‘We know there are more victims': Prison for Philly ex-cop charged in decade-long sex abuse case

Former Philadelphia Police officer Patrick Heron has plead guilty -- and will serve years in prison -- after facing more than 200 charges, including child sex assault and abuse of children while in uniform for crimes that occurred over the course of more than a decade.

On Monday, Lyandra Retacco, an assistant district attorney in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, announced that Henon pleaded guilty to stalking, unlawful conduct with two separate children, child porn possession, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault and kidnapping of a minor.

He was sentenced to serve 15 to 40 years in prison on an aggregate -- or combined -- sentence.

Retacco said the 53-year-old former officer was sentenced for crimes he committed while an active member of the city's police force -- from 2005 to 2017 -- as well as those he committed after he left the force.

While detailing the crimes that Heron admitted to, Retacco said that, as an on-duty officer in uniform, Heron videotaped sexual assaults of women and children that occurred in his patrol car.

In one video, Retacco gave an example of, a woman could be seen using an intravenous drug in Heron's patrol car before he sexually assaulted her.

Philadelphia District Attorney's Office

"That was consistent with the pattern which he videotaped of himself doing that in at least 16 other occasions we were able to identify," she said.

Also, after Heron was no longer a police officer, she said he solicited young girls and got them to send him child pornography. When one of these victims attempted to come forward, Retacco said that Heron told her she would be arrested "by my buddies in the seventh [district]."

In an effort to silence another accuser, Retacco said, Heron forged a court order and mental evaluation, which he then posted online, in an attempt to falsely "call out for help" for this individual.

Over the course of his criminal activity, Retacco said that Heron targeted a wide variety of women and girls -- even victimizing one child that was a runaway that he was supposed to return to her family.

Others, she said, were "trafficked women," who were likely in the throes of addiction at the time they were assaulted.

"Because many of these women are vulnerable and meet the definition of trafficked women, they are reluctant to come forward. They are well chosen, vulnerable victims," she said.

Heron, she said, has been in custody since 2022 after his bail was revoked when he was recorded threatening to kill a witness, as she said, "so this case could just go away."

Officials are still hoping to contact more individuals that, they believe, Heron has victimized.

"We know there are more victims," she said. "Many of the trafficked women in the videos that we've actually recovered remain unidentified."

Also during Monday's press event, officials with the DA's office announced that Armand Garcia of Aston, a former Roman Catholic priest at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in the Andorra section of Philadelphia, had pleaded guilty criminal charges on Friday as well.

Garcia, officials said, pleaded guilty to unlawful contact with a minor and corruption of a minor.

Officials said that Garcia was charged with assaulting a victim he met when she was a 13-year-old altar server at the parish elementary school.