HOUSTON – An HFD captain has been charged with possession of child pornography, and investigators say his wife is the one who turned him in.
Saul Fiszer, who was hired by HFD in 1994 and served as a captain at Fire Station 21 in southeast Houston, was arrested on Tuesday. HFD said Fiszer resigned on Friday.
"The Houston Fire Department is surprised and saddened, just like the rest of the community. We’re surprised that one of our members would be involved in such allegations, and we’re saddened for any victims, including his family, that may have suffered from whatever actions he may have performed," Chief Terry Garrison said.
According to court documents, Fiszer’s wife called HPD on January 10, 2012, after finding suspicious activity on her husband's cell phone.
The wife told police that she was looking at the family’s cell-phone records when she noticed a strange number that Mr. Fiszer was calling and receiving calls from.
Mrs. Fiszer began texting the number, pretending to be her husband, and learned that the number belonged to a 14-year-old girl in Capser, Wyoming.
Mrs. Fiszer said the girl referred to Saul Fiszer as "daddy."
Mrs. Fiszer told police she called and confronted the girl, and then notified the girl’s parents, who contacted the Casper Police Department.
Casper police then seized the girl’s phone and computer as evidence in their own investigation, according to court documents.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Fiszer said she confronted her husband about the teen, and Saul Fiszer admitted that he’d been chatting online and trading pictures with the girl.
Court documents state that Saul Fiszer then became "very upset" and started "talking about suicide."
Police said Mrs. Fiszer handed over her husband’s laptop and thumb drive to HPD that day, as well as copies of the family's cell-phone records.
On the morning of January 11, 2012, police interviewed Mrs. Fiszer over the phone. She reportedly told them that late on January 10, her husband admitted to having child pornography on his laptop and said he’d been having an online relationship with the 14-year-old Wyoming girl.
Later in the morning on January 11, Mrs. Fiszer called police again, saying that Saul Fiszer was at her home and talking about killing himself. An HPD officer stayed on the phone with Saul Fiszer, distracting him until an HPD Crisis Intervention Response Team could get there.
According to court documents, Saul Fiszer told the officer over the phone that he was suicidal because he was caught having a relationship with a teenager, and that was part of "his sex addiction that no one else knew about and that he had yet to discuss with his counselor."
Saul Fiszer told police that the night before, he’d tried to kill himself by running a hose from his exhaust pipe into his car, but the attempt was unsuccessful because the car ran out of gas.
The HFD captain told police that he’s been in therapy for sex addiction for a few months, and that he looks at porn online – sometimes featuring children. He also said he frequents chat rooms and is involved in role-playing, fantasies and all sexual acts. He said he sometimes trades sexual pictures with other people he meets on the Internet.
Police secured a search warrant for Saul Fiszer’s computer and thumb drives, and on January 20, 2012, a forensic analysis of the devices turned up at least two child-porn images and one child-porn video.
HFD on Friday said they were notified that Fiszer was the subject of an ongoing HPD investigation on January 11, and that he was put on paid administrative leave. But around 11 a.m. on Friday, officials said Fiszer signed resignation papers and was no longer employed by the Houston Fire Department.
Fiszer was just two years away from retirement.
"We, as a department, take these allegations very seriously. As a result of these allegations, I have opened up an Internal Affairs investigation that will run concurrently with HPD’s ongoing criminal investigation," said Garrison.
Fiszer was being held Friday in the Harris County Jail on $60,000 bond.
