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Caledonia, MN ( KROC AM News) - A Rochester man who was charged in Olmsted County last Tuesday with possessing thousands of images of child pornography was in court the day before in a much more serious case.

The Houston County Attorney’s office has filed several counts of criminal sexual conduct against 36-year-old Gary Baker, accusing him of molesting two girls when they were younger than 13 years old.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges last Monday and asked for a jury trial.

The criminal complaint includes four counts of 1st-degree criminal sexual conduct, indicating penetration was involved.

According to the complaint, Baker is accused of sexually abusing and assaulting the girls between June 2013 and November 2016 when he lived in the town of La Crescent. The allegations were first reported to La Crescent police in May 2020.

The complaint says when an investigator interviewed Baker about the allegations, he “confirmed he had done magic tricks” with the girls. He told the investigator “these tricks involved the illusion of a coin being under a person’s skin.”

Baker also told the investigator he had watched the girls “when their mothers were not present in the home.”

When Baker’s Rochester home was searched in May 2020 as part of the La Crescent case, officers found a digital memory card that contained nearly 11,000 images of child pornography.

They included images of girls ranging in age from 8 to 15.

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