(Source: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office) William HallPHOENIX (CBS5) -
Maricopa County Sheriff's Deputies arrested William Hall during a child porn sting. Hall is a registered sex offender. He was previously charged in 1987 with child molestation charges.
During this latest arrest, MCSO's Computer Crimes Unit received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about an unknown suspect who had been communicating with and receiving sexually explicit pictures of young boys.
MCSO deputies were able to track down the IP address to a town home on 29th Lane in Phoenix. It's there that Hall was arrested on Nov. 1, 2012. It's during that same day that police collected CDs, laptops and external hard drives filled with thousands of pictures of sexually explicit material that Hall had collected over the years.
According to a statement from MCSO investigators, Hall admitted to being a lifetime sex offender who had served 15 years in prison for child molestation. Hall also admitted to lying about his true identity to his live-in boyfriend for the past 10 years, in an attempt to go undetected.
"I'm shocked," said Hall's boyfriend, Richard Wallace.
"It's like any other relationship. You don't know where somebody was previously. It's a big shock," he continued.
Hall has also been charged with failing to register as a sex offender.
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