Details Emerge In Trial Of Buhl Man Charged With 120 Counts Of Possessing Child Pornography

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Closing arguments and jury deliberations are expected to begin Wednesday morning in the trial of a Buhl man charged with 120 counts of possession of child pornography and a single count of dissemination.

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As Patch previously reported, Dennis Wright was first arrested in late January 2023 on one count of dissemination of child pornography and 20 additional charges of possession of child pornography.

The next month, the grand jury indicted Wright on the initial charges, along with 100 additional counts of possession following a forensic investigation of devices seized during the execution of a search warrant.

Wright's trial began Tuesday morning in Circuit Court Judge Allen May's courtroom, with the 12-person jury and two alternates consisting of nine women and five men.

Wright is represented by Tuscaloosa attorney Joel Sogol, while Assistant District Attorney Thomas Marshall is prosecuting the case.

"I know I shouldn't be looking at stuff like that," Marshall said, quoting Wright's words to investigators as the first part of his opening remarks to the jury.

Sogol's opening remarks to the jury insisted that there was no question that the 120 images recovered from Wright's electronic devices were indeed child pornography. Sogol also said there was no doubt that his client possessed the images at the time of his arrest.

Sogol, instead, insisted that Wright did not know he had the images and would later go on to imply that someone else — possibly Wright's ex-wife — had put the photos on Wright's computer and shared one image to Pinterest to get him in trouble with the police in the messy wake of their divorce.

Indeed, the investigation was prompted when the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office received a tip from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) regarding a photo of a child posted on Pinterest on Dec. 11, 2022.

TCSO Senior Crime Analyst Daniel Hill was the first witness called to the stand by the state and discussed the findings of a search warrant carried out at Wright's home after receiving the tip from NCMEC by way of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC).

Hill said investigators recovered two desktop computer towers, a cell phone, three loose hard drives and a "server rack" that Wright later testified provided 30 terabytes of memory, collectively.

He also said the IP address and Pinterest account associated with the photo that spurred the investigation could be traced back to Wright.

Hill went on to say the 120 images were eventually found on the server rack, referred to at trial as Network Area Storage or NAS. He then said investigators discovered that the images originated from Tumblr — a microblogging platform and social networking site.

During Hill's testimony, this reporter observed Wright smiling and shaking his head as the investigator went over the evidence recovered from his home.

It was at this point that the District Attorney's Office offered five of the photos for the jury to view, serving as a cross-section of the numerous pictures.

Hill also testified that a sex doll — about the same proportions as the nine to 14-year-old girls in the pictures — was recovered from a locked bathroom closet in the master bedroom of Wright's home during the execution of the search warrant.

"It was very petite," Hill commented.

Hill wrapped up his testimony by saying there was also no evidence that any of Wright's devices had been "hacked" by another individual.

During Sogol's cross-examination of Hill, the investigator responded that the photos were downloaded between May 2016 and December 2016, with the majority of the pictures downloaded in a roughly 2-minute period.

TCSO Criminal Investigations Division (CID) investigator Tyler Bostick was the next witness called to the stand by prosecutors — one of three CID investigators to interview Wright after the initial tip was received.

Bostick testified that during questioning, Wright told him that he "tried to masturbate to [the pictures] but they didn't turn him on."

Bostick also said Wright told him he had downloaded the images from Tumblr.

CID investigator and supervisor Sgt. Josh Hastings was the third witness called to testify and said he interviewed Wright on Jan. 30, 2023.

Hastings commented that he has a daughter roughly the same age as Wright's young daughter and went on to say that he asked Wright how he would feel if it were his daughter in the photos.

Hastings testified that Wright told him his "curiosity" first began with "naturist" websites.

Commonly referred to as "nudism," naturism is the practice of non-sexual social nudity in private and in public.

Hastings said Wright insisted he felt "guilty" looking at the photos on naturist websites and "felt bad" after looking at the images for a couple of minutes.

