Wind Lake man faces 20 counts of possession of child pornography

WIND LAKE -- 61-year-old Marcel Trautwein of Wind Lake faces 500 years in prison for 20 counts of possession of child pornography -- after Trautwein reportedly took his computer in for service and an employee observed child pornography on the computer's hard drive, and called police.

Trautwein took his computer to David Shapiro, owner of DK Systems in Oak Creek to have it serviced.

"He brought in a computer that had failed. We sold him the new computer, and he wanted to see if he could recover data off his old computer," Shapiro said.

Shapiro says Trautwein was adamant his old files make it onto the new computer, so when the transfer failed halfway through, a technician took a closer look.

"When we looked in that folder to see what it was, all these thumbnails came up and strange name files and we didn't go any further," Shapiro said.

Shapiro told FOX6 News in his 25 years, he has never discovered anything like what was discovered on Trautwein's computer. Shapiro says the store has a policy not to go into personal files unless it is needed to complete the service to the computer.

The computer was then turned over to Oak Creek police, along with a hard drive used to transfer data to the new computer.

When interviewed by police, Trautwein told officers he obtained child pornography while surfing the web and downloading torrents. A criminal complaint in the case says Trautwein told police all the child pornography was from the internet, and none of it was homemade. Trautwein told police he "was just curious" and had surfed the net and had "been to places he shouldn't have been."

The criminal complaint says Trautwein told police he had been doing these types of internet searches for about five or six years. Trautwein told police he "didn't agree with everything he saw" and said "some of the kids were pretty young."

When asked how many times he had downloaded the child pornography over five or six years, Trautwein told police "I don't know -- maybe 500 or 600 times."

Trautwein told police he was downloading a torrent when his computer crashed, which was why he needed to take it in to be serviced.

The criminal complaint in the case indicates 25 GB worth of suspected child pornography was discovered on Trautwein's computer. Officials observed a DVD containing 1,590 images obtained from the computer's hard drive including images of female children -- approximately eight to 12 years old. A DVD from a laptop contained 118 images. Other DVDs contained 211 video files from the computer's hard drive.

Each "possession of child pornography" conviction could mean 25 years in prison, $100,000 in fines or both.