YOUR AD HERE »

Glenwood molester, pornographer gets 60 years

Luis Alfonso Aragon-Gallegos
Staff Photo |

A federal judge has sentenced a 29-year-old Glenwood Springs man to 60 years in federal prison for his conviction on child pornography charges.

Glenwood Springs police arrested Luis Alfonso Aragon-Gallegos in March 17, 2015, after an investigation into child pornography distribution led law enforcement to his door.

Investigators found that Aragon-Gallegos was not only downloading and distributing child pornography, but that he also had been molesting a Glenwood Springs child and producing child pornography.



State and federal officers would eventually find 110 images or videos that he produced. He had amassed a collection of child pornography including about 266,000 images and about 16,100 videos beyond those he produced himself.

“This pedophile’s actions are among the worst of the worst, as he molested and damaged an innocent child repeatedly. It’s sickening to even contemplate.”Thomas RavenelleFBI Denver Division Special Agent in Charge

“I think this man spent an awful lot of time engaging in this behavior,” said Ninth Judicial District Attorney Sherry Caloia.



“The digital evidence showed that Aragon began assaulting the child when she was 3 years old and that it continued for approximately four years until he was arrested,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release.

Caloia said Thursday she knew of no other victims that Aragon-Gallegos had molested, locally or otherwise.

The day after his arrest Aragon-Gallegos made bond on the child pornography charges, but he was immediately arrested on new charges of sexual assault on a child, according to the Department of Justice. His bond was then set at $1 million. He was convicted in January.

Given the scale of these crimes, federal prosecutors wanted to take up the case, and Caloia said she was happy to hand it over to them because the federal courts have “a heavier hammer” in terms of sentencing power.

He was charged on 22 counts of production of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography, and he was held in federal custody without bond.

“This pedophile’s actions are among the worst of the worst, as he molested and damaged an innocent child repeatedly. It’s sickening to even contemplate,” said FBI Denver Division Special Agent in Charge Thomas Ravenelle. “This sentence will keep him in prison and away from society for the rest of his life, so he can’t harm any other children.”

“He is exactly the reason why the FBI works diligently with our law enforcement partners and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate and prosecute the sexual exploitation of children,” Ravenelle said.

This child pornographer was caught through the work of Lee Damuth, an investigator with the Ninth Judicial District Attorney’s Office, and the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, said Caloia.

These investigators were looking into child pornography that was being distributed through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. They discovered Aragon-Gallegos’s activity online, tracked him back to Glenwood Springs and uncovered the local victim.

This case was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide DOJ initiative “to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse,” according to the DOJ.


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

Readers around Glenwood Springs and Garfield County make the Post Independent’s work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.