Wright also allegedly told Hastings that he had a Pinterest account that had recently been blocked or banned for reasons he did not understand.

Hastings then said Wright expressed curiosity in learning more about "what the dark web was about" — a part of the internet that requires specific software, configurations or authorization to access, while providing users anonymity and making search histories difficult to trace.

The focus of Hastings' testimony then shifted to a phone call made by Wright to his sister from the Tuscaloosa County Jail as Wright tried to manage an online mortgage account.

At one point in the call, Hastings said Wright could be heard telling his sister, "If I had a [Virtual Private Network], I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you."

FBI Special Agent Eric Salvador was then called to testify and said federal authorities were contacted after the sheriff's office received the tip from NCMEC.

Salvador told the jury that the Pinterest account in question could be linked to Wright and said the start of the IP address associated with the initial photo posted on Pinterest was Dec. 9, 2022 — a couple of days before the picture was posted to the social media website.

CID investigator Tyler Waid was the final witness called by prosecutors. He was the lead investigator on the case and was also one of the three investigators who interviewed Wright.

Waid testified that Wright referred to himself in interviews as someone who rarely left his house unless he was visiting relatives. It was during this discussion that Wright told Waid that his ex-wife had come to his home in Buhl a day or two after he took a trip to Georgia to visit his sister the December that the photo was published to Pinterest.

After Wright was arrested for dissemination, Waid also said he asked him what else investigators could expect to find on his devices, to which Wright replied, "more of the same."

Wright then allegedly told Waid that "I don't know why I didn't delete that shit," and that "a lot had changed since his daughter was born."

Testimony again returned to the doll found in the locked closet in Wright's bathroom and Waid stepped out from behind the witness stand to demonstrate the size of the doll to the jury — holding his hand a little lower than chest level to show a height consistent with that of a child.

"He did state it was a sex doll and he had not used it," Waid testified.

Wright Takes The Stand

After the state rested following a morning of testimony, Sogol called Wright to the stand as the only witness for the defense.

Wright said he retired after 26 years working with Airbus Inc. — 13 years as an avionics technician and another 13 as a software systems analyst. He is also a disabled Navy veteran who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Sogol began his questions by flatly asking his client if he had ever uploaded child pornography to any internet website and if he was aware of the child pornography on his hard drives, to which Wright responded "no."

Sogol also brought up Wright's 2021 divorce from the mother of his small child, who is currently six years old. Wright said when the divorce was finalized, he was awarded the couple's house, their car and full custody of their two-year-old daughter.

Wright testified that the comments he told investigators came after he thought he was being asked about adult pornography and that he was in Weaver visiting his mother on Dec. 11, 2022 — the day the photo was posted to Pinterest.

However, Wright later admitted that he did not tell investigators he had been out of town when he was being interviewed at the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office following his arrest.

He also told the jury that he was being "sarcastic" when he made the comment about using a VPN during the phone conversation with his sister from the Tuscaloosa County Jail.

Wright went on to testify that his ex-wife, her boyfriend and other family members had full access to his house and all of his online accounts — implying that it could have been any one of those individuals who actually downloaded the 120 photos and made the initial post on Pinterest that prompted the investigation.

While Wright has only been charged with possessing and disseminating child pornography, Tuscaloosa Patch previously reported that one alleged victim reached out and provided details of sexual abuse and being the victim of child pornography.

Tuscaloosa Patch has decided against publishing the name of the woman out of respect to her family, but Patch has confirmed that she was close to Wright. She told this reporter that when she and a friend were younger, Wright locked them away and took all of their communications from the outside world until they performed "sexual favors" for him.

"He took tons of nude photos of me and my friend when we were 14," she told Patch. "He always told me I was just a sex symbol, basically. It was physical — physical things happened. There is so much more, but I would like to testify."

Sadly, she passed away early last year before she had the chance to take the stand.

Closing statements are set to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, with jury deliberations to follow.

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