Georgia's notorious child porn collector Peter Mallory out on parole after 7 years into 1,000-year sentence
TROUP COUNTY, GEORGIA: A 72-year-old notorious sexual predator, who was sentenced to 1,000 years for sexual exploitation of children, has reportedly been released on parole. Peter Mallory, a former Troup County commissioner, who was renowned as a prolific collector of child pornography from Georgia was released on parole on May 27 by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Mallory's parole came nearly three weeks after an appeals court found that the sentence for Mallory’s 2012 conviction "was appropriate".
Shortly after his parole, District Attorney Herb Cranford released a statement saying that he opposed the decision “but was powerless to stop it." Cranford released a statement on Tuesday, June 30, stating that he had to explain his stance after several members of the Troup County community expressed concerns over Mallory's release. “Mallory’s crimes did not allow for the state to seek or the trial court to impose a sentence without parole eligibility, and parole is a power exercised exclusively by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles," Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The sexual predator and former owner of LaGrange television station WCAG-TV, was sentenced in December 2012 after a three-week trial. He was convicted of 60 counts of sexual exploitation of children, three counts of invasion of privacy and one count of tampering with evidence.
He was apprehended and charged after a LaGrange Police Department initiated an investigation into him in February 2011. Police were reportedly alerted to over 600 suspected child porn files linked to a computer in LaGrange, the officers' probe led them to the television station operated by Mallory. Authorities seized over 26,000 files of child pornography from him, according to the prosecutors in the case.
Cranford, in a press release before Mallory's parole, had stated: "The evidence demonstrated that Mallory knowingly and intentionally sought out, gathered, downloaded and saved these images and videos of children being raped, tortured and sexually exploited." The former television station owner also hid cameras in his office and used them to secretly record young women there.
Coweta Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Dennis Blackmon, a few months after the trial, called Mallory "probably the most prolific collector of child pornography in the entire world." When Mallory was first eligible for parole in December 2019, nearly seven years after his conviction, Cranford had then released a letter advocating against the parole board. A parole board spokesperson stated that Mallory’s eligibility was determined by Georgia’s sentencing laws for consecutive sentences.
Cranford, in his letter, said he opposed Mallory's parole “now or any time in the future” and added that the local community would be offended if the 72-year-old was released after just serving 7 years of his 1,000-year sentence.
“The evidence shows that Mallory is sexually deviant and commits these crimes by compulsion as much as by choice,” he said in the letter. “In the current digital age, no amount of supervision can stop a compulsive sexual deviant like Mallory from seeking out the most heinous images and videos of small children being sexually abused. Besides the District Attorney, two victims involved in the case also opposed Mallory's release.