HARRISBURG, N.C. — Investigators are calling Christopher Brownstead a “monster in plain sight” after he allegedly committed heinous crimes against children for years, including spying on guests at his Airbnb and sharing child sexual abuse material online.
Channel 9’s Hannah Goetz learned from investigators that this troubling case goes back as far as ten years, and they’ve just scratched the surface of the evidence.
But what they’ve found so far would be concerning for anyone in the community.
“This guy, by all intents and purposes, looks like a normal citizen that’s not living by the law, that is producing child pornography,” said investigator Lt. Chris Smith.
There are dozens of boxes of evidence at the Cabarrus County Sheriff’s Office linking to one case. Brownstead is charged with 30 counts, including sexual exploitation of a minor and secret peeping.
“We’ve got 40 different electronic devices from both houses. We got multiple cloud accounts to go through,” said Detective Joe Calabro. “So right now, we’re about three devices and one cloud account into the entirety of what’s going on.”
Investigators say Brownstead was making child sexual abuse material for years, and even spying on kids in parks and neighborhoods.
The initial investigation also points to disturbing findings about secret peeping in public.
“We found some photos that show that it looks like he was hiding in some sort of area and not wanting to be seen, and taking pictures of children as they were, as they were playing, and we found some stuff in his residence that looked almost like a spy bag that had glasses that looked like they had some sort of video capability on it, as well as binoculars and camera,” Calabro said.
Brownstead owns an Airbnb in the Lake Tillery area. With the help of the SBI, investigators found a hidden camera in the bathroom at his Airbnb.
“As you can see, there’s there’s a lens you probably can’t see it that comes through this socket here, so it appears to be just a regular wall socket, and on the back it has the storage area where this camera specifically was a WiFi camera, so it was just going back directly to his phone,” Smith said. “So after a search of his phone, we were able to find the videos that came through for it.”
There are real children and victims in the investigation, and with more evidence to go through.
“Hiding in plain sight. Here’s an individual who, by all intents and purposes, living in, you know, potentially million-dollar houses and nice neighborhoods, you wouldn’t feel to be involved in criminal activity,” Smith said. “Any adult that would have sexual gratification over a child, and not only sexual gratification from the instance, but to solicit these images, to trade these images, to continue to grow a sick culture of possessing that type of material is a monster.”
Investigators believe there will be more to come out of this case. They’re asking for anyone who believes they may be a victim to call the sheriff’s office.
Statement from Airbnb:
“We’ve taken immediate action to remove this individual from our platform and stand ready to assist law enforcement with their investigation.”
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