Larry D. Morrison, Jr., 48, of Ava, has been arrested and is held without bond after an investigation reportedly led law enforcement to discover files depicting child sexual abuse that had been viewed and shared by Morrison.
He is charged with one count of first-degree promotion of child pornography and two counts of possession of child pornography, having more than 20 pictures or one film or videotape. All of the charges are felonies.
They were filed Monday in Douglas County, according to court records. A post on the Douglas County Sheriff's Department Facebook page shows Morrison was taken into custody the same day, and a search warrant was executed at a location in Ava, resulting in the seizure of electronic devices that will be examined for evidence.
In a probable cause statement submitted by law enforcement to Douglas County Prosecutor Matthew Weatherman, it was noted the investigation began on Feb. 5 when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sent a cyber tip report to the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force, provided to them by cloud storage provider Dropbox.
The preliminary information came on Jan. 29 from a Boone County Cyber Crimes detective previously assigned to the case, who obtained a subpoena for a Dropbox online subscriber account and identified the suspect as Morrison.
West Plains Police Detective Joe Neuschwander, who is a cyber crimes task force officer, randomly reviewed some of the submitted files and reportedly saw some that depicted child sexual abuse, including sexually explicit images of a child who appeared to be 12 or 13 years old.
Neuschwander then obtained a search warrant in order to get subscriber and content information from Dropbox and reportedly uncovered 2,509 images and 54 videos depicting child sexual abuse, plus another 340 images and 101 videos of suspected child sexual abuse.
Neuschwander's report said the items capable of storing digital media that were seized as evidence would be examined, and there may be additional charges after that is complete.
Morrison's bond will be set at hearing to be held on Tuesday morning in the courtroom of Associate 44th Circuit Judge Elizabeth Bock, court records show.
Court records also show Morrison's prior felony convictions include four counts of a fraudulent use of a credit or debit device in 2016, and in 2017, possession of a controlled substance, all in Douglas County.
No attorney is listed as Morrison’s representation in the current case as of Friday afternoon.
