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From the Ottawa Citizen

U.S. justice officials are crediting a Canadian police officer's investigative smarts — and expertise with beer — for cracking a major child-pornography case that led this week to a 36-year prison sentence for a Maryland man.

In what U.S. district attorney Rod Rosenstein called an "awe-inspiring" international probe by Canadian and U.S. investigators, 47-year-old Timothy Malcolm Beers pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to produce child pornography, sexually exploiting two girls aged three and five, and possessing "a large collection" of illicit materials showing the sexual abuse of these and many other children.

Beers, a resident of Bowie, Md., also agreed to pay $75,000 to each of the two identified victims, and faces supervised release for life if he survives his lengthy jail term.

The key to solving the case was a Toronto police officer's online discovery two years ago of a child-porn photograph in which a particular brand of beer could be seen in the background, according to a 13-page plea agreement obtained by Canwest News Service.

The officer — Det.-Const. Warren Bulmer — was working as part of a global network of investigators, including the RCMP and Interpol, that seeks to identify and rescue the young victims of Internet child pornography.

The breakthrough in the case came in May 2007 when Bulmer gained access to illegal photos being shared electronically by members of a child-pornography ring.

"These images had been intercepted from a public area of the Internet," Bulmer told Canwest News Service on Friday.

"There were clues in those images. One in particular had what at first looked like some sort of can or cup. I did some work on that image, enhanced it to the point where I could read enough of the label. And it turned out to be a beer can."

The image-enhancement software showed that one of the adults involved had been drinking "Black & Tan" — a brand of beer produced by Yuengling, a 175-year-old Pennsylvania brewing company.

Bulmer did some research on the firm and discovered that Yuengling's distribution area was "very tight" — only about 12 states in the northeast corner of the U.S.

"And there were only six where Black & Tan was even distributed," said Bulmer.

After an alert was issued to child pornography investigators in those states, a detective assigned to an Internet-crimes task force in Maine discerned another clue in the photograph — an unusual, "Disney brand" pair of child's eyeglasses that could be traced to a limited number of ophthalmologists in the area.

A prosecutor and FBI agent in New York closed the loop. They tracked down a Maryland ophthalmologist who prescribed a pair of the Disney glasses to a girl he recognized as one of the victims in the photo.

The girl's father turned out to be Beers' former neighbour — and his co-conspirator in producing the pornographic scenes shot with Beers' camera.

"Then the FBI got involved," recalls Bulmer, "and eventually they kicked down this guy's door in Maryland."

Warrants executed at the father's house in Annapolis, Md., led detectives to Beers' home.

The images transmitted to Canada and elsewhere were traced to Beers' computer.

He was arrested last August, and the plea agreement negotiated in the months since then resulted in Thursday's sentencing at a U.S. district court in Baltimore.

The prosecution of the girls' father is ongoing.

"The international law enforcement effort that saved two little girls in Maryland from ongoing sexual abuse is awe-inspiring, and it has become a source of admiration and inspiration at national seminars focused on combating child exploitation," Rosenstein, Maryland's top prosecutor, said in a statement announcing Beers' sentencing. "Thanks to their extraordinary commitment and exceptional investigative skills, the discovery of a photograph in Canada led to an arrest here in Maryland and the rescue of two victimized children."

He expressed gratitude to the RCMP and Toronto Police Service, singling out Bulmer for kick-starting the cross-border probe by noticing that "a beer can in the photographs appeared to come from the northeastern United States."

The head of Maine's task force on child pornography, Sgt. Glenn Lang, said the case was a "great example" of Internet policing and "underscores the importance of agencies sharing information."

Bulmer said Beers' arrest and sentencing has left him "relieved and happy," adding that the plea bargain means prosecutors "didn't have to put those victims through any type of court proceeding, because that's our No. 1 concern — the children — which is why we look for them in the first place."

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service