Superior man faces child porn charges

A Superior man charged with possessing child pornography was held over for arraignment following a preliminary hearing in Douglas County Circuit Court on Wednesday.

Timothy Daniel Urbanski, 48, faces three counts of felony possession of child pornography.

He was arrested last month after the Superior Police Department received information that a cell phone he’d given a 7-year-old girl contained what appeared to be child pornography.

Superior Police Sgt. Nick Alexander, commander of the Lake Superior Forensic Technology & Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, testified Wednesday that images of suspected child pornography were found on the phone. When a search warrant was served on Urbanski’s apartment in Bayview Courts, Alexander said, they found 42 printed images of child pornography in the master bedroom of the residence.

Assistant District Attorney Ruth Kressel provided two of the images after Public Defender J. Patrick O’Neill objected to Alexander’s oral testimony about them. To prove the existence of a writing, recording or photo, he said, it must be provided. The images depicted what Alexander estimated to be a 5- to 7-year-old and a 12- to 14-year-old, both naked, in provocative positions.

Kressel admitted the images into evidence but asked they be sealed.

Alexander was present when Superior Police Detective Tom Champaigne questioned Urbanski at his residence. He testified that the Superior man admitted there would be images in the house. Urbanski also told Champaigne that the age of the subjects would be pretty young, about 9, Alexander said.

The Superior Police Department also seized nine computers from the residence.

“And there are well over half a million image files on those computers and there’s a large quantity of what I would classify as suspected child pornography,” Alexander said.

According to the criminal complaint:

Urbanski told Champaigne that he was downloading and printing the child pornography, then shredding it, in an attempt to rid the Internet of child pornography. He also admitted that he had downloaded child pornography from the Internet and saved the images to CDs or DVDs in his room.

Urbanski was held over for arraignment Oct. 10. He remains in custody at the Douglas County Jail. Cash bail of $10,000 has been set in the case, with the conditions that Urbanski have no contact with two specific juvenile females and unsupervised contact with any minor.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison and $100,000 fine on each count, and a court surcharge of $500 per image or copy of an image.

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