By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

Child pornography charges filed against a former Epsom music teacher were dropped after a recent Superior Court ruling said investigators improperly used a search warrant.

The ruling bars evidence of child pornography collected at the Epsom home of Thomas Rand, 54, thwarting a yearlong investigation by the county attorney’s office, the Merrimack County sheriffs and local police.

Rand was indicted after investigators found a photo album, videocassettes, a computer image and still images of children engaged in lewd exhibitions, according to a police affidavit supporting a search warrant.

Rand was also accused of installing a video camera in a Hooksett bathroom 14 to 15 years ago for the purpose of recording a boy’s body parts.

Investigators opened the investigation in 2004, after a Maine woman reported that Rand sexually assaulted her son over a four-year period beginning in 1977, court records show.

According to the affidavit, multiple people told investigators Rand had sexually assaulted them.

In 1977, Rand was convicted of sexual assault after admitting to molesting three students at Epsom Central School, where he was then a music teacher, court records show.

Rand then agreed not to teach anymore, but has since given private piano lessons, launched the Manchester Boy Scouts Explorer Music Program, taught music at St. Paul’s School in Concord, and has been involved with the Pittsfield Players, according to court records.

“(Rand) has continued to put himself in positions where he will have access to potential victims,” investigators wrote in the affidavit.

In a March 20 ruling, Merrimack County Superior Court Justice Kathleen McGuire sided with a plea from Rand to suppress evidence collected at his home, which led the county attorney to drop the case.

In her opinion, McGuire said, the affidavit was insufficient in supporting a search for child pornography, which Rand was charged with only after the search.

“The investigators were not seeking corroborating evidence to prove a crime either charged or under investigation,” McGuire wrote of the search. “Rather, the investigators were looking for pornographic pictures of children from which to begin an investigation of sexual assault.”