A national parks worker on a quest to find a gingerbread treehouse in a Washington forest discovered the storied cabin — and in it, a stash of kiddie porn that led to one creep’s arrest.
The cabin — tucked deep in the woods of Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and long talked about by hikers — contained framed photos of naked young girls on the walls and an envelope stuffed with child porn.
The disturbing items eventually led to the arrest of Daniel Wood, 56, from Mill Creek, who was charged with two counts of possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. A search of his home turned up thousands of images of child porn, mostly of girls ages 8 to 12, on a memory card, according to court papers.
Police linked the child porn stash to Wood through DNA they matched with a coffee mug and drug paraphernalia inside the treehouse, which sits eight feet off the ground and features glass windows, a pitched roof and a wrap-around deck.
Wood was busted thanks to a determined parks worker, who searched for the rumored cabin five times before he finally found it in November 2016.
The worker “heard rumors in the hiking community of this cabin and decided to try and find it,” court papers said. Once he did, he confiscated the revolting photos and reported them to the King County Sheriff’s Office.
A detective who was guided to the cabin — located miles up the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River — described it as “an elaborate treehouse that resembled a fairy or gingerbread house.”
Inside, there was a bed, bedding, clothing, food, dishes, candles and other items.
“On all four walls were framed pictures of fairy-like figures or what appeared to be young girls,” an FBI agent wrote in court papers. Two featured “what appeared to be young girls, approximately 8-12 years old.”
An envelope found on a bookcase had more pictures, some of which “appeared to be fictional, but there were several that contained images of young girls naked or scantily clothed,” the agent wrote.
A King County Search and Rescue volunteer told agents that he’d seen an SUV parked outside the cabin and provided them with a license plate number — which led them to Woods.
The agents matched DNA from the handlebars of a BMW motorcycle parked outside Woods’ condo and a discarded paper cup he’d used with the items found in the treehouse.
It’s unclear who built the cabin, but its existence had been known to Forest Service officials for about seven years. It had last been inspected in 2013 or 2014, and at that time, “there were no images in the cabin,” court papers said.
Woods doesn’t have a criminal record and was barred from having any contact with minors. He is scheduled for arraignment March 26.
https://nypost.com/2018/03/22/gingerbread-treehouse-found-with-littered-with-kiddie-porn/
