A Michigan couple faces charges in a child porn and bestiality case, and a Clare County 911 dispatcher faces charges as well—because she may have tipped the couple off to both the original probe and to arrest warrants sworn out while they were on the run.
Rebekah Oakley-Pyle and her husband, Malvin Pyle, fled their Harrison home for Oklahoma in February, after getting a tip that they were under investigation in a suspected child porn ring, according to authorities in the case. But the couple returned June 20, after they reportedly got another tip about the warrants, and were arrested and arraigned on their return.
Oakley-Pyle faces a sodomy charge based on reported evidence of bestiality with a dog, while her husband, Malvin Pyle, faces fourteen counts of child porn possession. Oakley-Pyle faces up to 15 years behind bars if convicted while her husband faces four. They were being held in Clare County Jail following their arraignment.
The dispatcher, whose name has not been disclosed, was arrested by the Mid-Michigan Area Computer Crime Task Force June 22 and arraigned the following day, the FBI said. The bureau added she was being held in the county jail in Gladwin County, which is said to share district and circuit courts with Clare County, because of her tie to the Clare County Sheriff's Department.
Law enforcement searched the Pyle home on a warrant in mid-February, after the couple had already fled, and the search turned up evidence of bestiality as well as child porn images on the couple's home computer.
An FBI supervisory senior resident agent, Walter Reynolds, told reporters the bestiality evidence surprised the computer crime task force members who searched the Pyle home. "We don't go looking for [such] cases," Reynolds was quoted as saying. "They come to us."
The dispatcher, who is believed to have known Oakley-Pyle personally, was suspended without pay following her arraignment. Authorities believe she called the Pyles on her own cell phone about the original investigation but may have called them from her 911 dispatch station about the arrest warrants.
That second tip produced the obstruction charge, authorities told reporters, because it gave the Pyles time for possible disposal or destruction of evidence.
