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An Arkansas postmaster is accused of sending 32 naked photos of himself to a 15-year-old girl, including images taken from inside the post office, according to authorities.
Raymond Lloyd Freeman Jr. was arrested Monday, January 5 on nine counts of pandering or possessing visual or print medium depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child, records show.
Information on his legal representation was not immediately available in court records.
Freeman, 49, is the postmaster of the Batesville Post Office, a position he has held since March 2014, according to the U.S. Postal Service. Batesville is about a 95-mile drive northeast from Little Rock.
USPS did not immediately respond to Us Weekly’s request for a comment.
The investigation into Freeman began with a police report his wife filed with the Batesville Police Department on October 30, according to an affidavit of probable cause obtained by Us.
Freeman’s wife explained to police that she is a mandated reporter and “found some inappropriate communications between her husband” and a teenage girl younger than 16, the affidavit says.
She shared that the evening before, on October 29, they “had been having some relationship issues” and she went through his phone while he was sleeping, according to the affidavit.
Freeman’s wife said she would share screenshots of the messages she found on his device with the police department, then later returned with “an envelope with multiple pictures in it” on November 8, the affidavit says.
Two days later, an investigator interviewed a 15-year-old who, according to the affidavit, said that she was communicating with Freeman over an online chat website.
Another investigator who wrote the affidavit, Brenda Little, of the Batesville Police Department, interviewed Freeman on November 13. That is when he acknowledged that he was chatting online with a 15-year-old, according to Little.
“He went on to say that at first he did not know that she was fifteen (15), but later he did,” Little wrote in the affidavit.
He also “stated that he had gotten depressed and his marriage was bad and he needed somebody to talk to,” the filing says.
Freeman also told Little that he received naked photos from the teen and also sent “maybe two” nude images of himself to her, according to the affidavit.
Little later secured a search warrant for Freeman’s online chats with the teen and discovered he sent 32 naked photos of himself to her between September 27 and October 29, the affidavit says.
“Some of these photos that Raymond sent are in Raymond’s office at the Post Office, Post Office bathroom and also in the Batesville mail truck,” Little wrote in the filing.
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In the messages Freeman is accused of sending, he also told the teen that he “loves her,” according to the affidavit.
The Independence County Sheriff’s Office arrested Freeman on January 5, jail records show.
His bond was set at $150,000, according to court records.
Freeman is due in Independence County Circuit Court on January 13.
Suspected child sexual exploitation can be reported online to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline.
In 2024, the non-profit organization’s tipline received more than 20 million reports about suspected child pornography, sexual abuse and exploitation, child sex trafficking and more.
