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Bob Wenzlau, a Palo Alto resident who is well known in the community for his environmental activism, is facing numerous felony charges after police officers caught him exchanging messages with and sending lewd photos to undercover investigators posing as 12-year-old girls, police said.
Wenzlau, who serves president of the local environmental consultant company Terradex and who sits on the city’s Stormwater Management Oversight Committee, was arrested Thursday morning at his home, according to a news release from the Palo Alto Police Department. The arrest followed numerous incidents in which Wenzlau, 67, allegedly used a mobile app to anonymously communicate with people who he thought were children, first in Georgia and then in Palo Alto.
Palo Alto detectives were tipped off about his behavior on March 5, when they received information from Burke County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia and from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about an adult male who is using an app to correspond with an undercover officer posing as a 12-year-old girl, police said. He allegedly said he was 55 years old, provided his cell phone number and used the app to send photos of himself and, later, sexually explicit photos of children to the undercover officer.
Once they received the tip from Georgia, Palo Alto police identified Wenzlau as the owner of the cell number and followed up by opening their own undercover account in the app where a local officer posed as a 12-year-old girl. Four days after they did that, Wenzlau found the account, proactively messaged it, provided his cell number and sent photos of himself, police said.
After several days of chatting, Wenzlau reportedly asked the undercover officer for explicit images, sent sexual images of children to the officer and arranged to meet his correspondent in person with the intent of performing sexual acts, police said in the news release. That meeting never occurred, police said.
Palo Alto detectives presented the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, who filed four felony charges against Wenzlau: contacting a minor with the intent to commit a sex offense, attempted lewd act on a child under 14, possession of child pornography and transmitting harmful matter to a person believed to be a minor. He is also facing a misdemeanor charge of arranging a meeting with a person believed to be a minor to engage in lewd behavior. An arrest is only an allegation, and the arrestee is considered innocent until proven guilty.
After obtaining an arrest warrant from a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge, police arrested Wenzlau at his home on April 11 without incident, police said. They also searched his home for evidence of other criminal activity, according to the police.
Wenzlau, is well known as City Hall for both his history of environmental activism and his past leadership at Neighbors Abroad, the nonprofit that manages the city’s sister-city relationships. He helped found the city’s curbside recycling program in the 1970s and was one of the leaders of a 2011 campaign to establish a waste-to-energy facility in the Baylands.
Palo Alto police believe it’s possible that there may be other victims and are asking anyone with information to call the department at 650-329-2413. Anonymous tips can be sent to paloalto@tipnow.org or (650) 383-8984.