Investigators are trying to determine the identities of children depicted in pornographic images -- and the images' origins -- that were found strewn about the Spring Lake Park home of John C. Heuer, who is charged with kidnapping and sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl this week.
Authorities had said there could be more victims, but exactly what concerned them didn't become clear until Paul Young with the Anoka County attorney's office revealed Thursday that authorities found an "abundance" of porn and multiple female undergarments in Heuer's townhouse.
The undergarments were found in a safe, Young told Anoka County District Judge James A. Cunningham Jr. at Heuer's bail hearing.
"These allegations certainly meet every child's and parent's worst fears of abduction," said Young, division chief of the county attorney's Violent Crime Team. "There was an abundance of pornography, including child porn."
Heuer, 48, was charged Wednesday with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count each of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping in the girl's abduction Sunday evening from a laundromat on Rice Street at Larpenteur Avenue in St. Paul.
Detective Mike Lapham, Anoka County sheriff's lead investigator on the case, said that the pictures did not appear to depict the girl, and that her undergarments were not among those seized.
Investigators will vet the images through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"If it's canned stuff from the Internet or personal stuff, we just don't know yet," Lapham said. "We don't want to leave any stone unturned."