Jurors in the Josh Duggar trial were given a ‘virtual tour’ of the accused child porn pervert’s computer today to demonstrate how he harvested and hid an alleged stash of warped video and images.
James Fottrell, Director of the FBI’s High Tech Investigation Unit, told a federal courthouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas that he used visualization software to replicate the exact desktop on Duggar’s seized work PC.
Using a series of screengrabs he showed how Duggar, 33, had allegedly created a secret domain where he could access the dark web to hunt for files marked ‘Jailbait,’ ‘Pedo Mom’ and ‘Daisy’s Destruction.’
’The latter video featured a girl of three to four months being stripped naked, posed on a bed and toilet before being tortured with hot wax. The infant is crying and screaming,’ the veteran investigator told jurors.
‘It’s one of the most offensive videos that I’m familiar with throughout my career.’
Fottrell told the court that he identified that particular video through something called a torrent file that was present on the HP computer taken from Duggar’s used car lot in November 2019.
Pictured: Joshua Duggar, 33, had allegedly created a secret domain where he could access the dark web to hunt for files marked ‘Jailbait,’ ‘Pedo Mom’ and ‘Daisy’s Destruction
Duggar, pictured, leaving court with his legal team on Thursday after proceedings for the trial in Fayetteville Arkansas
Pictured: Josh & Anna Duggar leaving court with his legal team on Thursday
The torrent file did not contain the actual abuse footage but Fottrell explained it was a set of instructions to locate the real thing on the dark web.
‘Like a recipe for a cake,’ he told jurors.
‘Those instructions tell it how to go out and fetch the file.’
Famous for appearing in TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, Duggar was charged in April with two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography.
He has pleaded guilty but faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 on each count if convicted.
Fottrell, giving evidence for the prosecution, first outlined how Duggar’s computer was running two parallel operating systems, regular Windows plus a second called Ubuntu, a setup classed as a Linux partition.
The alternative Ubuntu workspace was downloaded on May 11, 2019 and could only be accessed by physically restarting the computer and hitting F9 as it rebooted.
‘You would have to physically be present to boot the other system,’ he explained to jurors.
Fottrell said the Linux side of the computer was protected by the password intel1988 – the same password prosecutors say Duggar used for his internet banking.
Anna Duggar and Josh Duggar pose during the 42nd annual Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center on February 28, 2015
Duggar, pictured, with his wife and six children. Duggar is currently on trial for child pornography charges
Homeland security raiding Duggar’s work place, pictured, where a computer was seized that contained ‘some of the most offensive videos (I’ve) seen my career,’ said FBI’s James Fottrell
Behind the partition, Fottrell said he found that two programs called uTorrent and Tor Browser had been installed two days later for peer-to-peer file sharing on encrypted networks.
‘The purpose of that is to be anonymous. I don’t want to say I’m from Arkansas, I want to hide my identity and appear like I’m coming from somewhere else,’ he explained.
Despite cloaking his location, the computer’s operator had left numerous tell-tale signs, however, including thumbnail images and cached file names such as ‘ultra hard pedo pedophilia,’ the court heard.
The desktop’s media player also contained an encrypted list of recently viewed files which were identified using FBI databases as alleged child porn videos.
Fottrell told the court he was eventually able to use his expertise to retrieve dozens of deleted pictures, which were discreetly shown to jurors on monitors.
As he spoke, a slide of explicit thumbnail images briefly flashed up on a prosecutor’s monitor and were visible in the public gallery for several seconds.
Duggar’s wife Anna, the person sat closest to the screen, was staring down at the floor, however, and didn’t look up at them.
The downloads Fottrell identified began at 5:28 pm on May 14, 2019 and ended at 11:21 am on May 16 of that year, he said.
The single non-pornography file he was able to locate on the Linux side of Duggar’s computer was a June 2019 bill of sale for a 2004 Toyota 4Runner.
Pictured: Josh Duggar released from jail back on May 6. Duggar is now confined to the home of longtime friends of his parents, who have agreed to be his custodian during his release
Famous for appearing in TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, Duggar, pictured leaving jail in May, was charged in April with two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography
The document, revealed to jurors, was headed Wholesale Motors – the name of Duggar’s used car company in Springdale, Arkansas – and it listed the sales agent as ‘Joshua.’
Josh Duggar is the eldest of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s nine daughters and ten sons featured on 19 Kids and Counting, which documented the devout Baptist family’s life in Tontitown, Arkansas.
TLC pulled the long-running reality series after seven years in 2015 over revelations from a historic 2006 police report that Duggar had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter.
Duggar’s parents said he confessed to the fondling and apologized.
He also apologized for his pornography addiction and for cheating on Anna, who has attended court every day of the trial, which officially began on Tuesday and is expected to run into next week.
Duggar’s defense suffered a blow Wednesday after Judge Timothy L. Brooks ruled his trial can hear evidence about the molestation scandal during opening statements.
Witnesses are likely to include Bobye Holt, a ‘long time’ church friend of the Duggars.
Holt has already told an evidentiary hearing held prior to the trial that Josh admitted to her in 2003 that he had been touching the girls – referred to as Jane Does 1 through 4 – over and under their clothes for years.
Pictured: Josh and Anna Duggar alongside Rick Santorum, former US Senator from Pennsylvania. The Duggar family often stumped for Christian conservative politicians
Josh and Anna Duggar, pictured. Duggar, 33, faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 on each count if convicted
She also told the court that two years later Duggar further confessed to ‘digitally penetrating’ Jane Doe 4 while she sat on his lap reading bible stories.
Defense lawyers tried to bar Holt from repeating her testimony at trial on the basis of ‘clergy privilege,’ arguing that Holt and her husband were church leaders and the confession came during prayer and ‘priestly consolation and guidance.’
However Holt insisted she was not a church elder and that the church had nothing to do with her discussions with Duggar, who had been going on chaperoned dates with her daughter at the time of his first confession.
Judge Brooks ruled in the prosecution’s favor, noting that the youngsters who appeared in Duggar’s alleged trove of child porn were roughly the same age as the victims of his ‘hands-on child molestation offenses.’
Duggar patriarch Jim Bob was also subpoenaed to give evidence at Monday’s pre-trial hearing but he insisted he could barely remember anything about the abuse and was ditched as a prosecution witness.
Judge Brooks took a dim view of Jim Bob’s conduct in the witness box, writing in a footnote: ‘The court rejects this testimony as self-serving, contradictory and lacking in credibility.’
Jurors will potentially hear from two of Duggar siblings, however, his 20-year-old brother Jed and abuse victim Jill, 30, according to list of possible witnesses read to jurors.