A former Florida Keys man sentenced to federal prison on child pornography charges last month was arrested this week by Monroe County deputies on horrific allegations that he molested his own children, filmed several of the encounters and then distributed the images.
The alleged crimes occurred on a sailboat where Eric Cadogan resided, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. It was docked at a marina in the Middle Keys town of Marathon from 2019 until the 39-year-old returned to his home state of Wisconsin four years later.
His wife and five biological children lived on board with him, investigators say.
Cadogan was arrested in Wisconsin by the FBI in December on charges of distributing child pornography following a sting in which he offered to sell a man hundreds of images of children engaged in sexual behavior. The man, who was chatting with him through an obscure app, was a secret agent.
In some of the graphic images of children, a man was wearing a bracelet that agents found in Cadogan’s bedroom at the Wisconsin home where he was arrested.
He pleaded guilty to those charges in June and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Earlier this year, the sheriff’s office opened its own investigation after it was revealed during the federal investigation that his wife, Kia Lynn Cadogan, told FBI agents that she molested one of the couple’s young children.
Deputies arrested a 34-year-old woman in January. Her case on multiple counts of aggravated child abuse and child sexual assault is pending while she is in the county jail on $550,000 bail.
On Tuesday, the sheriff’s office announced it had arrested Eric Cadogan on multiple felony charges, including incest, sexual assault, child cruelty, contributing to the delinquency of a child and lewd and lascivious behavior by a child.
“I and the men and women of the Sheriff’s Office are committed to protecting the most vulnerable among us – our children,” Sheriff Rick Ramsay said in a statement. “I want to commend the Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Detectives and our law enforcement partners who worked to ensure these two suspects were brought to justice.”
The chilling probable cause statement details multiple instances of Eric Cadogan raping his children, encouraging them to engage in sexual acts with each other, and filming these crimes on his cellphone.
A judge this week ordered Cadogan held on $2.2 million bail.
Information about legal representation for either Cadogan was not immediately available. Authorities did not immediately respond to questions about the children’s whereabouts.
Kia Cadogan told FBI agents in December that Eric forced her to molest her son. But Ramsay told the Herald when his detectives arrested her in January that he didn’t believe her story.
While living in the Keys, Ramsay said she had ample opportunity to report the heinous acts that allegedly occurred on the ship as she traveled back and forth on the family boat.
“Our job is to protect people. If people speak out, they will be protected,” Ramsay said at the time. “She was equally a co-conspirator.”
