Editor’s Note: This news article contains graphic content.
CLEARFIELD – A Clearfield man accused of exchanging inappropriate photographs with a teenage girl waived his right to a preliminary hearing Wednesday during Centralized Court at the Clearfield County Jail.
John Paul Lutzow, 33, of Clearfield has been charged by Clearfield Borough police with six counts each of photograph/film/depict on computer sex act-knowingly or permitting child, child pornography and criminal use of a communications facility and 15 counts of corruption of minors. Lutzow is currently incarcerated at the jail in lieu of $50,000 bail
According to the affidavit of probable cause, on March 9 police received information that Lutzow had allegedly exchanged nude photos with a teenage girl who had recently stayed at his residence. A witness told police she had observed the explicit messages between Lutzow and the victim.
Police subsequently responded to the Lutzow residence and obtained consent to search his phone. It was seized by police. Lutzow told police he didn’t know anything about messages between him and the victim
After returning to the station, police looked through Lutzow’s phone. Police were able to observe some messages to and from the victim, which had been deleted. An e-mail observed by police prompted for a text messaging application to be reinstalled to continue a conversation with the victim.
Police proceeded to interview the victim at the station on Feb. 20. She told police she had spent the night with her friend at the Lutzow residence and approximately one week later, she and Lutzow started talking “inappropriately.”
The first three or four days, she said they just talked until Lutzow allegedly sent her a photograph of his private area. Afterward she told police that Lutzow asked her to send him photographs of her “private parts,” which she did, and he stated he “liked them.”
She and Lutzow used a text messaging app to send the photographs back and forth, she told police, and she provided Lutzow’s username.
On March 10 Lutzow agreed to an interview with police. He told police he believed the allegations against him were made up. Lutzow denied sending/receiving any sexual photographs with the victim.
On March 23 police received information from the victim’s father who had an iPod with a text messaging app. Lutzow was in her contacts, he told police.
On March 31 police attended a Child Advocacy Center interview with the victim. During the interview, she provided a similar account as she had previously to police.
On April 4 police reviewed the extracted data from all devices that were returned from a detective with the State College police. On the victim’s cell phone, police observed multiple images of her that were partially or completely nude.
There were a total of 74 images on the victim’s phone, which were similar to those described in her interview with police and at the CAC, according to the affidavit.
On Lutzow’s phone, there weren’t any pornographic images physically located. The detective was also unable to locate the text messaging app on the phone and to identify if it had been previously installed on it.
On the victim’s iPod, police observed multiple photographs of a male with his pants down who matched the victim’s description of Lutzow. There were nine, different photographs of Lutzow’s private area, according to the affidavit.
Also, the detective was able to recover some of the deleted incoming and outgoing messages from the text messaging app on the victim’s iPod.
On April 6 police made contact with Lutzow, and he agreed to come to the station for a second interview. During the interview, he denied the photographs recovered from the victim’s iPod were of his private area.
However, police observed that Lutzow was wearing similar clothing in both the photographs and during his interview. Police also noted other similar identifying characteristics.
Lutzow eventually admitted to police that photographs recovered from the victim’s iPod were of his private area. He admitted to sending them to her through a text messaging app on an old cellular phone. Lutzow also admitted to asking that the victim send him inappropriate photographs of herself.
Lutzow told police he committed the crimes because he was “lonely,” and he knows that he is a “piece of [expletive]” for doing it. “I want to die,” he told police.
