Editor Arrested on Child Porn Charge

Posted Thursday, August 7, 2008 12:00 am

By: The editor of a small weekly newspaper in West Texas was arrested Thursday in a federal child pornography probe, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Richard Ellsworth McLaughlin, 61, was arrested about noon in Kermit, a small oil-patch town about 45 miles west of Odessa. McLaughlin faces a charge of possession of child pornography.

Federal court records do not show if McLaughlin, editor of the weekly Winkler County News, has a lawyer.

Court records show that FBI agents searched McLaughlin's Kermit home Tuesday and seized a "large amount of media, digital and otherwise." On at least one recordable CD, investigators found several images of what they deemed to be child pornography.

McLaughlin is jailed and scheduled to make a court appearance Friday morning in Midland.

A telephone message left at the newspaper was not immediately returned Thursday.

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