A man has pleaded guilty to making pornographic videotapes of a 4-year-old girl that his wife caught him recording while he was naked at the couple's home last year.
State police arrested Thomas Deglau, 56, after his wife told authorities she woke up from a nap to find him recording the dancing girl in the basement of their home in Latrobe, an hour's drive east of Pittsburgh, in January 2014.
Federal authorities took over the case and indicted the Derry Township man on charges of making three videotapes of that girl and tapes involving her and another girl between 2012 and 2014.
Deglau's plea before a federal judge in Pittsburgh on Thursday means he now faces up to 30 years in prison when he returns to court at the end of July.
Deglau's wife was so shocked by his behavior that she didn't immediately confront him, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Lieber Smolar said. Instead, she went back upstairs, gathered her thoughts and then went back downstairs and spied her husband coaxing the girl to tell the camera that she liked being naked.
Deglau's wife waited for an opportune time, retrieved the videotape and several others she found and turned them over to the police days later.
Deglau's public defender didn't respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
