Brendan DuBois, a mystery writer and New York Times bestselling author, has been indicted on six felony counts of possession of child sex abuse images.
DuBois has been in preventative detention since July 10, when he surrendered to authorities after a warrant was issued for his arrest in New Hampshire. A judge at the time concluded his release could “endanger the safety of the defendant or the public, given the substantial number of alleged sexual abuse images and the recency of the downloaded images,” Foster’s Daily Democrat reported.
Authorities launched an investigation into 65-year-old DuBois back in March, after they received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding “apparent child pornography,” according to a police affidavit. Google alerted the nonprofit agency to illicit files uploaded to Google Drive, and investigators subsequently determined the IP address belonged to DuBois.
In May, police executed a search warrant at the author’s New Hampshire home in Exeter and seized multiple items, including a Toshiba I terabyte hard drive and an Apple laptop.
According to the affidavit, “more than 5,600 images on the computer were flagged as being ‘possible child abuse content.’” Detective Bailey Teixeira said the children featured range in age from infancy to around 12 years old, according to Foster’s Daily Democrat.
DuBois, a New York Times bestselling author, has written 29 novels over the course of his career, including “The First Lady” and “The Cornwalls Are Gone.” He also co-wrote several books with James Patterson, among them “Cross Down,” “Countdown,” “The Summer House” and “Blowback.”
In wake of his arrest, Severn River Publishing announced that it would remove his books from its website.
“While we respect the legal process, we have decided to immediately suspend all promotion and sales of Mr. DuBois’ books,” DuDois’ publisher said.
Dubois is set to be arraigned on Oct. 28.
With News Wire Services
