85-year-old woman killed in Houston dump truck crash identified by police
CRIME

Ex-headmaster rejects deal, gets 50 years for child porn

Cris Barrish and Jessica Masulli Reyes
The News Journal
Christopher D. Wheeler, former Tower Hill School headmaster, was convicted of 25 counts of dealing in child pornography.

Former Tower Hill headmaster Christopher D. Wheeler, who rejected an offer to serve only a minimum of four years in prison for dealing in child pornography, was instead sentenced to a mandatory 50 years behind bars Friday.

Wheeler's sentencing and guilty verdict, which his lawyer plans to appeal, culminated an 18-month investigation that shook the elite private school in west Wilmington.

In a case that stemmed from unsubstantiated allegations that Wheeler had sexually abused his adopted son and two other teenagers years ago, the 55-year-old Wheeler received a mandatory two years on each of 25 counts of dealing in child pornography.

The sentence was handed down Friday morning by Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis, who had pronounced Wheeler guilty in December.

Prosecutor Abigail Layton revealed the plea bargain offer that Wheeler turned down after the verdict. She said Wheeler would have faced the statutory two to 25 years in prison on each of the two counts, with only a minimum of four years behind bars. Prosecutors would have sought no more than 15 years, Layton said.

Wheeler instead opted for a non-jury trial,which Davis held in September. It lasted only one day, with only the lead state police detective testifying, and ended with separate closing arguments in November.

Wheeler's attorney, Thomas A. Foley, has said he plans to appeal the verdict. Wheeler has been held in prison since his November 2013 arrest.

Defense attorney Thomas A. Foley argued that giving Christopher D. Wheeler 50 years behind bars for dealing in child pornography was “draconian and disproportionate.”

Davis rejected Foley's argument that Delaware law, which requires two years behind bars on each count was "obscene, outrageous."

Said the judge: "This is a very serious crime. This is the abuse of a child and let's not forget that."

Wheeler, who has grown a white beard behind bars, declined to address Davis, saying, simply, "No thank you, your honor."

Outside court, Foley had no comment on the sentence or Wheeler's rejection of the state's earlier offer.

Layton said she knows an appeal is coming, but was satisfied with the sentence.

"Think about what is contained in each of those pictures,'' the prosecutor said. "In those pictures, kids are being raped and violated and it is captured on film for the rest of their life, the life of the Internet. Their worst moments are on film."

During an October 2013 raid at the school-owned mansion where Wheeler lived, authorities seized more than 2,000 images and videos of boys engaging in sex acts with men from a computer Wheeler kept in the music room. The discovery led school officials to immediately fire Wheeler from the headmaster job he had held for nearly nine years, and pay him more than $300,000 a year in salary and benefits.

School officials said last month that an outside investigation found "no evidence" Wheeler had "abused any student" at the $26,000-a-year institution.

Friday, spokeswoman Teresa Messmore issued a statement after the verdict that said, "None of Dr. Wheeler's conduct that was the subject of the criminal case involved students at our school. At this point, our school has nothing further to say. "

Wheeler has not been charged with sexually abusing anyone, but in court documents made public in the child porn case, authorities wrote that Wheeler was suspected of raping a boy he adopted from Russia when he worked at a private school in Illinois in the early 2000s, and of sexually assaulting two boys whose family he befriended in the West Chester, Pennsylvania, area about three decades ago.

The two brothers, whose family Wheeler befriended when he attended Westtown Friends near West Chester in the late 1970s, decided to confront their past after following the child sex abuse case of former Penn State University assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, according to an affidavit used to search Wheeler's Tower Hill-owned home, school office and his vehicles and private airplane.

In a letter to one of the brothers, Wheeler wrote: "I did those things. I am the one responsible," according to court documents.

"I will not compound your pain by attempting to deny or in any way deflect responsibility for my actions 35 years ago. I'll wait to hear from you about further appropriate steps towards resolution and restitution."

Wheeler, who took over Tower Hill in 2005, was hired after a search and vetting process that was "thorough, comprehensive and conscientiously executed," school officials said in a letter last month to the school community.

Founded in 1919 by du Pont family members, Tower's Hill's graduates include U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, former Gov. and U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, DuPont Co. chief executive Ellen Kullman and television personality Dr. Oz.

A new headmaster, Elizabeth "Bessie" Cromwell Speers, will start July 1. Speers most recently headed the The Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut.

A 'draconian' sentence

Friday's 30-minute hearing started with Davis rejecting Foley's argument that Wheeler should get a concurrent sentence on each count, which would mean he would serve only two to 25 years behind bars, the statutory range for a conviction on one Class B felony.

Wheeler's attorney argued in court Friday that Wheeler should not be sentenced consecutively, which is when the length of each prison term is added together.

