photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Kyle Elder, left, appears Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Douglas County District Court with attorney Hatem Chahine.

A 35-year-old New York man exchanged thousands of lewd messages, including sexually graphic photos, videos and phone calls, with a Lawrence 14-year-old, and made plans to travel here for the purposes of statutorily raping her, according to allegations in his arrest affidavit, which was released Monday morning.

The Douglas County District Attorney’s Office and defense attorney Hatem Chahine both had asked Judge Amy Hanley to entirely seal the affidavit, which outlines the circumstances around the arrest last summer of Kyle Elder, a violent sex offender who spent a decade in prison in New York before allegedly targeting the Lawrence child online.

Chahine said the public “will be just fine if the affidavit is sealed,” but the DA’s Office submitted a redacted version of the affidavit in the event that Hanley rejected, as she did, a total seal, and that is the version that is now available.

According to the affidavit, the contents of which have not been proved in court, the girl’s mother noticed that she had been acting strangely last August and looked at her iPhone, where she found numerous sexual communications between her daughter and an adult male stranger, including sexually explicit photos of both. The girl told her mother that the man’s name was Kyle Elder and that he lived in Niagara Falls, New York. The girl said she had complied with all of the man’s requests because he had threatened to harm her and her family, according to the affidavit.

The mother contacted police, who said the girl told them she met Elder in July 2024 via the social networking platform Tumblr, where she had been posting about a popular celebrity. Elder asked her for a picture of her face, then reportedly said that she “looked kissable.” The girl revealed to Elder that she was 14, and he revealed to her that he had been in prison for a decade. The conversations then moved to other social media and cellphone platforms, including Telegram, FaceTime, texting and Google Meet for a period of about six weeks.

A Lawrence detective contacted the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Services and discovered that a Kyle Elder, who matched the description provided by the Lawrence girl and the images on her phone, was on supervised release for a sex crime involving a 5-year-old.

The girl told police that Elder directed her to photograph herself nude and engaging in various sexual poses and activities and that he sent her similar images of himself. She said that via Google Meet’s screen-sharing feature she was able to see the hundreds of nude images he had collected of her, as well some photos of another girl who Elder said was also 14. Some of the sexual activity allegedly directed by Elder has been redacted in the affidavit.

The girl told police that she and Elder planned to meet for sex in Lawrence and that she was going to return to New York with him but she “chickened out” and they planned to meet another time. She said the cancellation upset Elder because he had already taken the time off from work.

The Lawrence detective who prepared the sworn affidavit said he observed “thousands of messages” between Elder and the girl, including videos of Elder masturbating and talking about “how he likes little children,” referring to himself multiple times as a “pedo” and using pornographic obscenities to indicate how he would degrade the girl. The detective also said he saw maps showing Lawrence motels where the two could meet.

Elder was taken into custody last summer by officers from the Lawrence Police Department, assisted by New York law enforcement, who forced their way into a home in Niagara Falls, New York, and arrested Elder.

A spokeswoman for the Lawrence Police Department told the Journal-World last week that two detectives from Lawrence made the trip to New York.

“Our detectives were at the arrest location where the Niagara Falls Police Department had already applied for the search warrant and executed it,” spokeswoman Laura McCabe said. “They did this after receiving investigation information from us. We interviewed the suspect after the arrest.”

McCabe said that police were “thankful to have stopped this criminal activity before the two met in person.”

“It is often difficult to identify online predators, and our investigators did good work,” she said, adding that the child in the case “is very brave.”

Elder is facing 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of electronic solicitation in Douglas County District Court. His bond has been set at $250,000 cash or surety, and his next court date is Wednesday for a status conference.

Elder was convicted in 2015 in New York of one count of use of a child under 17 years old in a sexual performance and one count of second-degree course of sexual conduct against a 5-year-old child. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and is currently serving 10 years of post-release supervision.

He is listed as a violent sexual offender on the New York registry of sexual offenders.