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Months of investigation reveal how raunchy photos were obtained, but personal questions unanswered
By Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal Columbus Bureau
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
COLUMBUS: In the brief moments when explicit photos splashed on the Norwalk High School classroom wall last October, state Rep. Matt Barrett's political life flashed before his eyes.
When the Norwalk police and State Highway Patrol arrived, Barrett, the Amherst Democrat, denied having ever seen the photos or knowing how the explicit poses by two women got on the portable memory stick.
Barrett was helpful. He raised the specter that political enemies could have planted the porn and he even offered up to investigators their first primary suspect: his 12-year-old son.
Within two days, Barrett's son would be interviewed and confess to police. His mother would admit she knew her son surfed the Internet for porn. The top Democrat in the Ohio House would hold her fellow lawmaker harmless for the behavior of his son, and the pre-adolescent's role would be exposed by the state and national media.
Barrett became the embarrassed and concerned father.
There was one problem: prior to the police arriving, before he pointed the finger at his own son as the culprit, long before the boy would go through months of pressure, shame and guilt, Barrett knew it was all a lie.
Reached by phone, Barrett did not want to address the investigation, and he would not Please see Detective, A7
answer specific questions regarding his son's innocence and the information he provided police.
According to a 246-page police report released last week, as investigators were on their way, Barrett had time to take a good look at the photos.
Deanna Lund, the school's computer technician, plugged the memory stick into her computer in a private library meeting room. She also searched Barrett's laptop for other pornography and found none.
Barrett had yanked the memory stick in the classroom as soon as the photos flashed, but Lund now gave him the chance to examine the pictures. He knew the women. He knew the photos had been sent to him at his request from cell phones to secret e-mail accounts he established with MySpace, in one case under the pseudonym John Doe.
He also knew his ascending political career was in deep jeopardy, so he lied and misled, so well that Barrett wrenched pathos from investigating officers, his colleagues in the legislature and the public. By blaming his son, he also neutralized a good deal of the political fallout to be expected if he ran for a second term a year later.
And Barrett would have gotten away with it, even the part where he convinced his wife and son it was the boy's fault, if not for persistent and enterprising police work from officers who, despite consoling the Barrett family in their desperate hours, were never fully convinced the legislator was telling the truth.
Still, it would take eight months and a great deal of time and taxpayer expense for investigators to unravel the strange private life of Matthew Barrett.
Flashed photos
The teacher, Derek Pigman, was in the rear of the room with his back turned during first period around 7:40 a.m. and never saw the flashed photos. When Barrett approached him and asked, ''What do we do?'' Pigman thought he was referring to technical problems and advised him to go on with the presentation.
Barrett complied without mentioning the pornography to the teacher. He threw a video on for the 19 students, stepped into the hallway and called his office and his attorney.
He gave two more presentations without the memory stick during second and third period.
Principal Robert Duncan knew nothing for nearly two hours until being alerted by a staff member who heard the story from students.
Duncan and district Superintendent Wayne Babcanec went to the classroom and confronted Barrett. Pigman didn't know until then what had happened.
When two Norwalk police detectives arrived at 11:05, Barrett was in the library.
Reporters would be told students saw a lone topless woman for an instant, but Norwalk police Detective Sgt. Todd Temple and Detective David Pigman viewed 20 to 25 photos of nude women in graphic pornographic poses. Student statements confirmed they witnessed the same images.
Barrett was a reluctant witness. He didn't want his comments recorded initially and asked if he needed an attorney.
He volunteered names of people with access to the memory stick, including his son, his legislative aide in Columbus, and unnamed people that may have been ''sabotaging him.''
Barrett told the detectives he had ''no clue what's on there.''
The State Highway Patrol was called and took control of the investigation after Barrett said the memory stick was state property.
Barrett left for Columbus to attend legislative hearings, leaving it to his wife, Wendy, to extract a confession from their son.
The next day, the patrol learned the memory stick was Barrett's, so the case went back to Norwalk. Temple asked the lawmaker to bring his son in for questioning.
''He's scared beyond belief to go to the police station,'' Barrett told the police, so they arranged to meet in the legislator's law offices in Norwalk on Oct 4.
Temple asked Barrett if the couple offered the boy ''something to take the heat for this?''
Barrett replied, ''No.''
Wendy Barrett told detectives she had not asked, but she knew her husband had not put those images on the computer. Then she reconsidered.
''Um, I'm sure at some point I have asked him, you know, and he has said, 'No,' '' she said.
Wendy Barrett said she had caught her son with pornography previously.
''I think he truly feels horrible. I think he doesn't want anything to happen to Dad. He feels badly. We all just feel horrible as a family,'' Wendy Barrett said.
