that Poe had forced him to perform a sex act, at gunpoint, in 2000, when he was 7, according to the affidavit. That boy's mother filed a report with the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department at the time, but the Wyandotte County District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute.

Agents with HSI -- an arm of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- spoke with Poe at his home in May but didn't find any child porn images on his computer or seven hard drives, the affidavit says.

Investigators later reviewed a recorded phone call Arnett made from a prison in Leavenworth, Kan., in which he asked Poe to go get some items from his home and hang onto them for him, according to the affidavit. Agents served a federal search warrant on Poe's home Aug. 6, but found out that Poe had left town after telling friends "something was coming down."

Another friend told investigators that Poe had confessed to him that he was a pedophile and he was leaving for good, the affidavit says. Instead, Poe was arrested in Texas four days later and eventually brought back to Kansas.

"This is an active, ongoing thing," Hartwig said. "We have two significant abuser-molesters of children. If people have information to help identify and rescue more children, that's the No. 1 goal for the day."