Law&Crime Sidebar - Chiropractor Had 1,000+ Child Porn, Bestiality Images: Prosecutors

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

John Doyle, a chiropractor with a family-oriented clinic in New York, as well as his wife Danielle Scofield, have been charged with possessing and promoting child sexual abuse material. When the prosecutor described some of the images allegedly found on Boyle’s phone, the judge asked her not to continue. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber reacts to the horrific allegations with criminal defense attorney Adam Konta.HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A New York chiropractor who runs a family clinic is accused of horrific sex crimes against children. He and his wife have now both been indicted a multiple child sexual abuse charges and they're both now out on bond. We're going to dig into this incredibly disturbing case with New York criminal defense attorney Adam Conta. Welcome to Saibar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Let's talk about 33-year-old John Boyle, who runs the Boyle family chiropractic. It's an award-winning clinic in Kingston, New York. The problem is he and his wife,

also 33-year-old, Danielle Schofield Boyle, they're going to be a year-old. They're going to be a world. They're getting attention in their community for a very different reason because they have both been arrested and charged this week with crimes involving child sexual abuse material. So they were arraigned in Ulster County Court this week and I am going to tell you there is a lot to get into here. It is very disgusting. But to talk about this, I want to bring on a friend of the show criminal defense attorney Adam Conta, Adam, good to see you. Thanks so much for coming on and so prepared has his notes and everything, ready to go. This is a tough one.

I think for me, the way I wanted to start it is not just one member of the community who's being arrested and charged, but now you have a couple. And there's so many cases that we cover where there's either a husband or a wife who are charged or convicted of crimes and then the other party, their spouse,

has no idea, almost like a separate life. But to see two people arrested and charged together, is that unusual? Is that a different kind of case? What do you make of that? I think it can be unusual, especially in a scenario where these aren't just members of a community. They're sort of held to a little bit different standard.

They're chiropractors, they're not MDs, but they still have sort of an ethical code. And I think because people go to them in their community for care, they're kind of in that same category of teachers or something like that, where they're sort of held to this higher ethical standard. And so when something like this happens,

it makes it all them much more shocking. But the reality is, is that these sort of, deviances, these sort of proclivities for terrible, terrible criminal behavior, sometimes you kind of find yourself gravitating towards other people who maybe you sort of instinctually feel might also want to participate in that. It's too early for us to know the dynamic of who was into this first, who pushed, who started it, but we certainly seem to have a scenario where both people are involved. And, you know, I don't think it is as unusual necessarily as the common viewer might think.

Well, let me ask you this, from a legal point of view, how does it complicate the case? Because their communications to each other, that would be spousal privilege, right? Or would they be tried together, husband and wife? What do you take away? What should we be thinking about there? I think they would be tried together. You know, I think there are spousal privileges that exist, but when there's this kind of dearth of evidence where you have so much forensic evidence, both on phones, and even location evidence,

when they rented an Airbnb and then left a review on it and looked like they did some activity there. I think there's enough evidence to where prosecutors aren't worried about that spousal privilege now, but that may have been what ultimately led to a four-month delay between the search warrant being granted and the arrest. You hit upon so many things that I want to talk about. So I want to take it from the beginning and then we'll go into each step. So let's talk about the investigation. The Ulster County Assistant District Attorney Jenna Hastings told the Times Union that New York State Police had started investigating this couple last year after they apparently got a tip.

from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And that tip involved a sexually explicit photo of a girl between the ages of 11 and 13 that was reportedly shared on the social media platform Snapchat. Now, police, they ended up apparently tracing the account to Boyle's IP address. This is according to Assistant District Attorney Hastings. By the way, before I go any further,

Snapchat is a platform we see a lot in these kinds of cases. First thing I thought is it has, and I haven't used Snapchat in years, but I still remember, it has that disappearing function. You send something and it disappears. And it always made me wonder would alleged perpetrators use that platform because they think it can't be connected back to them. But the IP address still stands, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think people think because when you open Snapchat and you view it, then 10 seconds later it disappears, people think that that's gone and that you are immune then from any responsibility for what you just sent, regardless of what it could be. But we now know that Snapchat actually holds on to the data.

