MARPLE – A Swarthmore man charged with 50 counts related to online child pornography last week took his own life Monday morning at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery.
Thomas Bowles, 45, of the 1400 block of Greenway Road, was reportedly found dead on the cemetery grounds.
An official cause of death was not available later Monday. The call for a self-inflicted gunshot wound went out at 8:52 a.m. and the Delaware County Medical Examiner’s Office was dispatched to the scene.
Defense attorney Richard Daubenberger did confirm Bowles was found dead.
An affidavit of probable cause for Bowles’ arrest written by Delaware County Detective Brian Alexander states that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a report from Synchronoss Technologies on March 1 that a phone number registered to Bowles uploaded an image of suspected child pornography.
Alexander, a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, reviewed the file and confirmed that it was a 26-second video of the sexual abuse of a female child aged approximately 11-13 years old, according to the affidavit.
Verizon identified the offending number as belonging to Bowles.
Synchronoss subsequently reported 35 additional files being uploaded using that same number on March 2, 3, 7 and 8. Alexander reviewed those files and found they also included juveniles as young as approximately 5 to 8 years old being sexually abused.
Investigators served a search warrant at Bowles’ home on April 10, and seized a phone, tablet and computer tower at that time.
Bowles allegedly told detectives that work had slowed down in March and he began engaging in multiple online chat groups on the social media platform KIK. Bowles allegedly admitted to sending and receiving child sexual abuse material in these groups and saving it to his phone, which was subsequently uploaded to the Synchronoss cloud server.
Bowles said that he knew what he was doing and that it was illegal, according to the affidavit. He was charged with 25 counts each of possession of child pornography and criminal use of a communication device.
Bowles was preliminarily arraigned April 10 before Magisterial District Judge David H. Lang, who set bail at $75,000 unsecured. He had been scheduled for a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Andrew Goldberg on April 25.
Daubenberger provided this statement from Bowles’ wife, Sarah: “Tommy was a gentle soul who voluntarily sought treatment to make sure he continued being a loving husband and positive member of society.”
