Former lab tech at UWM pleads guilty to possessing child porn, sentenced to 3 years prison

Jay Dobberke



MILWAUKEE -- A Milwaukee County judge sentenced Jay Dobberke on Thursday, Nov. 14 to three years in prison and another two years of extended supervision. This, after Dobberke pleaded guilty to one of ten charges of possession of child pornography. The other nine charges were dismissed and read into the court record.

Dobberke, 63, is a former lab tech for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). According to the criminal complaint, Milwaukee police were assigned a CyberTip that indicated on Feb. 13, a subject “had viewed an image that depicted child pornography on the search engine ‘Bing.'” Investigators determined the “IP address came from an IP range assigned to the Physics Building” at UWM — and specifically “assigned to a device that was being used by” Dobberke.

Physics building at UW-Milwaukee



The complaint said investigators got in contact with UWM officials — and learned “for an IP address to be assigned in the Physics Building range, it has to be physically plugged into a wall jack.” They also determined the device and its IP address were located in a specific room of the Physics Building.

A search warrant was executed on the room in question on April 26. The complaint said officers “located numerous VHS tapes, DVDs, and a computer tower” in addition to adult pornographic magazines. They also found “handwritten documents with the names of women and references to young girls.” All of this was found in Dobberke’s workspace, the complaint said. An initial scan of the computer tower turned up “10 images of child pornography as well as child porn-related searches in (Dobberke’s) search history.”