And so that's never going to actually work in the way that people ultimately think it will. IP address is very accurate in the sense that if you're a defense attorney, what are ways you can say, oh, that was a mistake. It didn't go back to my IP address. Is there any ways to fight against that? You know, unless there's a VPN that's sort of in the middle there, that you can sort of say, well, maybe it bounced off here and bounced off there and that we don't actually know. Unfortunately, no. IP addresses are pretty good.

So going back to this, then what happened was the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they flagged another set of images. Yeah, this is not just one thing. They flagged apparently another set of images, again, of a young girl, reportedly between 10 and 13 years old, that Boyle had allegedly shared on an adult chat website called Flinkster. And by the way, Adam, if anyone views these images, are they criminally liable? do they have to download it, do they have to disseminate it in order for them to be criminally liable? Is it just the viewing of these materials on a site like that?

Does that subject them to criminal liability? Well, it depends. It depends on what the intent of that person is, really. And that's often the hardest part in determining cases like this in a scenario that you just described. If someone comes up to you and shows you a photo and you had no reason to know it was coming, you didn't know that it was going to contain a minor and you had no idea that that was about to happen, then no, you're not going to be criminally liable for it. But if you go to a website and you look, even if you don't download it, even if you don't disseminate it, if you specifically go to a site to try to find that type of material and are successful, then you can absolutely still be criminally liable.

So going back to this, talking about the couple of here, according to investigators, these images were created as Adam was talking about at an Airbnb in Florida where Boyle and his wife apparently stayed in August of 2023 and get this, the Times Union reports that Boyle even left a review of the Airbus. Airbnb. So it's unclear what that review said. Pretty chilling, but also Adam, not great for him because it ties him back to the property. Not great for him at all. When you look at a photo, what's the first thing the police are going to do? They're going to look for identifiable marks in that photo so they can try to figure out where this happened, where this criminal activity took place, maybe for jurisdictional purposes, maybe just to help find the child and locate the subject of the picture to see what services they need. But when you do something so specifically horrible in a place that is identifiable and then a review, leave a review of

that place to tie yourself to it so specifically. Again, you know, this is, we're in a situation where we're glad that people like this don't think through everything perfectly and that they leave behind these breadcrumbs of evidence. Would it be fair for me to say that maybe, maybe if these allegations are true, they You picked a property outside of the state, rental property, knowing they're about to engage in some illegal conduct, that there's something nefarious about this being at an Airbnb in another state. That's what I thought of it. Is that a fair assumption? I mean, it could be. I think, honestly, and even more disturbing, my guess would be that they

throw out a wide net to try to see who they can lure in as a victim to their sick little plan, and they happen to find an 11 to 13-year-old girl or her parents, we don't know yet, who were up for that in Florida. So I'm guessing that they traveled based on victim location more so than jurisdiction. Interesting. So a search warrant was filed in October of 2024. And when police got their hands on Boyle's phone, what they found was so horrific. According to Hastings, investigators found more than 1,300 photos and 811 videos allegedly showing child sexual abuse.

And I'm not going to get graphic here, but there were apparently hundreds of photos, according to police, that showed infants, toddlers. I'm sorry to say, there's some in bondage. That's what's being reported. There were other images that apparently showed sex acts with animals, and at least four images even depicted child necrophilia. This is a whole other level of disgusting. And it makes me also wonder, where did they get these materials?

Where'd they get the images? I mean, a lot of this stuff comes out of Eastern Europe. But the reality is that there are terrible people around this world willing to do this because there is a small pocket of people who find some sick pleasure in this. And we are just starting to learn about this case. We are just starting to learn the depravity of these two individuals. But what you just said, I mean, 1,300 pictures, 800 videos. That is such a huge cash.

