MIAMI COUNTY, Ind. — NOTE: The video above is from a previous report on Indiana State Police addressing questions about the handling of the case against Kline.
A Miami County judge has granted a motion to delay Kegan Anthony Kline's pre-trial conference because pretrial negotiations between Kline's attorney and prosecutors broke down.
Kline's attorney said there would not be a plea agreement.
The pretrial conference that had been set for Kline's child exploitation case was moved from Dec. 16, 2021 to Feb. 24, 2022. The motion also set the final pre-trial conference date for April 21, 2022 and the start of the jury trial for May 9, 2022.
Kline is facing 30 charges related to child exploitation, child pornography and child solicitation.
The charges stem from a search of his Peru, Indiana, home on Feb. 25, 2017. 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 social media accounts with the username anthony_shots 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 or videos from all of the girls he chatted with, that the images were pornographic in nature, and that he had saved them.
On. Dec. 6, ISP issued a press release seeking information into an online account with the username anthony_shots. While the release did not identify Kline or call him a person of interest at the time, it did say Delphi investigators were seeking more information about the account.
13News has learned that release asking for information on the anthony_shots profile has led to around 500 tips in the past week.
On Monday, ISP confirmed detectives were looking into Kline as part of the investigation into the deaths of Abby Williams and Libby German, but still did not call him a suspect or person of interest in the case.
It released the following statement:
The Indiana State Police has received many media inquiries since our December 6th press release concerning "anthony_shots" and eventually the identification of Kegan Kline. Your questions are certainly relevant as they relate to a long, complex, and extremely complicated murder investigation.
During the last nearly five years, we have conducted dozens of secondary investigations based on information we received. One of those investigations included a Possession of Child Pornography case resulting in the arrest of Kegan Kline. The information we had, have, and continue to receive concerning Kline has ebbed and flowed over these last few years. We understand there was a period of time that passed between 2017 and 2020 when Kline was not arrested and incarcerated for Possession of Child Pornography. Once the Indiana State Police presented the criminal case to the Miami County Prosecutor in June of 2020, immediate action was taken by both the Indiana State Police and the Miami County Prosecutor's Office, which ultimately resulted in Kline's arrest.
Like so many other pieces of this investigation, we will always review, learn from, and make any necessary adjustments. We do not believe that any person has done anything intentionally wrong, but we will continue to critically evaluate our efforts.
We know there is enormous interest in the "WHY" of everything we do, but we cannot and will not speculate. One day you will have the opportunity to see and know what we do, and we look forward to that day.