Robert Richard Bahm, 78, of Lansdale. Credit: Montgomery County Detectives
Robert Richard Bahm 78, has been charged with 83 felony counts of child pornography.
A Lansdale man charged with 84 felony counts of possession of child pornography after more than 100,000 images and six videos of child sexual abuse material were allegedly found on his laptop while being serviced at Best Buy in February had a pre-trial conference rescheduled for November in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.
Robert Richard Bahm, 78, of an apartment on the 600 block of South Broad Street, is free on $50,000 unsecured bail, per court records, and awaits a Nov. 8 pre-trial conference before Common Pleas Judge Risa Vetri Ferman. He is also charged with felony criminal use of a communication device.
Bahm was originally charged with 167 counts of child pornography, but 83 of the charges were withdrawn at a July preliminary hearing, per court records.
The investigation began on Feb. 24 at 11:43 a.m., when Montgomery Township Police were called to the Best Buy at Airport Square for a report of potential child pornography on a customer’s laptop, police said.
A Geek Squad employee reported that Bahm came to the store around 11 a.m. to get Microsoft Office installed onto his laptop, and when Bahm was told he would have to leave the computer at the store for the installation, he became nervous and asked for his service to be expedited, police said.
Bahm left the laptop and left the store, according to authorities.
After logging into Bahm’s laptop, the employee plugged in a USB thumb drive to begin installing Microsoft software onto the laptop, police said. Upon going into Windows File Explorer, the “Downloads” folder showed two downloads with inappropriate titles relating to child pornography, police said, at which point Best Buy immediately called police.
Montgomery Township Police seized the laptop from Best Buy and called Bahm to come to the station, police said. When interrogated by police over why they wanted to talk to him, Bahm allegedly said it was because of pornography on his laptop.
Bahm told detectives he watched adult pornography regularly, specifically “women in pantyhose,” according to the complaint, but could not give police the names of any pornographic websites he visits.
When Bahm was asked why police would be concerned about adult pornography on his laptop, he allegedly said that occasionally pornographic images of children will appear on the screen. He told police the children’s ages are between five and 12 in the images, according to police, and said he has searched for “preteens in pantyhose,” but those searches never showed him child pornography.
A search warrant was obtained for the laptop and the county detectives conducted a forensic investigation, which revealed 100,326 images and six videos of child sexual abuse material, police said. Out of the 100,326 images, 8,000 of them were not duplicates, according to the report.
Police said the children in the videos and images ranged in age from 3 to 7 years old, per the affidavit.
All suspects and defendants are innocent until proven guilty. This story was compiled using public court records.