And often in these cases, you see people with hard drives that have, you know, these kind of enormous amounts of child pornography. This is so specifically disturbing. And I think what's going to separate them is that they didn't just possess it. They produced it. You see people who go on the dark web out of like a dark disturbing curiosity or just a depravity of their own, a sickness of their own, but not to this level, not to where they go. go out, find the victims, produce it themselves.

That is an entirely different level that we're looking at here. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm actually, I'm not even kidding. I'm actually a little nauseous reading it. It's so disgusting. Do people buy this? Do people purchase this kind of material? Yeah, I mean, that's, there are two markets really for this.

There's a trading market, people trade images. And there's a very lucrative selling market because the risks of producing it and selling it are obviously very high. as the punishments should be extremely strict. But there are places where people who want to do this can find it profitable. If the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children didn't get involved, then you think about how much material they allegedly had on them, I mean, this wasn't detected earlier.

Why is it not detected earlier? They're not mechanisms in place to just flag somebody having possession of this. What are the difficulties in trying to find people who have this content? Well, people who do this type of activity also are, you know, they think, smart enough to evade law enforcement, whether it's through a system of VPNs to hide where their IP addresses are from, whether it's airtight computers that don't touch the internet but for specific, you know, just to be plugged into hard drives so they're not leaving behind a digital fingerprint, whether it's sending these things only on double-ended encrypted messaging

sites like telegram, signal, places like that. So they feel as though, these people feel as though they can do enough to hide themselves from law enforcement. It's not so dissimilar from drug traffickers putting in kilos and kilos and hundreds of pounds, tons of cocaine on shipping containers. They know that some shipping containers are going to be found, but if you just kind of put them throughout, the odds of some getting through is pretty likely. And I think that this industry kind of goes under the same model. And I want to give everybody a sense of the impact of this.

So obviously I just said, I feel pretty nauseous after talking about this. Well, apparently, during Boyles of Raymond earlier this week, Hastings, read details. from that police investigation into the record, and I mean, we are talking allegedly highly obscene material of a child of children as young as four, and the judge in this case, Philip W. Kershner, actually didn't even let her finish, said that the court had a, quote, clear idea of the nature of the crime. That tells me that, you know, that's a level of degree that the court doesn't even want to hear the rest of it. We got it, right? I, you know, I've been doing this for a long time, maybe almost 20 years here in New York City.

I have never once, not once in my career had a judge cut off a prosecutor from laying out the facts and evidence of a case. It's shocking because this is that type of case. So it makes me wonder, how do you even prepare a jury for this? How do you prepare a jury? Do they have to see all this material? Are they subjected? Do they have to see the images and the images and the images? A, let me ask you that, B, whether you are a prosecutor or you are a criminal defense attorney,

how on earth do you select and prepare a jury for this? It's incredibly difficult. It's not difficult at all for a prosecutor, honestly, because this is one of those crimes that is almost easier to prosecute than murder, because people can understand reasons why someone would murder someone else. They can understand a lot of reasons why you'd be involved in drugs, but there is no acceptable there's no acceptable reason to be involved in child pornography. So the challenge here is obviously on the defense attorney.

And what you have to do in these situations is you have to lean into it. Listen, this is an ugly, disgusting case with ugly, disgusting facts. We're not hiding from that. But are my clients responsible for possessing or producing it or disseminating it? And those are separate issues and they must be judged separately. And so you do your best to try to find a jury that can at least be open-minded enough to understand the nature and the gravity and just the horrificness of this case, but still be open-minded enough to at least hear what the defense might be and judge those facts, taking it all into context. Do they have to see all of this? Do they close the courtroom down? No spectators for those days? How does it work? They'll close the courtroom down, and the jury will have to see some of it.

And by the way, I was going to get to this later. I might as well get to it now. Do you think in these cases there is an incentive for both the prosecution and the defense to work out a plea deal? Why do I say that? Obviously, for the defense perspective, and we'll talk about what the charges are and what the potential punishment can be, if they can get something where it's not the rest of their life in prison or a significant amount of time. But from a prosecutor's point of view, I don't want to be. try this case. I don't want to subject a jury to it. Is there an incentive to try to get a deal here?

