Former substitute teacher pleads guilty in child porn case

A former Washington substitute teacher — previously convicted in King County for possessing child pornography that was discovered on his computer by a service technician — has pleaded guilty in Clark County Superior Court under similar circumstances.

Kurtis L. Kasner, 75, of Vancouver entered a guilty plea Monday to second-degree internet viewing depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

He will be sentenced July 9 pending the completion of a pre-sentencing investigation.

In 2015, Kasner was convicted in King County of possessing child pornography, court records show.

The Seattle Times reported in October 2014, when Kasner was arrested, that he had been a substitute teacher since 2000 in the Northshore School District, which covers the cities of Bothell, Kenmore, Woodinville and parts of unincorporated King County. He was also a school teacher in California for 30 years before moving to Washington.

Kasner had sent his computer to a repair company, and the technician assigned to work on it found the images of child pornography, the Times reported.

In the Clark County case, Kasner sent his computer’s external hard drive to a repair company in California, which discovered child pornography on the drive. The computer repair company turned over the drive to the FBI, and the case was forwarded to the Vancouver Police Department’s Digital Evidence Cybercrime Unit for further investigation, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Investigators found nearly 20,000 images of child pornography on the hard drive. And Kasner had doctored some of the images to put his head, from what appeared to be a childhood photo, on the images of child pornography, as well as a relative’s head, the affidavit states.

Additional child pornography was located on Kasner’s thumb drive, court records say.