The call to the Redondo Beach police department came from a local CVS Pharmacy on November 18, 2010. An anonymous employee had just developed 48 suspicious-looking photos from a recent 35-mm film drop-off. The photos showed a man in a classroom with his arm over the shoulders of children whose eyes were blindfolded and mouths were taped. Some of the photos showed a Madagascar cockroach on the children’s faces. One in particular showed child eating what detectives later determined was a bodily fluid from a spoon.
“The kids weren’t in distress in the photos… he’s smiling, they’re smiling,” said RBPD Detective Sgt. Shawn Freeman. “The big thing when you look at the photos is that there’s definitely something improper going on. Just what it is you don’t immediately know. It’s not until you do a good investigation that you figure out what’s taking place”
RBPD investigators looked closely at the pictures to figure out where they were taken. After they determined that they were not photographed in a Redondo Beach classroom, they brought the photos to Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department. Mark Berndt, the name on the order form, was a 61-year-old Torrance resident and third-grade teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles.
“It helped that his name was unusual,” said RBPD Police Chief Joe Leonardi. “If he had the name Mark Smith it would have been very difficult to find out more about him.”
“We were simply able to pick up the phone and tell the Sheriff’s department what we had and they took the case,” said Freeman. “They took the ball and did a great job with it. It’s just outstanding – the investigation got him arrested on 23 felony counts.”
At the time the photos were discovered, Miramonte Elementary was not in session. According to Leonardi, Berndt was removed from the classroom before school resumed in January 2011. The Sheriff’s Department continued their investigation over the course of the following year.
“Law enforcement was very careful to make sure they had all the facts before they moved forward,” said Leonardi. “If you jump forward without the facts you can lose the case.”
Leonardi was very impressed by how his department reacted to the suspicious photographs.
“It’s easy for a police officer who doesn’t see direct evidence of a crime to discount it, and that’s not what Redondo did,” said Leonardi. “Our guys recognized something wasn’t right and did all they could in the first weeks to identify who it was — and it was done before kids ever went back into the classroom.”
LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy issued a statement last week in which he said he was “sickened and horrified’ by the behavior attributed to Berndt. The superintendent said crisis counselors have been provided to the children and their families since the investigation began.
Berndt, who taught for more than 30 years at Miramonte, will be arraigned on Feb. 21 after being held in lieu of $23 million bail. He faces charges of 23 counts of lewd conduct with children ranging from ages seven to 10, from 2009 to 2011. Since the RBPD initiated the case, over 400 more photographs have been found in Berndt’s Torrance apartment.
“The real credit goes to the employee at CVS for coming forward with the pictures to begin with,” said RBPD Lt. Joe Hoffman. “We did what we do. We’re police officers – that’s the crux of our duties. We look at things that may or may not be criminal and take the most appropriate course of action to solve crimes and make sure no further people are victimized.”