There is no type of case in our system where there is a greater incentive, especially in the state system. Nobody wants to do this case. Nobody wants to try this case. The prosecutors don't want to put victims through this. If they can actually find and locate some of the subjects of that horrible, horrible evidence, they don't want to put them through testifying. And they want this closed for the community. They want a sense of closure as fast as possible for the community, and they want these people taking off the streets as fast as possible. And so I think that there is a larger avenue to find a plea here than people might think. Now, going back to this, you mentioned it before. So the judge also questioned Hastings about why four months passed between the time investigators served the search warrant and when Boyle was arraigned.

And the Times Union reported that Hastings didn't really have an answer to that question. And it's interesting because according to the New York State police blotter, Schofield, the wife here, was actually arrested back in October charged with two child sexual abuse material possession counts. Boyle wasn't. They've both been arrested this week. That's interesting, right? It's all interesting. And the judge could not have been more correct in asking that question. Do you know why that would have happened?

I have a theory. I have a theory. I don't know if it's going to be true or not. I think everything we're seeing right now is a placeholder for ultimately the prosecution that's about to come. Because you talked about, you talked about what these people are charged with, right? They're talking about hundreds, hundreds of videos, thousands of pictures that they produced, that they disseminated with images as disturbing as that we could, you know, even come to terms with. They're charged with, and what they're charged with and what's contemplated in the New York state laws are D and E felonies.

They're facing two to seven years in prison with a possibility of probation. Probation is not off the table with these types of charges. And so to get to your question of why I think there was that four-month gap, these type of charges are looked at very differently in the federal system. I think that the Ulster County, the Kingston prosecutors are probably working hand-in-hand with federal prosecutors, and there's going to be a dual prosecution here. I would guess, and I would guess that that four months was sort of to allow the feds to also investigate this case. What are federal charges they could be facing in potential prison time in the federal level? Well, it's very similar charges. It's possessing, disseminating, producing images of child pornography.

But each image in the federal system, you can get up to 20 years in prison for it. Each image. Yeah. Wow. So you could put these people away forever in federal prison. Keep that in mind because we're going to talk about the state charges. And actually, I'll tell you what, let's talk about them right now. So Boyle and Schofield, they are both charged with promoting an obscene sexual performance

by a child less than 17, possessing obscene sexual performance by a child less than 16, possessing sexual performance by a child less than 16. And it's our understanding Boyle also faces an additional charge of promoting a sexual performance by a child less than 17. According to New York State's Penal Code, a person is guilty of promoting a sexual performance by a child. When knowing the character and content thereof, he produces, directs, or promotes any performance which includes sexual conduct by a child less than.

than 17 years of age and the wording of the statute for possessing a sexual performance by a child very similar. It is a person is guilty of possessing a sexual performance by a child when knowing the character and content thereof he knowingly has in his possession or control or knowingly accesses with intent to view any performance which includes sexual conduct by a child less than 16 years of age. And as you might expect, all of the crimes that Boyle and Schofield are facing are very serious felonies as we're talking about but you mentioned the prison time and correct me wrong we we looked at this based on the sentencing guidelines um we thought that they could be facing up to 22 years in prison that uh boyle could face and then his wife could face 15 are we looking

at it the wrong way i believe so actually uh take out the notes well i take out the notes i brought here this is why we have you with uh with me and you can kind of see here um so you can you can kind of see here right she can show it to the camera but he can see it there you go the actual sent that's a sentencing guideline hired by one of the fine fine lawyers at the Bronx defenders David Fige and if you go here on the sex case right yeah these are first-time offenders yeah and they're facing D and e felonies so on an e-felony they're looking at one and a half to four and on the D felonies they're looking at two to seven and if you look at it they've got

little asterisks next to them which means that they can also even receive probation doesn't it add up wouldn't it be consecutive it depends It depends. It depends. It depends what the prosecutors want to do here. With this case, I would think they have to go as consecutive. Well, let's talk about what you said before though, right? What are their goals here?

