Lance Mussack, 41, of Flagler Beach, Arrested on Child Porn Charge

Mussack allegedly confessed to his girlfriend and in a controlled, or recorded, phone call, with police listening, that he had taken the photographs, which were on his cell phone.

Mussack had been dating his girlfriend for about a year. She told Flagler Beach police that just before the new year she picked up Mussack’s iPhone to take a funny selfie of herself, but noticed in his images the close-up picture of what appeared to be a young girl’s vagina. The picture bothered her. Almost two weeks later–on Jan. 10–she picked up Mussack’s phone again to find the photograph, only to find still “more provocative and nude pictures,” with a time stamp of January 6.

In those pictures she noticed a custom-made blanket she recognized, along with bedsheets she recognized–Mussack’s own. She then realized the girl in the picture was her own daughter.

She immediately confronted Mussack, who was getting ready for work. He did not deny it, according to his arrest report, repeatedly yelling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She ordered him out of the house and contacted police, where she knew an officer personally.

The Flagler Beach police detective arranged for a controlled phone call between Mussack and the child’s mother, when he said he had never touched the girl, and said the two pictures were the extent of it. “Yes, it’ll never happen again,” Using an expletive, Mussack said during the call. He said he didn’t know why it had happened in the first place.

She asked him if the girl had been aware of what he was doing: she had not wanted to sleep there recently. “No, definitely not, totally asleep. I don’t know why she would say that,” he said.

Mussack intimated to the child’s mother that his own father had acted inappropriately toward a close family member. “It’s always come back to haunt me,” he says during the phone call. I try and get it off my shoulders.” (His late father of the same name had a sexual-offender record in Indiana.) Again using an expletive, he then goes on to say he wanted to “jump off the bridge,” then after saying he needs to get help says he must go, and hangs up.

The afternoon of January 10, Mussack was pulled over as he drove his Ford truck south on Oceanshore Boulevard, back from work in St. Johns County, and taken to the Flagler Beach police station. He was booked at the jail that night and released on $25,000 bond 24 hours later.