WARNING: Graphic Material - The court documents hyperlinked in this story contain graphic descriptions of items recovered from the home of a man charged with child sex crimes.
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. – Investigators searching the basement of the Independence home of Burrell Mohler, Sr., took into evidence five computers, four guns and several boxes of pornography and sex toys.
Jackson County authorities searched the basement on Nov. 11 and made the
Return/Receipt for Search Warrant public on Wednesday.
Along with the computer, guns and sex toys were cameras, video recording devices and blank tapes, according to the above document filed in Jackson County Court.
Mohler, Sr., his brother and his four sons are all charged in an alleged child sex ring dating back more than 20 years. The crimes each are accused of allegedly occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mohler, Sr., and his four sons were arrested and initially charged Tuesday, Nov. 10, while his brother, Darrel Mohler, was arrested at his current residence in Florida on Friday, Nov. 13.
Upon Mohler Sr.’s arrest on Nov. 10, which occurred at the Independence home he lives in with his wife and another 27-year-old female his wife says they had allowed to move in with them, authorities questioned both women, who were cooperative with the investigation.
Mohler, Sr.’s wife, who NBC Action News is choosing not to identify because she has not been implicated as a suspect in the case, told authorities that evening her husband had moved into the basement “after she had discovered that Burrell Mohler was viewing magazines and videos depicting persons involved in sexual activity,” according to court records.
The wife went on to tell investigators she had found magazines “depicting young females fully nude in sexual explicit poses fully exposing genitals” and that some of the magazines made reference to incest activities, according to the
Application for Search Warrant.
She had found the magazines in a false ceiling area of the basement her husband was living in, she told authorities, and had locked them in a file cabinet in her bedroom. She gave investigators the key to that file cabinet the night of her husband’s arrest and inside they discovered magazines that displayed graphic images of “obviously young females (possibly under the age of 17)” engaging in sexual activity depicted as incest in the titles and text of the articles included in the magazine, according to the request for a search warrant for the basement.
Read the Search Warrant HereThough the
inventory of the items seized the next day in the search of the basement included very graphic descriptions of the items recovered, it did not make reference to any incest activity.
It wasn’t immediately clear what, if any, of the evidence gathered at Mohler, Sr.’s home will be used against him in the case against him and the other members of his family.
Also unclear Wednesday was who the 27-year-old female is and her connection to the Mohler family. She has also not been implicated as a suspect in the investigation, which authorities call ongoing.