Foley cited a Delaware statute enacted in July that allows a judge to sentence a defendant concurrently for certain crimes. If the statute had applied, he could have been sentenced to as little as two years in prison.

However, Judge Eric M. Davis said the statute does not apply because the crimes occurred before it was enacted.

Layton then said she realized that Davis had to sentence Wheeler to 50 years, calling it essentially "a life sentence."

Prosecutor Abigail Layton said Christopher D. Wheeler’s 50-year sentence for 25 counts of dealing in child pornography was appropriate.

She said Wheeler "still fails to accept responsibility'' for the appalling crimes, which involved him subscribing to Internet newsgroups that contained the child-sex images and that he attempted to erase them after police knocked on his door.

Less than a day before the raid, she noted, Wheeler was online, searching the "gayboystube.com'' site. "Fifty years is sufficient,'' he said.

Foley countered that 50 years was a "draconian and disproportionate sentence'' that was not envisioned by Delaware politicians who passed the law. He implied that murderers, rapists and other criminals get less time in prison than what Wheeler was facing.

"Excessive? I think that it's pretty excessive,'' the defense attorney said, telling the judge to pronounce the sentence so he could take the next steps to exonerate his client or reduce his prison time.

Layton countered that each image represents one or more victims.

"When you think of it in that context, 50 years sounds appropriate when there are 2,000-plus victims in this case," she said.

"These kids go on to have very, very difficult lives. They walk down the street and don't know if someone is smiling at them because they are nice or because they've seen these images on the Internet."

Davis said Wheeler has shown no remorse to the victims. Instead, he has only apologized for the harm he caused the community and those close to him.

Davis also told Wheeler that if he knew he was attracted to children, he should have avoided being a headmaster at a school.

"You shouldn't have placed yourself in a position where temptation faces you every morning when you shake hands with a child," Davis said.

'Browsing for child pornography'

Foley had argued in papers and during the brief trial, that Wheeler should be exonerated because the state has no proof that he actually viewed the child porn. Foley asserted that Wheeler subscribed to lawful online newsgroups with no knowledge they contained graphic, illegal images.

The state argued that "we have this pattern that Mr. Filthy is seeking out child pornography," Foley said during closing arguments.

That contention differed from the testimony of the state's lone witness, state police Det. Kevin Perna, who presented no evidence Wheeler ever looked at the objectionable images, let alone shared them with others, Foley said then.

"There's no proof he knew," Foley argued, telling Davis prosecutors want to cast Wheeler as "Mr. Filthy."

Layton, who did not use the term "Mr. Filthy" during that hearing when referring to Wheeler, countered that newsgroups he paid for had limited content that left 5,000 images or videos of child porn or child erotica on his iMac computer. Authorities seized the evidence from Wheeler's Tower Hill-owned mansion on Mount Salem Lane and Wheeler later conceded he had sole access to his computers.

Wheeler was the same man, Layton argued in November, who had searched the Internet for "gayboystube" after 1 a.m. the day of the search. He was the same educator who was running a "Net Shred" program designed to eradicate a computer's internet history when authorities, led by Attorney General Beau Biden's top two deputies, knocked on his door, she said.

Wheeler sought out and used child porn "for his own gratification," Layton said. "It was not a mistake. It was by design."

For example, one image seized by authorities showed a naked boy, age 8 to 10, with his "hands bound behind his back and leaning on a table" while he appeared to be performing oral sex on an adult with his hand on the boy's head, police wrote in Wheeler's arrest affidavit.

Before pronouncing his verdict, Davis rejected all of Foley's arguments, saying that the evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Wheeler "developed a pattern of Internet browsing for child pornography."

"The sheer number of images" on two Wheeler computers and a hard drive convinced the judge that the prohibited sex acts with children "didn't inadvertently end up on a computer."

Davis also had rejected Wheeler's bid to suppress the child porn evidence, arguing that the state police search overseen by State Prosecutor Kathleen M. Jennings and then-Chief Deputy Attorney General Ian R. McConnel exceeded its bounds when it searched for child porn.

Foley had aruged that the search should have been limited to finding evidence Wheeler tried to tamper with or intimidate possible witnesses in alleged sexual assaults against two teenagers more than three decades ago and his adopted son, Nikolai, about a decade ago. Wheeler has not been charged with any sexual assaults or witness tampering.

Detective Perna testified, however, that as soon as files were found that were suspected to contain images of child pornography, a new warrant was obtained that allowed such a search.

Contact senior investigative reporter Cris Barrish at (302) 324-2785, cbarrish@delawareonline.com, on Facebook or Twitter @crisbarrish. Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at jmreyes@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2777 or on Twitter @JessicaMasulli.