Eldon Rakstraw, 24, of Belle, was arrested on a warrant in Maries County on March 21 and charged with 51 counts of alleged possession of child pornography Class B felony and six counts of possession of child pornography Class C felony.

Major Scott John with the Maries County Sheriff’s Department said Rakestraw has three open cases against him.

“These pornographic images and videos were located on his personal cell phone,” John said. “We arrested him last fall, in 2021, with a warrant and he had his phone with his personal property. When a second case came up with allegations of child molestation, we were starting to see a pattern and knowing people who commit those types of crimes usually have evidence on their phones, we applied for a search warrant.”

After law enforcement served the warrant, they asked Rakeshaw for his passcode and he refused.

“We sent his phone to ICAD — Internet Crimes Against Children, where they have a GrayKey,” John said. “Some devices are harder to get into than others and require longer.”

It took law enforcement about six weeks with the GrayKey to unlock Rakestraw’s iPhone.

After evidence was discovered, Maries County deputies applied for a warrant for Rakestraw’s arrest. 

At the time of his arrest, Rakestraw had voluntarily turned himself in for a parole violation and was serving seven days of shock time in the Maries County Jail. The parole violation stemmed from an unrelated case from Jan. 21 where Rakestraw pled guilty to two counts of statutory rape in the second degree and one count of witness tampering. Part of the plea deal was a seven-year sentence for each of the three charges with a suspended execution of sentence requiring five years of supervised probation.

During his court appearance on March 21, Judge Kerry G. Rowed revoked Rakestraw’s probation due to bond violations of the Jan. 21 court case.

“His bond was revoked today (Tuesday), not for new charges, but for his Jan. 21 arrest for child molestation,” John said. “The reason the bond was revoked is that he violated probation in the first case. The probation order was he wasn’t supposed to have contact with the victim and he violated that.”

Rakestraw has a second open case in Maries County Circuit Court with allegations of child molestation which occurred in Belle in the fall of 2021.

“I cannot commend Detective Dale Harp enough for his work on these cases,” John said. “He has spent countless hours interviewing victims, reviewing evidence, and traveling back and forth to St. Louis working with the ICAC Task Force. Because of Detective Harp’s work and inter-agency relationship building we had access to very expensive software which was able to defeat the locks on Rakestraw’s cellular device and gain access to these disturbing images and videos.”

Rakestraw is scheduled to be in court on April 5.

Following a court appearance on March 21 in Maries County for an unrelated case, the Maries County Sheriff’s Department served Eldon Rakestraw of Belle with a warrant for his arrest