Ybor City bar owner and his romantic partner face child porn charges

An Ybor City bar owner and his romantic partner are now facing child porn charges. 

Richard "Rich" Kowalczyk, the owner of Southern Nights in Ybor City, and his romantic partner Eric Patrick, a teacher, stand accused of transmitting child pornography and conspiring to solicit a minor for sex acts.

Southern Nights in Ybor City.

Southern Nights in Ybor City.

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"One of the biggest things in a child pornography case is that government usually isn't in your house. They can't see what's on the other side of the computer, so a lot of times they have to put together these cases circumstantially,"  Tampa Attorney Anthony Rickman, who isn't connected to the case, said. "They have to prove that the person possessed the child pornography."

Law enforcement first started investigating Kowalczyk and Patrick in January 2023.

That's when court documents say, "law enforcement discovered a Telegram1 conversation between a suspect under investigation (SOI) and Kowalczyk."

The conversation included "a graphic discussion of child sexual abuse material (CSAM)," "discussions of hands-on sexual encounters with minors," and "multiple images and videos depicting child sexual abuse material." 

Those conversations led law enforcement to execute a search warrant for Kowalczyk and Patrick's home, where they found a cell phone and computers, which prosecutors say reveal both Kowalczyk and Patrick engaged in child exploitation.

A snippet of the charges that Kowalczyk and Patrick face.

A snippet of the charges that Kowalczyk and Patrick face.

Court records say during that search, Kowalczyk admitted to law enforcement that he received child pornography.

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"Possession shows that you have the ability to control it, the ability to access it, and that you knew it was there," Rickman said. "In this particular case, we had the defendant engage in a series of explicit chats in which they discuss the images and the videos they received."

According to the indictment, after searching Kowalczyk's iPhone, they found "83 images and two videos of child exploitation, which included images of minors under 12 years of age."

They also found a "conversation between Kowalczyk and Patrick, between November 2019 and March 2021, which included images and discussions of child exploitation."

A piece of the charges that Kowalczyk and Patrick face.

A piece of the charges that Kowalczyk and Patrick face.

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As Rickman explains, it's no surprise that both men's arrests occurred almost two years after they had issued the initial search warrant.

"When you're going through phone records, when you're going through voluminous documents that are received forensically from cell phones, these cases take some time to put together," Rickman said.

FOX 13 contacted Patrick's attorney, John Notar, who said his client maintained his innocence and looked forward to defending himself in court.

FOX 13 reached out to Kowalczyk's attorney and is still waiting to hear back.

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