Navy Man Targeted In Child Porn Probe

APRIL 1--Minutes after returning to the United States last month on a military transport plane following a deployment in Afghanistan, a Navy bomb disposal specialist was escorted off the aircraft by federal agents and had his bags searched as part of a child pornography investigation, court records show.

A Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) probe is targeting Richard Smith Andridge, a 39-year-old Navy Chief with the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit, according to a U.S. District Court filing. Andridge had his backpack and khaki duffel bag seized from an Air Force C-17 upon its arrival on March 11 at the Naval Air Station in Coronado, California.

During questioning by an NCIS agent, Andridge, who had spent the prior five months in Afghanistan, admitted to having “sexually-related chat” with young girls and sharing pornographic images with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl (but who was actually a Kentucky undercover cop).

Andridge--who used the online handle “navyguy_sd”--also copped to receiving nude images from a minor female he had met online and “participating in web camera sessions” in a “Teen Chat” room on Stickam, the live streaming video site. Andridge told NCIS Agent Christiana Huntzinger that he would enter the Stickam chat room and have a “private web camera session wherein a minor female would disrobe and display nudity at his request.” Andridge’s Stickam page can be seen here.

Andridge, Huntzinger reported in a sworn affidavit, “admitted to being sexually excited by juvenile females, ranging in age from 13-16.” While in Afghanistan, Andridge told the NCIS investigator, he used his computer “to communicate with minors.” He added that he “deleted any images of child pornography from his laptop computer prior to leaving Afghanistan, and deleted any chat records as well because he didn’t want his wife to find them.”

NCIS agents began probing Andridge after two separate women complained to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a man using the online nickname “navyguy_sd” had sent them troubling messages in a Yahoo parenting chat room about being nude with young girls.

Agents were later contacted by a Kentucky cop who, posing online as a 14-year-old girl, had also been solicited by “navyguy_sd.” At one point, investigators allege, Andridge sent the underover officer a photo that “depicted an adult male standing in military desert camouflage uniform, and holding an automatic weapon.”

A subsequent search of Andridge’s Yahoo e-mail account turned up correspondence with an underage girl who sent him photographs showing her nude buttocks. In one e-mail to the girl, Andridge asked, “Do you have a cam yet?” (7 pages)