Bryan Elrod Saves $37 in Dine and Dash but Gets Busted for Child Porn

Schmucks aren't always only schmucks.

Sometimes they're also creeps, or scumbags, or pervs so repulsive that the thought of their depravity is capable of making the skin crawl right off your skeleton in order to huddle in a dark corner, shivering.

Which brings us to Bryan Elrod.

If prosecutors are right, Elrod's initial act of schmuckiness — dining and dashing at a Boulder restaurant — resulted in his unveiling as a child-porn aficionado whose phone was pre-loaded with images that translated into felony charges.

It took a while for the hammer to come down. According to the Boulder Daily Camera, the incident in question took place back on October 9 at the Old Chicago branch on the Pearl Street Mall.

An affidavit accessed by the paper maintains that Elrod ate, then split in order to avoid ponying up the princely sum of $37.81.

However, he also left his cell phone behind — and a restaurant employee who accessed it in the hope of learning its owner's identity was subjected to a gruesome sight.

The phone's browser was reportedly open to a child-porn website.

Suddenly, the cops called to investigate the case had a more serious crime on their hands. By their account, Elrod had in excess of 8,000 images on the phone, most of them pornography — and 267 of those were child porn in which the camera subjects went from early puberty all the way down to toddler age.


Elrod had been in trouble before. The affidavit references previous busts in Colorado for crimes such as fraud, assault, escape, driving under the influence and more.

But child porn was new territory for him — and after he was finally tracked down at a Longmont motel, the Boulder District Attorney's office slapped him with thirteen felony counts of child sexual exploitation.

It couldn't have happened to a more deserving schmuck. Or creep. Or scumbag. Or....

Look below to see a CBS4 report about Elrod.