Detective tells how he found child porn on Derby Middle School teacher’s laptop

Investigators examining electronics seized from a Derby Middle School teacher and coach on suspicion of child sex crimes found more than 250 images and videos of child pornography, according to a court document.

The images, discovered during searches in late January, showed “nude prepubescent” girls and boys, some younger than 8 years old, according to an affidavit presenting the probable cause for a criminal charge against the teacher.

Late Monday, Derby school board members voted 6-0 to fire the teacher, Cody Chitwood, “effective immediately,” said district spokeswoman Katie Carlson. Board members voted after meeting in executive session following their regular meeting Monday, she said.

Chitwood, 37, was charged earlier this month with 11 counts of sexual exploitation of a child. Chitwood, who was hired by the Derby district in 2004, taught special education at Derby Middle School and coached football, track and girls’ basketball.

According to the affidavit, a sheriff’s detective assigned to Sedgwick County’s Exploited and Missing Child Unit observed that an IP address “was transmitting a large amount of suspected child pornography within a website called Chatstep.com.”

The detective later found that the IP address had uploaded 368 links to various chatrooms on the website between July 31 and Oct. 27, the document says.

After issuing summonses to the website and to AT&T UVerse, an internet service provider, investigators traced the IP address to Chitwood’s home in Derby.

In December, detectives learned that the same IP address was the subject of an investigation by Homeland Security special agents in Phoenix, who “had captured several links to child pornography shared by the user” on the website, the document says.

A username linked to Chitwood’s IP address was used “over 700 times to enter chatrooms on Chatstep where the user … would then sometimes share links to child pornography,” the document says.

The website reported that the user entered numerous rooms “predicated towards the sharing of child pornography and given names that would indicate such,” including “preteens,” “preteen porn,” “EnZesssst,” “pedopicsvids” and “yungens,” the document says.

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a joint effort between the Wichita Police Department and Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office, served a search warrant on Jan. 23 in Derby. Chitwood was booked into jail that day.

According to the court document, Chitwood said he had a Macbook Pro that was his personal laptop computer, and he provided the password to investigators. On the laptop, detectives found “over fifty thumbnail images of child sexual exploitation from varying dates,” the document says.

As part of another search warrant executed Jan. 26, investigators seized a Verizon 4G LTE tablet, on which they “located over 200 deleted original images, videos, and thumbnail images of child sexual exploitation,” the document says.

According to the document, Chitwood told investigators he had seen images of naked children on the internet, “and said ‘when you’re on the internet you see a lot of things.’”

“Chitwood further stated, ‘They have naturism, nudist camp websites all the time.’ When asked how he found these, Chitwood stated, ‘Just through links. … You start clicking links and you go a lot of weird places,’” the document says.

“Chitwood then stated that he ‘never knowingly nor willing traded child pornography on any website,’” it says.

Chitwood is the second Derby middle school teacher in three years to be arrested on suspicion of child sex crimes.

Steven Young, a former eighth-grade social studies teacher at Derby North Middle School, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to one count of electronic solicitation of a child.

In that case, forensic investigators found child pornography on Young’s school-issued computer, according to court records.

Carlson, the Derby school district spokeswoman, would not say whether any district property was seized as part of the investigation into Chitwood’s alleged crimes.

This story was originally published February 26, 2018 at 6:40 PM with the headline "Detective tells how he found child porn on Derby Middle School teacher’s laptop."