Are there goals here to get the most jail time? Are the goals here to get the greatest punishment they can get for these people? Or is it to heal a wound of a community? It's fair. That's fair. Not going, right? So you're talking about a potential of a deal here. Let me ask you this.

Let's say they go to trial. What on earth are the possible defenses? The possible defenses in a case like this. In a case like this are it wasn't me, which means that there is no defense for both of them. There is a possible defense for one of them. I don't know which one, but one of them can say, the other one's a monster. I have been in this horrible, abusive relationship for X amount of time. I have been abused and held against my will and forced to do things that I never would have done.

This other person is a monster. This is all their fault. I'm going to testify against them. them under the bus completely. Please have mercy on me. I guess. I guess it's a way to look at it. Now, talk about this couple. They were arraigned in Ulster County Court this week. They both entered Not Guilty Please. They were each released on $200,000 bond. I was surprised by that, were you? I wasn't. I wasn't. The reality is, is again, these are in state court D and E felonies. And so you can't remand someone for for D&E felonies, no matter how really a

egregious the crimes are, and there's no conduct that I can think of that's more egregious than this. I'm not downplaying the horrible nature of the conduct, but if you look at the laws that they're actually charged with, it's nonviolent D&E felonies. And so, you know, that's very high bail for D&E felonies. Appropriate, for sure. I mean, these people shouldn't be allowed to get out, you know, for one second after being charged with something like this. But if you look at what the bail laws are right now, you look at what they're charged with,

then it does not surprise me. And then, of course, if they're federal charges, everything changes, like you said. Now, the Times Union and News 12 in the Hudson Valley both report that Boyle family chiropractic stopped seeing patients in Kingston office back in October. This was around the time that Schofield was arrested. In fact, if you go on Google Maps, it lists the business as permanently closed, and the clinic's website also appears to have been taken down. But when it was open, that clinic boasted very good online reviews from patients.

And at one point, it was named top chiropractor in the Hudson Valley in a reader's choice poll by Chronogram Magazine. Now, on its Facebook page, Boyle Family Chiropractic often had posts featuring children, encouraging parents to bring little ones with them so their appointments, you know, they could help them out with treatment. And the Facebook page also touted chiropractic adjustment for babies. And, you know, Adam, based on the Facebook pages, it appears that Boyle and, you know, Schofield have two children of their own, which makes me wonder, are you concerned about that? Is there going to be an investigation into their home life? I imagine there's an investigation now into their practice. Oh, my God, of course. Yeah. There's going to be tremendous scrutiny and focus on their own parenting as well on any inappropriate behavior with any

members of the community that they happen to have treated. Does this, and again, I don't have official confirmation of this. I could call the speculation. I don't know. But given the charges they're facing, do you think? it is connected to their practice in some way? It doesn't seem like it. And honestly, a lot of times people that have these sort of dual lives, they need that duality and they need that separation in order to mentally sort of deal with it. So they can sort of compartmentalize these two lives that they lead and how they don't intersect.

So we saw this with the serial killer out in Long Island recently too, right? His family had no idea that he was alleged to be going out and murder. all these people all this time. So I think it's actually pretty common with especially, especially these ultra-terrible sort of fact patterns that it's a complete shock to everyone around them and their business, their family,

because it's so foreign to the people that they know. I think it's just in a human level given these allegations, thinking about them being around children so often, pretty disgusting and frightening to think about. But look, look, we're attorneys, they're innocent and so proven guilty. We'll see which way this goes,

but my gosh, this seemed like a really tough case to defend, and particularly if it hits the federal level, as we said, everything will change. Adam Conth, thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you. Cheers. All right, everybody, what a case. Thank you so much for joining us here on Sidebar. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast.

I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.