A man applying to be a reserve police officer in Langley allegedly lied on a polygraph exam and later admitted to having child pornography on his home computer, according to court records.
Dylan G. Jefferies, the 27-year-old applicant, pleaded not guilty in Island County Superior Court Monday to 17 counts of possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Three counts were first-degree charges, the most serious, and the rest were second-degree.
Jefferies, a Freeland resident and former firefighter, submitted to a polygraph exam in 2011 after he applied to become a reserve police officer with the City of Langley.
The polygraph examiner advised the police chief that Jefferies seemed to show deception on a question regarding illegal sexual activity; Jefferies allegedly admitted to the examiner that he had images of child pornography on his home computer, according to the report on the case.
Jefferies, however, claimed in a letter to a state investigator that the polygraph examiner refused to accept his answers and coerced him into making a statement he did not agree with.
Jefferies did not get the job as a Langley reserve officer. Also, South Whidbey Fire/EMS Chief Rusty Palmer confirmed that Jefferies left the organization about a year and a half ago.
Detective Ed Wallace with the Island County Sheriff’s Office was called in to investigate the case. He’s a forensic computer expert.
Wallace obtained a search warrant and seized a computer and a hard disk drive from Jefferies’ home.
Wallace said he found many images and videos that appeared to be child porn. He submitted the suspected files to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to determine if any of the child victims are known; the group reported back that nine of the image files and eight videos are known child porn with known victims.
A double murder, multiple sex assaults and a catastrophic computer failure delayed the case for about two years.
Wallace wrote that he “shelved” the case temporarily due to the high-priority investigations.
Then the department’s computer storage device failed and he lost eight terabytes of work.
Wallace started rebuilding the case last year after the department purchased a new storage device.
In addition to child porn, Wallace found “questionable” images of teenage girls on Jefferies’ computer, many of which may have been downloaded off social media pages, the report states.
Wallace wrote that he located backup files from Jefferies’ IOS device and found some of the search terms he had used, which included such things as “teen bra,” “teen girls kissing,” “little girl webcam,” “teen prego” and “age of consent.”
