Man arrested again for possessing child pornography
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IDAHO FALLS — A man has been arrested for a second time this year after investigators found him in possession of more child pornography.
Samuel S. Gale, 32, was first taken into custody in July on five counts of possessing sexually exploitative images of minors. After being released to pretrial services in September, Gale was allegedly found with more child pornography and was arrested again. He was charged with 10 more counts of possessing sexually exploitative images of minors in October.
While Gale was waiting to be tried in the first case, investigators received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children concerning Gale. Dropbox alerted NCMEC that an account linked to Gale had allegedly uploaded child pornography. According to court documents, investigators found 293 videos and 868 pornographic images of children uploaded to Gale’s Dropbox account.
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According to court documents, investigators reviewed phone calls between Gale and his wife while he was in jail in July. In one phone call, Gale allegedly admitted to sexually touching one of her children before they got married. He also allegedly told her he had touched other children when he was 15 years old.
In another call, Gale allegedly told his wife he had been looking at child porn.
“Samual goes on to say that he has been doing better about not viewing it and would go a few months and would not view it and would ‘mess up’ and then go a couple of weeks without viewing it,” investigators noted in court documents.
According to documents, Gale returned to live with his wife and the multiple children in their home after he was released from jail in September. His wife allegedly lied to Child Protective services telling them she didn’t have any reason to believe Gale was a danger to her children.
After living in the home with his wife and the children for a few weeks, Gale was arrested and charged.
Gale was released to pretrial services on Oct. 12 with an order banning him from having contact with minors or accessing the internet.
Gale was arraigned in Bonneville County Monday. A new court date has yet to be set. He is scheduled for a jury trial on Dec. 4, for the first set of charges from July.