Thomas Markle, father of Meghan, arrested after feds find photos of him sexually abusing minors, DOJ says

By Holly Yan, Max Foster, Elizabeth Wagmeister, CNN

(CNN) — Thomas Markle, the father of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was arrested by federal agents in Florida on Friday and faces a charge of possession of child pornography, the Department of Justice announced.

“Mr. Markle is accused of possessing child sexual abuse material, including photographs depicting himself with minor girls,” said First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli, who leads the Los Angeles-based US Attorney’s office.

The 82-year-old allegedly kept “sexually explicit photographs of himself with prepubescent girls in two Los Angeles-area storage units he rented for nearly two decades,” the DOJ said.

Markle made an initial appearance in the US District Court in Tampa, Florida, on Friday. US Magistrate Judge Thomas Wilson ordered Markle to be released and placed him on house arrest. Markle is not allowed to travel outside the Middle District of Florida and the Central District of California, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Markle has not entered a plea, the office said. His arraignment in California has yet to be scheduled, but likely will take several weeks, prosecutors said.

Agents seized about 78 items, including slides, film negatives and books that contained suspected child sexual abuse material, the agency said. Two images depict a man — whom a witness identified as Markle — with a nude prepubescent girl, the DOJ said. Another image depicts a nude girl in a room that appears to be part of a motel chain in the Philippines, federal investigators said.

One image shows a clothed man with a nude girl sitting on his lap, according to a criminal complaint filed against Markle. The photo shows the man with his hand reaching around the girl’s body and touching her inappropriately, an FBI agent wrote in the complaint. A redacted version of the photo was later shown to a witness, who identified the man in the photo as Markle, the court filing said.

If convicted, he would face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison, the DOJ said. CNN is working to determine if Markle has legal representation.

When asked for comment about the news, which was first reported by the Daily Mail, a spokesperson for Markle’s daughter Meghan told CNN they had no comment at this time.

Markle has been estranged from Meghan and did not attend her wedding to Britain’s Prince Harry in 2018.

An international investigation

In October, the American-born duchess said she was “deeply distressed” by a report that her father had a trove of images depicting child sex abuse.

Thomas Markle’s son told Britain’s The Sun newspaper he had uncovered a stash of indecent images of underage children in storage boxes and on computer hard drives at his father’s house in the Philippines and reported him to authorities in that country.

The Philippines Justice Department’s child abuse unit told CNN the matter was “under investigation.”

Thomas Markle Sr. vehemently denied the allegations in an interview with Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper.

“I’m shocked, I’m hurt and I’m very upset that my son is making these accusations against me,” he told the Daily Mail. The elder Markle also said the computer equipment hadn’t been in his possession since he left Mexico with his son Thomas Markle Jr. in 2025.

Markle Jr. told The Sun he also reported his discovery to US authorities. In October, the FBI told CNN it was aware of the allegations involving Markle Sr., a US citizen, and will “provide support, as appropriate, to the Philippine authorities.”

“We will also investigate any related allegations of federal violations of U.S. law,” the FBI said at the time.

This is far from the first time foreign law enforcement agencies have worked together to investigate possible child sex tourism or possession of abuse material.

In recent decades, a slew of allegations involving American citizens in Southeast Asia resulted in one of the most robust foreign law enforcement initiatives the FBI maintains, said CNN Senior Correspondent Josh Campbell, who was a former FBI agent stationed in the Philippines.

“On any given day, several FBI agents assigned abroad are working with Philippine and other Southeast Asian police forces to identify and target people suspected of exploiting children,” Campbell said.

A strained father-daughter relationship

Meghan was close to her father when she was a child, joining him on the sets of TV shows where he worked as a lighting director or director of photography.

The duchess has spoken about how her father’s job introduced her to the entertainment business long before she became a successful actress. “Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of ‘Married with Children,’” she told Esquire magazine in 2018.

But their relationship deteriorated, with their fractured relationship becoming public in the weeks leading up to Meghan’s 2018 wedding to Prince Harry. Staged paparazzi photos showing Markle getting fitted for a suit were published, and he later apologized for working with a British tabloid to create the photos.

Two months after the wedding, Markle told the Daily Mail that Meghan had cut ties with him and he was unable to get in touch with her.

In 2021, Meghan said she mourned the loss of her relationship with her dad, telling Oprah Winfrey: “I grieve a lot … I’ve lost my father.”

In the 2022 Netflix docuseries “Harry & Meghan,” the Duke of Sussex said it was “incredibly sad what happened” between his wife and her father.

“She had a father before this, and now she doesn’t have a father,” Harry said. “And I shouldered that because if Meg wasn’t with me, then her dad would still be her dad.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

CNN’s Kathleen Magramo contributed to this report.

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