LAGRANGE, Ga. — The former owner of a local TV station has been sentenced to 1,000 years in prison on child pornography charges.
Peter Mallory was well-known and respected in Lagrange, where he owned TV 33, a low-power independent television station.
The station was located in a building on the West Georgia Technical College campus. When Lagrange Police Department Detective Christopher Pritchett first realized child pornography was being downloaded somewhere in the building, he thought it was a student's doing, but he soon learned otherwise when investigators searched Mallory's computer.
Pritchett said the nearly 26,000 files of movies and photos found on Mallory's computer were more than investigators in Georgia had ever seen in one case.
"Everything that we found was the rape and torture of children," Pritchett said.
Investigators said while they were searching for the child porn, they also stumbled upon photos of some of Mallory's employees. Police said he had cameras under his desk that took photos underneath female employees' skirts.
In December, a jury convicted Mallory of sexual exploitation of children, tampering with evidence and invasion of privacy. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to 1,000 years in prison.
Mallory's attorneys argued that the images were downloaded by mistake and that the cameras were placed to catch whoever was stealing from Mallory's office. They have asked for a new trial.
Channel 2's Eric Philips spoke to the district attorney's office, the Department of Corrections, the clerk of Court, and Mallory's defense attorney and they all believe 1,000 years in the longest sentence in Georgia history.
WSBTV
