MIAMI COUNTY, Ind. — Kegan Kline pleaded guilty on Thursday at the Miami Circuit Court in his child porn case.
He was facing 25 charges ranging from child exploitation and possession of child pornography to obstruction of justice.
The prosecutor said there is no plea agreement being offered, but Kline and his attorney indicated he was ready to plead guilty to the charges. The sentencing will be left up to the judge.
In his change of plea, Kline told the judge he thinks he is bipolar and schizophrenic, but he was able to make the clear decision to plead guilty. The judge walked Kline through each charge to make sure he understood what he was pleading guilty to.
After pleading guilty, Kline gave sworn testimony about the offenses he committed. Kline admitted receiving photos of girls under 18 showing their bare breasts, along with other graphic photos. Kline admitted having pornographic images of girls under 12 years old.
Kline admitted using the catfish social media profiles "anthony_shots" and "Emily Ann" to contact his victims. He also admitted that he obstructed justice by deleting social media apps from his devices.
Kline will also have to register as a violent sexual offender when he is released from prison. His sentencing will be be May 18.
Kline's change of plea means he will be giving up his right to a trial. Prosecutors filed the state's witness list in the child pornography case against Kline in early March.
The list included 19 individuals, including Kline's father, Jerry, and Vincent Kowalski, the model and police officer whose photos were used on the "anthony_shots" social media account.
The child pornography and exploitation charges stemmed from a search of Kline's Peru, Indiana, home on Feb. 25, 2017, just 11 days after the bodies of Liberty German and Abigail Williams were discovered. The FBI, Indiana State Police and Peru Police Department took part in serving the search warrant, and the investigation was focused on Kline allegedly soliciting underage girls.
According to a probable cause affidavit out of Miami County obtained by 13News, Kline created the anthony_shots account approximately six months prior to when investigators interviewed him in February of 2017.
He allegedly said he created the account to contact both girls he knew and girls he did not.
Court documents show Kline saying he would talk to girls, even if they were under the age of 16, and that he found them on Instagram and then told them to message him on Snapchat.
Kline allegedly claimed to have received pictures from all of the girls he chatted with and had saved them.
According to court documents, while investigators talked to Kline shortly after he returned from Las Vegas. Investigators said he told them he was "f****ed and he should've left." Kline said he had planned to leave the area that day, after his dad fell asleep, according to the court documents.
In that probable cause affidavit, Kline said he received sexual photos and videos of the girls he was messaging.
Investigators seized six devices from Kline, including smartphones, a tablet and an iPod touch as part of the 2017 search warrant on the child pornography case.
The iPod Touch was last used in May of 2015 and contained sexually explicit images of children, according to court documents. Locations for some of the images came back to Hammond or Royal Center, Indiana.
One iPhone, last used May of 2015, contained sexual images of girls around the age of 14. The geo-location on the images came back to cities in Indiana, including Bunker Hill, Galveston, Indianapolis, Kokomo, Monterey and Royal Center.
A Samsung Galaxy phone, last used in June of 2015, contained sexually explicit images of children between 12 and 17 years old.
Another iPhone investigators found contained sexual images of children between 12 and 17, adults involved in sexual acts with children between the ages of 3 and 11, and images of drugs and Kline with a black handgun. That phone was last used November of 2016.
The tablet was last used in March of 2016 and showed conversations on Facebook Messenger and the user suggesting the conversations be moved to Kik Messenger or Snapchat, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Another Samsung Galaxy phone recovered was factory reset on Feb. 23, 2017. A factory reset essentially wipes all user data from a device. Investigators were able to get information on the device after the reset. It included discussions about meeting people in Las Vegas and prostitution.
On Feb. 27, 2017, Kline contacted police claiming he had located his iPhone 5. Investigators said they found images of females posing nude, but investigators could not determine their ages. Investigators also found much of the data from Facebook, Instagram, MeetMe, Snapchat and Twitter had been deleted.
A review of the phone found that hours after police released him the day they searched his home, Feb. 25, 2017, he had uninstalled and deleted Snapchat and Instagram. The following day, MeetMe was uninstalled and deleted. The browser search history had also been deleted the morning of Feb. 27 before the phone was turned in to authorities.
Police have previously questioned Kline about whether his father had access to his phone or the account. Kline has said he would not let his father have access to his phone for long periods of time.
Police believe Kowalski's teen modeling photos were taken and used to catfish young girls. He said his photos have been used on fake social media accounts since 2014.
"You just search my name, there's a hundred accounts, fake accounts, of me," Kowalski told 13News in December 2021.
The submitted witness list, filed Monday, also includes Barbara MacDonald, the producer behind HLN's "Down the Hill" podcast; law enforcement officers; and a Riley Hospital doctor.
MacDonald interviewed Kline while in the Miami County Jail about the anthony_shots account. According to MacDonald, Kline admitted to creating the account to solicit nude images from underage girls, but said he was not trying to meet any of those girls in real life.
"I don't really know. I was just lonely. You know what I mean? Just talking to people. I don't know why I did it really," Kline said.
Kline said police told him that the anthony_shots account was the last to communicate with Libby German before her murder.
When MacDonald asked Kline if he talked to German on Feb. 13, 2017, Kline said, "That's what they said. That's what the police told me."
Kline is not a suspect in the Delphi double murders case.
Kline initially faced 30 charges including possession of child pornography, child solicitation and child exploitation, but 5 of those charges were dropped in November.