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| Cops: Largo Puppeteer Wanted to " Cook" and " Eat" Children
By Melanie Michael
WTSP
July 24, 2012
http://www.wtsp.com/news/topstories/article/265157/250/COPS-Largo-puppeteer-wanted-to-cook-and-eat-children
[with video]
Largo, Florida -- The details in this case are so deviant and so diabolical the contents of the federal documents are creating a visceral reaction in people.
Those who read the material become sick to their stomachs.
A 57-year-old local puppeteer from Largo is accused of planning to kidnap children -- specifically toddlers -- torture them, rape them, murder them, then cook their body parts on a stove, according to federal documents.
Ronald Brown was busted by federal agents this week and is on a U.S. Marshal hold in the Pinellas County Jail. Brown lives in the Whispering Pines mobile home park in Largo off of 142nd Street.
He is surrounded by children each and every day.
Even though no one answered his door when 10 News arrived, Mr. Brown's minivan was in the driveway. Visible through the window were puppets, party CDs, and a badge from Kidz Zone.
One neighbor, Robin Fuchs, was both terrified and disgusted when she heard the details of the case. She says her children and others play in the area all the time. "They're all passing his house every morning and afternoon. Some parents aren't home and sending their kids on. They don't know at all," she said.
Brown started his puppeteer company in 1992, Puppet Plus. On Facebook, Brown brags about performing in schools and malls, even for the Tampa Bay Rays.
But it's what he's allegedly doing online that has federal agents interested. Brown and another man were chatting, detectives say, about kidnapping kids and eating them, even going so far as to describe, in detail, what the men wanted to do with the body parts. The conversations are graphic and vile.
One portion goes as follows:
"Summer is heating up, should be good pickins."
"It's so hot, the kids are almost naked out there."
"My mouth watered looking at her for sure."
Those comments were the tamest and cleanest of the comments, by far.
Agents say they captured images on Brown's computer. The pictures are simply too graphic to describe in detail. They are of children in bondage positions. Some of the images, agents say, are of dead children.
According to documents, Brown was targeting a little boy at a local church.
He told FBI agents, he wanted to "eat" the child. Brown also admitted in the documents that he wanted to strangle children, that he was in a group on Yahoo where he discussed his fantasies online.
Agents say Brown had multiple photos of child pornography depicting little boys in severe pain.
We asked one of Brown's neighbors, Paula Tincher, "When you hear something like that, what do you think?"
Shaking her head and wincing, she said, "It freaks me out. I have three kids of my own."
Brown will appear in federal court on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. in front of U.S. Magistrate Thomas Wilson.
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