E-mails, pictures, videos.
Also, there were boxes of DVDs and videos next to a television in Casey's room. Diskin discovered that Stiffler and Snow had purchased a flat-screen television, computer, and PlayStation for Casey.
Fred Harper
AP/Wide World Photos
Yavapai County Sheriff Steve Waugh presents a "Certificate of Appreciation" to Julie Bradshaw, left, and two others at the Mingus Springs school for helping unravel the Rodreick case.
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It didn't take too much detective work for the cops to know to check the home's video collection: There was a porno playing on the living-room TV when they entered.
Diskin's hunch about finding incriminating images in the home proved correct.
What he didn't realize at the time, though, is just how painful it can be for officers to view what sexual predators find pleasurable.
Officers agreed it was time to turn up the heat on the suspects. Huante and Diskin confronted Stiffler, telling him his story didn't make any sense. Diskin told Stiffler he believed there was "more to the story." There's a reason you went to Oklahoma with a convicted sex offender to pick up a child, Diskin told Stiffler.
Huante and Diskin then left the room to let Stiffler stew. They went back to Snow to confront him.
They asked Snow about his sexual relationship with Casey.
After some prodding, Snow finally admitted to an ongoing sexual relationship with Casey. He admitted that the reason he and Stiffler had gone to Oklahoma to bring Casey to Arizona was to have sex with him. Snow said he knew Casey was only 12 years old. He admitted to having a sexual attraction to children.
Snow admitted that he saw e-mails from Casey with photos of Casey "naked with his brothers."
But they were e-mails to Stiffler, Snow said. And Snow said that though he never looked at child porn on the computer, he had witnessed Stiffler viewing porn several times.
The men were beginning to turn on each other.
Still believing Casey was a minor, Diskin and Huante had Snow detail the sex acts he engaged in with Casey.
Diskin did not detail Snow's answers in his police report. By the time he wrote it, he knew what he didn't know at the time — that the sex was actually between two legal adults.
In another room, Detective Mike Poling was questioning the person he thought was 12-year-old Casey Price. Casey continued to look down at the floor, and said little.
Casey then stood up and asked Deputy Boan, whom he had talked to earlier and who had begun the investigation with a visit to the school, if he could speak with him outside.
Boan, too, still thought he was talking to 12-year-old Casey.
Once outside, Casey told Boan that the other detectives inside were making him nervous. Boan promised Casey that he would do everything in his power to ensure that he would be safe.
Casey said he also felt uncomfortable with Robert Snow being in the house. Casey told Boan that Robert "acts gay" around him and creeps him out.
Casey then told Boan that he had twice awakened with his underwear down. He suspected that Snow had sodomized him, because Snow would make him sit on his lap while Snow touched himself. Casey said he takes medication that makes him sleepy and that Snow might have "done stuff" to him while he was passed out.
"Casey insisted that nothing else was going on and he felt safe in the house," Boan wrote in a later police report.
Child Protective Services was called as officers learned that they had an abused child on their hands.
Boan directed Casey to an unmarked police car to wait for CPS caseworkers to arrive.
After talking to Snow, Diskin walked into the room with Lonnie Stiffler and announced:
"Robert told us everything."
Stiffler admitted to seeing the e-mailed photos of Casey naked.
Finally, Stiffler admitted to having sex with Casey.
But it was only three times, he said. And he hadn't had sex with Casey in more than two months.
At this point, detectives believed they had a theory as to what was happening here: Two men, Robert Snow and Lonnie Stiffler, had lured a boy from Oklahoma to turn into their personal sex toy.
But what about this other guy in the house, 34-year-old Brian Nellis?
Sergeant Huante began questioning Nellis, whom Stiffler had first claimed was the older of his two grandsons and Casey's cousin.
After the long interview with Nellis, the reality of the situation came into sharper focus for the detectives.
And it got a lot more complicated.
Nellis first told Huante that he had met Casey when the boy was 8 or 9 years old. Nellis said Casey's father, Neil Rodreick Sr., used to give him rides to college in Oklahoma. One day, he said, Rodreick came to him and asked if he could watch Casey. Casey's dad never came back.
Nellis admitted that he also was a convicted sex offender.
Nellis said Casey moved out of his home in El Mirage in 2004, leaving an e-mail that he had moved in with Snow and Stiffler.
Nellis explained that his criminal conviction was for committing lewd acts with a 7-year-old.
Huante told Nellis that both Stiffler and Snow had admitted to having sex with Casey.
Nellis said he had no knowledge of that. If he had known, he said, he would have done something about it. He had learned his lesson in prison, he said. When he sees child-pornography stories, he said, "it tears me up."
