Virginia man peed on laptop to try and destroy evidence of child sex abuse material: Police
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - An Arlington man will spend nearly two decades in prison after pleading guilty to multiple child sex crimes.
What we know:
Stephen Howell was sentenced to 18 years and 10 months in prison, the Justice Department announced this week. In May, the DOJ announced that Howell had pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a minor and attempting to destroy evidence.
The backstory:
Investigators said Howell had sexual conversations with multiple minors. Officials said he sent his victims sexually explicit images of himself to his victims, and coerced them to send him the same — in one case, even paying for them.
The DOJ said Howell met with a 15-year-old girl for sex and recorded the abuse.
Howell also distributed the images to others, and even asked another person for "advice on grooming minors" and "assistance rebuilding his CSAM collection after having deleted it," the DOJ said.
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When the FBI came to arrest Howell in May 2025, officials said he grabbed two kitchen knives and barricaded himself in his bedroom. During the nine-hour standoff, the DOJ said Howell urinated on his laptop in an attempt to destroy evidence.
When investigators eventually got his laptop, they were able to repair it and recover the sexually explicit images of children.
Dig deeper:
Howell's case is just one of 19 other child sexual abuse cases that the Eastern District of Virginia has prosecuted in recent months.
The Source: Information in this story is from the U.S. Department of Justice.