Interpol says suspected pedophile caught in New Jersey
By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press Writer
PARIS - Police detained a suspected pedophile in New Jersey Thursday, just two days after Interpol made a rare appeal for public help in the international manhunt to catch him, the police agency said.
Wayne Nelson Corliss, 58, was detained in Union City, N.J., Interpol said. He is suspected of sexually abusing at least three boys from Southeast Asia thought to have been as young as 6 to 10 years old at the time, the international police agency said.
Interpol had asked for the public's help because two years of police investigations had failed to determine the man's identity, nationality and whereabouts.
The agency's head, Ronald Noble, called the appeal an "extraordinary success" and that such calls for public help could in future be expanded from child sex offenders to "seriously wanted international criminals."
Without the public appeal, "this guy would still be out there," Noble said.
It was only the second time that Interpol had launched such a public manhunt for a suspected pedophile. The first time, in October, led to the quick arrest by police in Thailand of Christopher Paul Neil, a 32-year-old Canadian who went on trial in March on charges that he abused a 9-year-old boy.
Interpol said images of Corliss allegedly abusing children had circulated on the Internet. He was detained after Interpol's appeal drew nearly 250,000 visits in just 24 hours to the agency's Web site, where photos of the man were posted, and several strong leads e-mailed in by people who recognized him, Noble said.
"Live by the sword, die by the sword," the Interpol secretary-general said in a telephone interview. Without the Internet, the suspect "wouldn't have been able to circulate his sexual abuse on the Internet. But if it hadn't been for the Internet, we wouldn't have been able to catch this guy." Police were able to track Corliss's whereabouts through his subscription to an online news service called 'Musclephone' that sends bodybuilding text messages to user's mobile phones.
Photos seized by police in Norway in 2006 from the computer of a man later convicted of child sex offenses showed Corliss' alleged abuse, the international police agency said. He did not appear to make any effort to hide his identity in the photos, officials said.
New Jersey State Police said Corliss is not a registered sex offender there.
Because of the lack of basic information about the man, Interpol officials had been simply calling the suspect "Mr. IDent" — shortened from the word identity.
Photos released by Interpol showed a gray-haired white man wearing glasses or lying on a checkered mattress or blanket in a yellow plaid shirt. Other photos seen by The Associated Press, not among those made public, appeared to show the man engaged in sexual acts with boys.
A computerized Interpol database of child abuse images played a part in the hunt for the man. The first photos seized in Norway and others received in the two years since were run through the database of more than 520,000 images.
In all, the database and police investigations helped turn up a total of around 800 images, including nearly 100 of the man himself and others of his suspected victims or places where he is thought to have committed his alleged crimes, Interpol said.
