MINNEAPOLIS — The FBI asked for the public’s help Tuesday in identifying at least 90 potential victims of a suspected child predator who worked at 10 U.S. schools and others abroad for more than four decades before committing suicide last month in Minnesota.
William James Vahey, 64, killed himself in Luverne, Minn., on March 21, the FBI said. That was two days after agents in Houston filed for a warrant to search a computer thumb drive that belonged to Vahey, a U.S. citizen with residences in London and Hilton Head Island, S.C. An employee of the American Nicaraguan School in Managua, where Vahey had recently taught ninth-grade world history and geography, gave the drive to the U.S. Embassy there.
The storage device contained pornographic images of at least 90 boys, ages 12 to 14, who appeared to be drugged and unconscious, the FBI said. The agency’s spokeswoman in Houston, Special Agent Shauna Dunlap, told The Associated Press that investigators suspect all of the boys in the images were students of Vahey’s, going back to 2008, and that he had molested all of them.
“When confronted about the images by a school administrator, Vahey confessed that he was molested as a child and had preyed on boys his entire life, giving them sleeping pills prior to the molestation,” according to a statement posted prominently on the FBI’s website, www.fbi.gov, with links for potential victims.