CINCINNATI — A former Tri-State PE teacher died Sunday while he was awaiting trial for several charges of child pornography and exploitation, the Butler County Sheriff's Office said.
Mark Altherr, 45, died of an apparent suicide, according to the sheriff's office and the Hamilton County Coroner's Office.
Altherr, a longtime fitness education teacher with Oak Hills Local School District, was facing more than a dozen federal charges tied to the exploitation of children. In August, he was indicted on 16 counts of sexual exploitation of children. These charges came after he was initially charged with one federal count of distribution of child pornography and one federal count of possession of child pornography.
The charges are connected to Altherr's illegal and explicit interactions with a victim who was between 5 and 6 years old at the time the crimes were allegedly committed, according to court documents.
Learn about the FBI's investigation into Altherr below:
On at least 16 instances spanning between May 30, 2023 and June 20, 2024, Altherr allegedly produced child pornography depicting the victim "engaging in and assisting another person to engage in sexually explicit conduct," according to court documents.
According to court documents, investigators found child pornography depicting "a prepubescent minor and a minor who had not attained 12 years of age."
From there, Altherr distributed the explicit content to others online, per the documents. The website Altherr used, launched around 2019, specifically describes itself as "a child pornography community," according to court documents.
The FBI's investigation showed Altherr was an active member of that website and posted files to it, some of which depicted child pornography, according to court documents. The FBI determined Altherr had been using the site since 2021 and that, in that time, he made at least 262 posts on the site — some of which were made in early 2024, according to court documents.
FBI agents believed it was "necessary" to find Altherr after learning he was a teacher at Delshire Elementary in Delhi Township. On July 26, they went to his home in Cincinnati but found he was not there, per court documents. A ping of his cellphone showed investigators that he was at a public location in Columbus, Ohio, according to the FBI.
An FBI agent was dispatched to that location in Columbus, where they found Altherr's vehicle, according to court documents. Per the criminal complaint, agents observed Altherr enter the vehicle with a female minor. He then drove himself and the child to a hotel in the Columbus area, according to the document.
That same day, agents found images Altherr posted to the website, including images depicting sexual abuse of children. Based on that, FBI agents believed the child with Altherr was in "imminent danger when she entered the hotel with Altherr," leading them to conduct a probable cause arrest on him. Inside the hotel room, agents discovered a young girl, completely nude, according to court documents.
Later that same evening, FBI agents executed a search warrant on Altherr's Cincinnati home. During that search, electronics at Altherr's home were found to have both images and videos depicting sexual abuse against children, some as young as 3-to-4 years old.
Altherr was being held in the Butler County Jail until his trial.
Altherr accepted his job at Delshire Elementary School in the Oak Hills Local Schools District in 2019. He was employed as a fitness education teacher at the elementary until his arrest. Prior to his time in Cincinnati, Altherr spent nearly two decades teaching in several schools in Colorado.
His personnel records, requested by WCPO after his arrest, do not indicate any past complaints or disciplinary actions, but documents in the file did say the FBI wasn't able to rule out whether any of Altherr's students were victims of his actions.
