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Goff indiscretions detailed in memo

After receiving the note, a commissioner compares former Fire Marshal Donald Goff to John Couey.

By BRADY DENNIS
Published April 13, 2005

TAMPA - Former county Fire Marshal Donald Goff had pornographic Web links on his work computer, visited personal ad sites while on duty and once drove his department vehicle to an apartment complex he thought was home to a 14-year-old girl with whom he wanted to have sex, according to a recent memo.

The memo, sent April 1 by county fire Chief William Nesmith to Commissioner Ronda Storms, offers another glimpse into the indiscretions of Goff, who resigned abruptly in June and later pleaded guilty to federal charges of possessing child porn and transferring obscene materials to a minor.

Last month, he began serving a 37-month sentence at a federal prison in Texas.

In the memo, Nesmith told Storms that technicians scanned Goff's work computer and found numerous links to pornographic Web sites dating to 2002. However, officials said Goff was not in the office when some of the sites were accessed and that someone else could have used his computer.

They said Goff also admitted to visiting several "personals" Web sites while on duty, including Yahoo! Personals. Those sites were not pornographic but were unauthorized, the memo states.

According to a federal arrest affidavit, Goff participated last June in an online chat room meant for 9- to 15-year-old children from his home computer. There, he made contact with an FBI agent posing as a 14-year-old Florida girl with the screen name "kdra14fl."

Over the following days, he made numerous attempts to arrange a sexual encounter with kdra14fl. It was during that time that Goff transmitted images over a Web cam that showed him holding his penis while wearing his fire marshal uniform.

Also during that week, while dressed in uniform, he drove his department vehicle to a Temple Terrace apartment complex where he thought the girl lived.

"This was the first I had heard of this and I was totally surprised," Nesmith wrote in his memo.

Storms' first reaction was disgust.

"It's terrible. It's bone chilling," she said Tuesday. "It's a compete abuse of power, and it shows how frightening people like this are."

Storms compared Goff with John Couey, a sexual offender recently charged in Citrus County with the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford.

"(They) are the same people; they are the same characters," Storms said, adding that Goff's case is perhaps more troubling because he was a respected fire official. "This was an individual you place trust into. That's what makes it more frightening."

Storms also had inquired about whether Goff had any unsupervised encounters with children while fire marshal, but Nesmith wrote in the memo that none could be confirmed. He would occasionally drop in on events such as the Florida State Fair, but any exposure to children would have been in proximity to other people, Nesmith wrote.

It's been a trying year for the county's Fire Marshal's Office, which by all accounts is rife with discontent and infighting. After Goff's resignation, Nesmith hired former Clearwater Fire Marshal Randy Hinder to try to revive the office.

But on March 30, barely seven months later, he fired Hinder, saying the new fire marshal had only deepened the rifts within the office. A search for another fire marshal will begin soon, Nesmith said Monday.

[Last modified April 13, 2005, 01:29:17]