UNION CO., Ill. - A young man from Dongola in Union County has been indicted on multiple child pornography counts.
Chad Anthony Miller, 28, is the guy in question.
Miller was indicted by a Union County grand jury seated by State's Attorney Tyler Edmonds; the grand jury returned 23 true bills of indictment yesterday, Tuesday, April 2.
Twenty of those counts are Class X Child Pornography; three are Class 2 felony counts of same. There also happens to be a single count of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse of a victim under the age of 13, meaning that it's alleged Miller actually had sexual contact with a child, not just engaged in child porn. All of the charges date back to early November 2018.
Interestingly, published reports indicate that Union County received "assistance" from the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. There's not a lot more info to be had on that, so it leads those in the know to speculate that either Flip Minton (father of the onerous Richie Minton), who has worked computer forensics specifically for child porn based out of Franklin County, and who just a couple of years ago was going around bragging that he'd accessed Disclosure's computers, is involved; or, even more of a stretch (but still possible), it might be that a child porn case that's been dragging on in Franklin for a couple of years might have some kind of association with Miller's. That case is the one involving former Clay County Hospital Chief Financial Officer Michael Hobbs, who was busted two years ago on charges of child porn and whose case isn't going very quickly through the court system. Oftentimes, however, one person charged with child porn will rat out others in the network so that they might get a lighter sentence.
We don't know if this is the case here, but we'll keep an eye on it. In the meantime, Miller is being held on a $500,000 bail at Union County and remains behind bars. He's set for arraignment tomorrow (April 4); because there's been indictments, there doesn't have to be a preliminary hearing.