License revoked for ex-Kansas police chief serving decades in prison for child porn
A former Kansas police chief who is in prison for making and possessing child porn has been stripped of his law enforcement certification.
The license of Joel Womochil, 39, of El Dorado, was revoked in late April, according to a summary order of revocation from the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training. The summary was made public in May.
Womochil was sentenced March 28 to 60 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit sexual exploitation child/production of child pornography, federal court records show.
Each charge carried 30 years, and the sentences are to be served consecutively. He was also ordered to pay $529,050 in restitution, The Eagle reported.
He had been the Burns police chief since Feb. 8, 2022. He had also worked part time for the Butler County Sheriff’s Office as a detention deputy and the Peabody Police Department.
Womochil resigned from his post on Aug. 8, 2023, days before being arrested on Aug. 15, 2023 and charged with over a dozen counts of child porn. The charges alleged that between Aug. 9-15 that year he was in possession of child porn, with one of the 13 videos involving a child under the age of 5 who had a pacifier, court records show.
Three other people were charged and sentenced to prison along with Womochil. All three conspired with him in producing the child porn, an April news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas said.
Taylor Mullen, 33, and his girlfriend, 38-year-old Jessica Quave, both plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit sexual exploitation of a child - production of child pornography.
In 2021, Mullen and Quave “created videos of themselves engaging in sexually explicit behavior with a child under six years old and sent them to Womochil,” the release added.
The couple were each sentenced in March to 30 years in prison.
The fourth person involved in the conspiracy was 40-year-old Denise Sandman of Indiana. Sandman met Womochil online in 2019, and she agreed to “create images of a child under the age of five engaged in sexually explicit conduct and send the images to Womochil, which he saved on his hard drive,” according to the release.
Sandmann pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit sexual exploitation of a child – production of child pornography and one count of sexual exploitation of a child – production of child pornography. She was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Burns is a city of less than 250 people about 50 miles northeast of Wichita.