Philip Alan Drechsler (Butlert County Sheriff’s Office)
A 60-year-old investigative journalist in California was arrested by federal authorities last week for his alleged role in a grotesque online group dedicated to disseminating videos and images of child sexual abuse.
Philip Alan Drechsler, who allegedly shared more than 100 videos of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) with the group, was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with one count each of distribution of child pornography and possession of and access with intent to view child pornography, court documents obtained by Law&Crime show.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the investigation into Drechsler stemmed from a separate federal investigation out of Missouri. In that case, someone suspected of disseminating child pornography allowed FBI agents to takeover his Telegram username and gave him access to a group chat titled “The Playground Lives” in June 2021.
The FBI said the group had 23 members and the chat “involved approximately 1,683 photos, 8,128 videos, and 36 links to shared files, all of which depicted suspected CSAM and included primarily prepubescent females, some as young as toddler age, involved in sexually explicit activity.”
“FBI Lancaster’s investigation of Drechsler reveals Drechsler was a frequent contributor to ‘The Playground Lives’ chat, including repeatedly distributing CSAM of young children,” the affidavit states. “Between approximately August 17th, 2020, and June 28th, 2021, Drechsler, under the screen name ‘Karen Flores,’ shared approximately 117 suspected CSAM videos in ‘The Playground Lives.’”
FBI agents on April 6 obtained and executed warrants on Drechsler and his home in Lancaster, around 70 miles north of Los Angeles. On his phone, agents say they found recently deleted CSAM of a prepubescent girl. When asked about the images on his phone, Drechsler allegedly equivocated.
“Drechsler stated that he could not tell the age of the individuals and did not think it was child pornography,” the investigating agent wrote in the affidavit. “I asked him if the individuals looked like adults or children and Drechsler confirmed that they looked like children.”
Many of the other descriptions in the affidavit of the CSAM allegedly found on Drechsler’s devices or that he allegedly shared via the Telegram group chat involve children as young as toddlers being sexually assaulted and are too graphic to include.
On April 17, Drechsler’s wife told FBI agents that he recently told her he was going to kill himself because he had “nothing to live for.” He then packed three guns and traveled to Ohio to “say goodbye to his daughter” and “see his parents’ gravesite one final time.” Drechsler’s wife provided investigators with the name and address of the hotel where he was staying while in Ohio.
Drechsler was taken into custody in Cincinnati and is currently being detained in the Butler County Jail where he is being held at the request of federal agents, records show. He is expected to be transported back to California to face the aforementioned federal criminal charges filed against him.
Drechsler worked as an investigative producer at Los Angeles NBC affiliate KNBC from 2012 until he was laid off in February 2023.
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