By Mike Donoghue, Vermont News First

BURLINGTON – U.S. Homeland Security Investigations has arrested a Washington County man after special agents determined he posted more than 8,000 images or videos of child pornography on a dark web computer site, federal court records show.

Jeffrey Paul Coolidge, 58, of Montpelier is charged with the production, distribution and possession of child sexual materials, the records indicate.  He also is known as Jay Coolidge or Jay Pratt, records show.

Coolidge has convictions in Vermont for sexual assault and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child in 1997, HSI said in court records. 

The records also show Coolidge was on the Vermont Sex Offender Registry until at least 2017, but he is no longer included on the Vermont list, which fails to include all sex offenders and allows some sex offenders to drop off.

Coolidge — or somebody using his account — made statements on the dark web that indicate he may have sexually assaulted or committed a lewd act with a child recently and was looking to set up another chance to engage the child, the HSI said in court papers. 

Montpelier Police Chief Eric W. Nordenson, along with a HSI special agent, stopped by Coolidge’s apartment at 81 Berlin Street with a new police truck to show it to the suspect on Wednesday, court records show.  While in the driveway, Coolidge posed for a picture with the police truck and was invited by an HSI agent to go to the city police station to talk about the federal investigation.  He freely agreed and jumped into Nordenson’s vehicle for the ride, the HSI said.

HSI special agents based in South Burlington, along with Montpelier Police, later conducted a court-ordered search of Coolidge’s second floor apartment on Berlin Street.

Coolidge admitted at the police station he was a “member” of a dark web site that he called the “Boy’s Club” and that he used an assumed name, which had matched what HSI had uncovered, records show.

He explained the site is dedicated to those with a sexual interest in male children between the ages of 4 and 14 years-old and that site rules dictated the age and gender of the persons posted and shared, the HSI reported.

HSI said the defendant explained new people in the club start off as a “guest” and later can move up to “registered guest” status before eventually having a chance to become a “member.”

Out of the more than 8,000 images or videos of sexually explicit depictions of children reportedly posted by Coolidge on the subject site, many had been previously identified as child pornography by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, HSI said in a court affidavit.

Coolidge appeared briefly for his initial hearing on the federal charges before Magistrate Judge Kevin Doyle in U.S. District Court late Friday afternoon.  Prosecutors filed a request for a 3-day continuance and  Doyle gave them until 1 p.m. Wednesday.  The prosecution has filed a detention motion noting it believes there are no conditions of release that will keep the community safe or ensure the convicted felon will appear for his court hearings.

The arrest was sparked by an initial investigation by HSI in Portland, Maine, which has been doing extensive work on cracking into the dark web and tracing the source of the child pornography that is freely and secretly exchanged.  HSI said it continues to work to identify victims of child sexual abuse and to infiltrate and dismantle criminal organizations that operate child sexual abuse forums. 

The dark web is designed to facilitate anonymous communication over the Internet and secret networks have been created to facilitate the exchange, HSI said in court papers.   The network will help mask the user’s actual IP address on the computer’s ISP address. 

It was part of an investigation that an undercover HSI special agent reportedly connected with Coolidge who is believed to have posted a request for photos of little boys involving certain sexual abuse, court records show.  The conversations continued over the Internet and HSI agents were able to track the source in Vermont, records show. 

A version of this story first appeared in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.