A Santa Cruz man is wanted on a warrant for possession of child porn after a Santa Fe City Police detective raided his house with help from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
James Earl Towles, 72, has been wanted on the warrant issued in Santa Fe Magistrate Court since it was filed on Nov. 21, following the raid on his house and his interrogation on Nov. 13.
Santa Fe Police Detective Alex Durham wrote in an affidavit for an arrest warrant that he received 16 tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, for activity between 2023 and 2025, with a common suspect.
When Durham raided Towles’ house, he collected his phone, laptop, an external hard drive and another computer. On his phone, after getting his password, he found downloaded child pornography, he wrote.
During an interrogation, where Towles’s waived his Miranda rights, including his right to remain silent, he initially denied downloading child pornography before admitting he does download it, after the detective said they had evidence. He told the detective that he started viewing it two years ago.
“He was upset and said, ‘Why do they even put on (sic) there like that,’” Durham wrote. “Mr. Towles said it (CSAM) (child sexual abuse material) just came up one time and he could not help it. I asked what website he was on and how he would search it. Mr. Towles continued to just sit there and cry and not elaborate.”
He repeatedly told the detective that “it just comes up” but the detective confronted him with the tips, that he used a photo-based search engine that searched using photos a user uploaded, to find similar content, indicating he used child porn he already possessed to find more, he wrote.
“Mr. Towles said when he was viewing the CSAM he knew it was wrong but could not help it,” he wrote.
He told the detective he downloads the images “a couple days a week,” he wrote.
Durham wrote he was asking for an arrest warrant instead of a summons, because he is a grandfather who has “access to juveniles similar in age to children in the CSAM videos” and that people who possess child pornography are statistically likely to be “hands on offenders” and therefore, he needed to be arrested to protect the community and any “real-life victims.”
Towles has no previous arrest record in New Mexico.
Possession of child pornography is a fourth degree felony but carries a special penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
If the child pornography represents children under 13, there is a mandatory minimum sentence of one year and the maximum sentence is 11 years, according to state law.