Former Northrop wrestling coach charged in child porn production

WARNING: Charges are of an extremely disturbing nature

FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---When Jamie Lee Ridenour got off the plane at Charlotte Douglas International Airport Oct. 3, 2025, fresh off a vacation in the Dominican Republic, customs officials were waiting for him.

They found more than 1,000 explicit photos on his devices taken from 2020 through 2023 of infants and toddlers being sexually abused. Some of the photos depicted sado-masochism while others exhibited bestiality.

There was evidence that Ridenour, 43, a Fort Wayne resident, was involved in the production of these photos, according to U.S. attorney Lesley Miller Lowery. 

Jamie Lee Ridenour

Ridenour was charged Tuesday with Transportation of Child Pornography and Possession of Child Pornography.

The day the charges were filed in federal court, Ridenour was arrested by U.S. Marshals around 1:30 p.m. at his home on Greyhawk Drive in Fort Wayne’s Cherry Hill residential area. He was being held as a federal inmate at the Noble County Jail.

Ridenour, who was a volunteer wrestling coach at Northrop High School from January 2025 through June of this year, appeared in federal court Monday for a detention hearing.

Federal Magistrate Andrew Teel will remand Ridenour to the Western District of North Carolina where the charges originated even though his attorney, Emily Kutsenok, of Fort Wayne, asked that he be allowed to remain here.

Kutsenok argued that he has a support system and no previous criminal history. There was no evidence he would violate pre-trial conditions, she said.

U.S. attorney Lesley Miller Lowery disagreed. Because of “Mr. Ridenour’s proclivities when it comes to child sex abuse material” and his “conversations with several other people” through a social media tool, Telegram, and activities with “a minor he called a nephew,” the U.S. District Court Northern District of Indiana believed he should return to the charging district, she said, i.e. North Carolina.

Nor should he be confined to his home with the promises that he wouldn’t access minors or the internet.

“You can’t supervise a grown man all the time and who comes and goes,” Miller Lowery said.

Teel agreed. Given the severity of the allegations, he believed Ridenour should remain in custody and returned to the charging district.

The federal government has a range of alleged offenses from least to most serious.

“Yours is the most serious,” Teel said addressing Ridenour who appeared in court in orange jumpsuit and shackles. Teel compared the offenses to drug transactions between two adults. That act was consensual, albeit illegal.

“There’s nothing consensual about (this),” he said, referring to the child sex abuse material transported and allegedly produced by Ridenour. The danger posed to the community is significant; the allegations “unfathomable,” actions that would cause lifelong trauma, Teel added.

Teel noted that one charge carries a mandatory minimum of five years, the other 15 years.

A Fort Wayne Community Schools spokesman told The Probable Cause that Ridenour was a volunteer with the Northrop wrestling program. He did not say why Ridenour left that job. To date, there are no charges of wrongdoing with wrestling students.

Another case filed in Allen Superior Court was transferred to federal court. Ridenour who works in IT and has been employed  for 11 months, according to court testimony, had a job with Brooks Construction as an information systems developer from May 2016 to May 2025.

He filed a complaint just after he was terminated alleging he was discriminated against on the basis of his sex and sexual orientation and “retaliated against for complaining of disparate treatment in violation of the Civil Rights Act.”

In the filing, there is a reference to Ridenour and his husband.

In that case, he is represented by Jennifer Hitchcock of Close & Hitchcock LLC in Fort Wayne.

Brooks Construction has retained Thomas Kimbrough of Barrett McNagny.