East Haven Man Had Videos Of Violent Child Rapes On Computer: PD

EAST HAVEN, CT — Through the Freedom of Information Act, Patch obtained state Superior Court charging documents by the Guilford Police Department to obtain an arrest warrant for an East Haven man who has since been charged with first-degree possession of child pornography.

All the following information is from the charging document presented by Guilford police to the Superior Court.

Caution is advised as the following descriptions of what was found may be disturbing for readers.

Last June, a man took his computer to NerdsToGo computer service in Guilford. The desktop wasn’t “booting up,” he said.

As part of the diagnostic and repair procedure, the data on the device was downloaded to a hard drive. Once the computer was repaired, the files were moved back into their respective folders, pictures, and videos, for example. During that process, a file called “Funtimes” was seen with a thumbnail image of a penis on a video and then saw another thumbnail image on a video of what appeared to be a child in a folder named “11 YO.” The worker shared what they saw with a supervisor at the repair shop and then discovered a video of a man’s penis grazing the mouth of a sleeping child.

Police were contacted. The person who brought in the computer and paid in advance for service was described as a “white male approximately 5 ft 6 in tall skinny build rough-skinned, in his 30s-40s, with a long dark-colored beard wearing a baseball cap. He said his name was Tony Bruno. Guilford police investigators found that Bruno lived a couple of towns over.

East Haven police confirmed that 67-year-old Anthony Bruno lived in the town, and its Detective Bureau assisted Guilford investigators.

The hard drive where all the data from his computer was temporarily stored, and would usually have been wiped, was sent to the state lab.

In total, stored on Bruno’s desktop, state investigators found 842 videos and 11 still images of child pornography.

The videos, some as short as 10 seconds, others as long as 18 minutes, depict graphic and violent scenes of rape, sodomy, and other disturbing sexual assaults. All perpetrated by adult men, the acts are against newborns, infants, toddlers, young prepubescent boys, and in some cases, very young girls.

Patch will not describe the deeply disturbing specifics of each, as can be read in the criminal information.

Bruno was arrested on Dec. 21. Court documents show he was presented in Superior Court in New Haven Dec. 23 and released on $20,000 surety bond.

He's due in court Tuesday.

This story will be updated should that court appearance lead to new information.