When the police interviewed Barrett's son, he admitted, ''I downloaded it to download onto my computer,'' but he never transferred the files.
''Was it you or [your dad] that looked up the stuff on the computer and put it on the thumb drive?'' Temple asked.
''That was me,'' Barrett's son said, affirming that he had not been promised anything by his parents to take the blame.
Before the interview ended, as Detective Pigman asked the boy to identify the kind of Web site that he surfed for the porn, Barrett abruptly interrupted: ''Don't. I don't want him to answer. Don't, don't answer please.''
The investigation
The case seemed closed. House Minority Leader Joyce Beatty, D-Columbus, issued a news release that explained the son was responsible and asked everyone, including the media, to respect the Barretts' privacy during their troubling time.
The state patrol assisted by conducting forensics tests. A computer specialist noticed files on the laptop and memory stick that contradicted everything Barrett told investigators.
In late December, the specialist told the Norwalk police that 61 images were not from the Internet, but from cell phones.
Detective Pigman was looking at a snapshot from Barrett's e-mail inbox. Messages marked ''Re: as promised,'' contained some of the pornographic pictures. There were other messages indicating Barrett was trolling the Net for erotic satisfaction, including ''Adult Friend\Finder News: Hot videos, private phone calls and sexy profiles!''
Pigman traced two e-mail addresses back to Barrett by subpoenaing records from MySpace and Yahoo for owner information. Both accounts, the first opened in 2003 under the name ''Lee'' and the second in 2006 by ''John Doe,'' were assigned to the Internet provider address at his law firm, Miraldi and Barrett Attorneys.
''If Mr. Barrett's son started this account, it would have meant he would have been around 7 years of age and would have done so in his father's office,'' Detective Pigman noted.
The patrol also proved the son's innocence another way. The e-mail addresses were in an area of the computer that could only be accessed by Barrett swiping his unique thumbprint to open the files and not in guest files used by his son and other family members.
Detective Pigman traced two cell phone numbers that sent the e-mails to Barrett and turned up the women striking the poses.
The women
Temple and Pigman went to interview the first woman, who lived nearby in Amherst, on March 27. She wasn't home, so they waited 45 minutes with her husband until she arrived.
She admitted calling Barrett.
They met through mutual friends. She used a timer on her cell phone to take pictures of herself and sent them to several e-mail addresses for Barrett.
''It actually started as a joke,'' the woman said.
Temple told the woman Barrett was blaming his son.
''[She] snickered and advised OK,'' Temple reported.
They told her it was not a crime to e-mail pornographic pictures to a consenting adult, but it was a felony to e-mail graphic photos to a 12-year-old child.
When they told the second woman the same thing the next day, she cried. She said she did not send pictures to a child.
She had read in the newspapers that Barrett was blaming his son and found it ''disgusting.''
They met at the Seneca County Fair during Barrett's unsuccessful 2004 Ohio House bid and remained friends until she met her husband in early 2007.
He was a ''smooth talking person,'' and she had just gone through a rough divorce. They went to dinner, he gave her tickets to a Browns game and asked her to send nude photos using her cell phone. E-mails from Barrett were marked ''John Doe.''
''I asked her if he had some sort of fetish for that. (She) advised, 'obviously I think so.' ''
The second woman also admitted she conferred with Barrett after police contacted her.
On April 7, the Norwalk police called Barrett and asked him to come in for further questioning. Barrett said he was busy through the week and didn't know what his wife had planned for his weekend. He would get back to them.
He never called back, but two days later, Jack Bradley, an attorney representing Barrett, did.
Bradley said he was told by Norwalk Law Director Stuart O'Hara and Huron County Prosecutor Russell Leffler to hold tight because the case would be reviewed in another county to consider criminal charges.
On April 23, Barrett told Beatty and state Rep. Chris Redfern, D-Catawba Island Township, the pornography was his and not his son's.
The next day, Barrett resigned from the Ohio House.
The case went to Sandusky County, where Beth Tischler, an assistant prosecutor, reported on April 29 that Barrett could be charged with obstructing official business, a second-degree misdemeanor, and falsification, a first-degree misdemeanor.
Sandusky County Prosecutor Thomas Stierwalt said no criminal charges were warranted and it is customary for an outside prosecutor to return misdemeanor cases to the original county to determine whether to file charges.
O'Hara decided against pursuing the case.
With that decision, Barrett never had to answer investigators' questions about his clandestine e-mail accounts, his relationship with the women who sent him the pictures, and the reasons why he was willing to incriminate his son.
Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.
COLUMBUS: In the brief moments when explicit photos splashed on the Norwalk High School classroom wall last October, state Rep. Matt Barrett's political life flashed before his eyes.
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