A man arrested in Winslow is being charged for allegedly possessing child pornography after Bremerton police tracked him down to Bainbridge Island.
Robert Elias Ritchie Jr., 28, faces a second-degree charge for allegedly possessing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Ritchie was arrested on Bainbridge Saturday, March 9. He moved to the island in April 2012 from Bremerton.
While living in Bremerton, Ritchie pawned a laptop computer on Feb. 29, 2012 at a shop on Wheaton Way.
When the loan for the laptop defaulted in July, it was inspected by pawn shop employees before being put on the shelf for sale. Employees, however, discovered various files on the computer with titles indicating they contained child pornography. The files were downloaded on Feb. 11, 2012, 2 1/2 weeks before the computer was pawned.
The pawn shop handed the laptop over to police to investigate. Detectives found three files containing child pornography. Each file had a preview video and a full-length version indicating that the person who downloaded them previewed them first, and then downloaded the full version knowing what it contained.
The three suspected titles of the files either imply or state the girls depicted are under the age of 18. Bremerton police reports state that the girls appear to be between the ages of 12 and 16.
Ritchie denied that he downloaded the files, and said that he owned the computer while living with two other men yet didn’t want to place blame, according to police reports.
He also told police that a box of his belongings was stolen as he was moving out of Bremerton. The box included the laptop. Detectives, however, checked the original police report for the burglary, but it included the theft of an XBox, a gift card and prescription medication with no mention of the computer.
Ritchie is a registered sex offender. He was convicted in 2006 for a misdemeanor charge of “communication with a minor for immoral purposes” after being arrested for “rape of a child.” The charges stemmed from an allegation that Ritchie, when he was 19, had sex with a 14-year-old girl.
Ritchie also has been convicted for felonies including theft and forgery.
Ritchie has frequently legally changed his name over the years since his initial conviction as a sex offender. When police arrested him in Winslow, he was going under the name of Dupree Julius Lee Stern, one of seven aliases.
He was living on Bainbridge Island under the name of Ashton Charles Bailey and pawned the computer under the name Shailoh Lebeaux. The Bremerton police report Ritchie made for his stolen box was under the name Robert Jonah Ritche.
He also has used the names Keith David Ritchie, Ryan Charles Russell and Dominic Anthony Toretto, according to police reports.
