A computer forensics expert took the stand on Thursday Day 3 of Josh Duggar‘s trial on two counts of receiving and possessing child pornography. The story the expert witness told was horrifying, to say the least.
In his testimony, James Fottrell, the director of the Department of Justice‘s High Technology Investigative Unit spoke about the three devices cops seized from Duggar. It was a personal MacBook laptop, a personal iPhone, and a Hewlett Packard desktop computer from the office. On Friday morning, the prosecution continued the examination of the expert witness from the U.S. Department of Justice as the Josh Duggar child pornography trial continued in Fayetteville.
The expert acknowledged that there was no illicit material found on either the MacBook computer or the iPhone in Duggar’s possession but the HP desktop computer was “riddled with illicit material”. The PC’s hard drive was partitioned so that the Linux system could operate completely independently of the public-facing HP version.
Fottrell testified that the computer access enabled authorities to find thumbnail versions of child sexual abuse images, as well as deleted files and evidence of streamed and downloaded videos with titles like “pedomom” and “Daisy’s Destruction”. The investigators also reportedly found lewd images of an unidentified girl believed to be between 8 and 12 years old.
Fottrell explained that the illicit material was hidden behind a password-protected partition. That password was “intel1988.” This is the same password prosecutors argue Duggar used for several of his important banking and personal accounts. The password also includes the year of his birth.
Duggar’s HP desktop computer reportedly had bookmarked at least two sites that kept lists of these anonymous websites on the Dark Web. The place is known for its criminal activity including credit card schemes, drug sales, gun sales, murder-for-hire plots, and sexually exploitative material.