A child molestation suspect who has been missing since escaping a manhunt in North Idaho in December was arrested Thursday in Los Angeles.

Nathaniel Robert Howell, 32, was booked into jail in Los Angeles County about 3:52 p.m. Thursday, according to online records.

Howell had been wanted on a felony warrant in Kootenai County charging him with four counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child and five counts of sexual exploitation.

Coeur d'Alene police notified the public about his fugitive status after he ran from police through the woods in the 1500 block of South Sagle Road last December.

Howell had seen police while visiting relatives nearby. He's now awaiting extradition to North Idaho from California.

A Spokane Valley man caught with child pornography last fall has been indicted by a federal grand jury.

Cory R. Greer pleaded not guilty Monday to transportation of child pornography, receipt of child pornography, and a forfeiture calling for him to give up a laptop computer seizure from his home last fall.

Spokane County sheriff's investigators searched Greer's apartment at 19221 E. Buckeye Ave. on Oct. 12.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children notified them of child pornography was being sent through email coming from a local Internet Protocol address; Deputy Damon Simmons traced the address to Greer, who was 28 at the time of the search.

Greer “was cooperative and not considered a threat to the community” and was not arrested.

He was allowed to remain out of custody after his arraignment but is on home detention.

A Spokane man is wanted in Kootenai County on a charge of lewd conduct with a minor under 16.

Crime Stoppers is offering a reward for tips that lead to the arrest of Louis Arturo Hernandez-Vera, 32.

His criminal case in Idaho is sealed pending his arrest.

Hernandez-Vera, 5-foot-4 and 220 pounds, last gave an address in the 500 block of South Freya in Spokane. He has no criminal record in Spokane County.

Anyone with tips on Hernandez-Vera’s location is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS or submit tips online.

SEATTLE (AP) — A 33-year-old Centralia woman is accused of photographing herself having sex with a 16-year-old New Jersey boy she met through an online game.

The seattlepi.com reports child pornography charges were filed in federal court in Tacoma recently against Jessica Pearce. She’s accused of beginning a relationship with the boy in 2008 after they met playing “World of Warcraft.”

Prosecutors say she flew to meet the boy in New Jersey three times, once bringing her 6-year-old child with her. They flew back to Washington together on her final visit. Pearce was arrested Tuesday and is due in court Friday.

After making national news last summer, a babysitter sex scandal in North Idaho was plea-bargained out Thursday after the alleged victim gave the accused a perfect alibi: He said the sex acts occurred on dates when the babysitter was living out of state. 

Summer Kelli Ashle Hughes, 29, also known as Summer Nelson, will be on supervised probation for two years after entering an Alford plea to four lesser counts of misdemeanor injury to a child.

Kootenai County prosecutors were prepared to take her to trial on felony lewd-conduct charges before her teenaged accuser, who was 14 at the time of the crimes, testified at a preliminary hearing in May.

Read the rest of my story here.

Sex abuse charges against a Coeur d’Alene man have been dismissed in Missouri because of a technicality.

Randall L. Tetzner, 50, left the Adair County Detention Center on Monday after a judge dropped two counts of sodomy and two counts of rape for alleged incidents in 1986 and 1987, said Adair County Prosecutor Mark Williams.

The dismissal hinged on a change in the Missouri statute of limitations for sex crimes.

Previous law didn’t allow charges more than 10 years after an alleged crime. That changed in June 1997 to 10 years after a victim’s 18th birthday, Williams said. (The woman who accused Tetzner is 27.)

But under the old law, the statute of limitations for filing against Tetzner had already expired - in February 1997.

That four-month gap led to Tetzner’s charges being dropped this week, Williams said.

The prosecutor called the dismissal “extremely frustrating.”

“Our objective was to put him in prison for along time,” Williams said.

Tetzner said in a phone interview Tuesday that that allegations were false and that he’s relieved to be reunited with his family.

“It’s made me appreciate liberty, “ Tetzner said. “It’s made me appreciate my family more than anyone can possibly imagine.”

His wife, Diane Tetzner, said the allegations stemmed from an ongoing family feud. Meanwhile, she said, her family has been through “hell.”

“It was the worst thing we’ve ever been through in our lives,” Tetzner said. “This has turned our lives upside down.”

A phone call to Tetzner’s wife was not immediately returned.

Tetzner had been in Missouri since December after fighting extradition from Kootenai County, where he’d been in jail since Sept. 18.

His arrest came after a woman told detectives she’d been abused by Tetzner when she was 3 and 4 years old in Kirksville, Missouri.

Tetzner had been arrested on the accusations in 1987, but the case was dismissed after a judge found no probable cause. The alleged victim told detectives she began to remember more about the incidents in 2007, according to court documents.

Tetzner, who Williams described as a “very litigious individual,” is well known in Kootenai County, particularly the Coeur d’Alene School District, where he advocates for children with disabilities and helped start an “autism essay contest.”

In 2005, the Coeur d’Alene School Board settled a federal lawsuit filed by him after he was locked out of a school board meeting two years earlier. The school board agreed to apologize to Tetzner and changed meeting minutes to acknowledge the meeting had been “inadvertently locked,” according to a story you can read here.

Tetzner’s wife also unsuccessfully ran for school board in 2005.

In 2003, Tetzner complained to police that sex-themed comic books were in a place where children could see them at a Coeur d’Alene store, leading to the books’ removal.

Read more here.

A former Post Falls church youth leader was arrested last week on suspicion he had sexual and inappropriate contact with multiple minor girls from the congregation.

Jordan Vernon, 20, (right) is accused of allegedly having sex with at least two girls ages 14 and 17, and having inappropriate contact with at least two others ages 12 and 14 while serving as a youth leader in training at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls from 2007 to 2009, said Post Falls Police Detective Sgt. Dave Beck.

Vernon was arrested Dec. 28 for sexual battery of a minor child under the age of 16, lewd conduct with a minor child under the age of 16, and statutory rape for having sexual intercourse with child under 18, among other charges, police said.

Luke Denman, 28, (left) a relative of Vernon, was also arrested for intimidating a witness.

Denman allegedly went to the church after learning authorities planned to arrest Vernon, and threatened a church member, Beck said.