Caza verdict in early May
The fate of a notorious Kamloops pedophile arrested as part of an international crackdown on child pornography is now in the hands of a judge.
David Caza’s trial ended in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops on Tuesday, April 16.
He is facing a lengthy list of charges, including allegations he possessed and distributed child pornography, as well as inviting a minor to sexual touching and luring a child via the Internet.
Caza, 48, was arrested following a raid at his downtown Kamloops apartment in January 2010. Police said the search yielded 3,500 videos and 50,000 pictures, most of them verified to be depictions of children involved in sexual acts.
In closing arguments this week, Crown prosecutor Bernie Caffaro said the lengths to which Caza went to maintain his alleged collection of child porn show his determination as a predator.
“This need to categorize and organize and rationalize this collection is absolutely inherent in the effort,” he said.
“It’s physical evidence and it’s also circumstantial evidence connecting Mr. Caza to that child pornography.”
The physical evidence includes photos and videos — some of which were viewed at trial — as well as computers, hard drives and other digital equipment seized by police.
The circumstantial evidence against Caza comes from witness statements — including a former roommate who said he saw the convicted sex offender engage in online webcam chat sessions during which he typed orders to what appeared to be children involved in sex acts, resulting in the charges of Internet luring and invitation to sexual touching.
However, according to defence lawyer John Gustafson, that testimony shouldn’t carry much weight.
In his closing submissions, Gustafson noted a number of files found by police on Caza’s computer appeared to be “screenshot” videos — captures depicting the entire frame of a computer’s monitor.
The former roommate, an admitted drug user with mental-health issues, testified he saw Caza engaged in the chats on a living-room computer in the downtown apartment the men shared.
Gustafson argued there’s a chance the roommate was actually witnessing Caza watch one of the screenshot videos.
“That [video] could have literally been recorded 10 years before it ended up on Mr. Caza’s computer,” Gustafson said, noting one such video found on Caza’s computer shows a young boy being ordered around by someone with the username “Joyce” typing orders that appear on the screen.
“We have no way of knowing if this is an actual recording of something the user of this computer did, or something done anywhere else in the world and re-distributed.”
Gustafson said Caza’s computer was routinely made available to guests who visited his apartment, meaning any number of people could have downloaded the child pornography files.
The Crown alleges Caza’s main source of child pornography — and the place he distributed it — was a peer-to-peer file-sharing website called GigaTribe, where he went by the username “Paper123boy.”
Kamloops Mounties were tipped off to Caza’s activities on the site by a Toronto detective who had gained access to another user’s account.
That user, a man in Tennessee operating under the handle “Devthedude2008,” had been arrested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Agents seized his computer equipment and uncovered his passwords, which were then provided to Canadian authorities.
The Toronto detective, posing as Devthedude2008, began communicating with Caza’s Paper123boy account.
Caza was convicted in 2001 of sexually assaulting three teenaged boys, and again in 2005 for possession of child pornography.
Caza most recent trial began on Feb. 14.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Powers is expected to return with his verdict in early May.
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