Richard Saxton
A Crawford County man arrested by multiple law enforcement agencies on child pornography charges Friday is a former postmaster for the United States Postal Service in Fort Smith, having retired from that post several years ago.
Richard Saxton, 65, was arrested after a cyber-tip was called into the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and a search warrant was executed on his residence on Scott Farm Loop just north of Van Buren on Friday.
The Van Buren Police Department, Crawford County Sheriff’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security all participated in the investigation and search warrant.
Saxton was also a former postmaster in Amarillo, Texas, according to an unnamed source that worked with him at the Fort Smith facility. According to the source Saxton retired from the USPS in 2011 or 2012.
Saxton apparently also lived in Denton, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Officials discovered “hundreds of pictures” while executing the search warrant. They said due to the content and nature of some of the photographs that some of the children portrayed in the media may have been actual victims and actually photographed by the suspect.
Law enforcement said they believe Saxton may have used multiple social media and other internet resources to build and enhance his collection of sexually explicit photographs of under aged children.
Dennis W. McCaslin
Dennis McCaslin has been a longtime news and sports reporter for several media outlets in the Fort Smith area. He has also been a well known radio personality and play-by-play announcer for several years prior to joining InsideFortSmith.Com. He is the voice of the ArklahomaSports High School Game of the Week. E-mail: dennis@greatplainsdigital.com
