Donnie Snook was as close to sainthood as it got in Saint John.

Sitting on city council for two consecutive terms, the 41-year-old former Salvation Army officer championed the razing of derelict buildings, helped drive biker gangs out of town and fed warm lunches to children through a Christian youth ministry.

“He was the soldier for the marginalized,” said former city councillor Patty Higgins.

But that image was shattered this January after a Toronto police officer sitting in a dark, windowless room 1,500 kilometres away spent 22 months tracking an unknown predator online.

Snook is now facing three counts of sexual touching related to one child, whose identity is protected by a court-ordered publication ban, dating back to December 2006. He is also charged with one count of making child pornography related to the same child and two counts each of possessing and distributing child pornography between March 2011 and January 2013.

None of the allegations against Snook has been proven in court. He has resigned his council seat and is suspended with pay from his position as executive director of the Inner City Youth Ministry. His defence lawyer, Dennis Boyle, refused to comment when contacted by the Star.

In what may soon be one of the largest cases of alleged child abuse in recent Canadian memory, the Star has learned that since Snook’s arrest as many as 20 children and their families have come forward with allegations and further charges are pending, according to multiple sources.

This is a story on tracking a predator.

Early morning on March 1, 2011, Det. Paul Krawczyk logs online for another day in his digital office at the child exploitation section that is tucked away on the third floor of Toronto police’s sprawling College St. headquarters.

A user he’s never chatted with signs on. The conversation gets quickly to the point.

“I love 12 and under,” the user tells Krawczyk, in a discussion about underage boys that the detective detailed to the Star in an interview.

The investigator is navigating an online venue he knows is frequented by pedophiles, the details of which were not disclosed to protect future investigations. It’s one of many seedy corners in which he searches for secret perversions.

The conversation continues.

“Are you active at all?” Krawczyk asks, using the code for engaging in sexual acts.

“Yes,” the user responds, and then pauses. “I should be more careful I guess.”

When the conversation ends after 15 minutes, the user writes: “I trust you already.”

That misguided trust gave Krawczyk a first set of images, 48 in total, from the user. Most of the downloaded images depicted prepubescent boys involved in sexual acts with adult males.

Though the user remained anonymous on the publicly accessible site, Krawczyk had enough to make a report. Tracing the user’s IP address gave him a place to start: Saint John, N.B. He contacted local authorities the following day.

The detective didn’t know then how long the hunt would last — in the end it would be the lengthiest of his career — or that it would uncover what he says today is one of the worst cases he’s ever investigated.

“At that point it was pretty straightforward, to be honest . . . I thought that would be the end of it,” Krawczyk said. “I personally believe that once all the evidence comes out in this case and the public learns all the details, it will turn the city upside down.”

Following their first chat in March, the anonymous user disappeared until May. The detective had been looking for the user every day while conducting other online investigations.

Krawczyk, a father of two young children, joined the force in 1996 as a street-level cop at 51 Division, patrolling places like Regent Park.

After the child exploitation section was formed in 2001, Krawczyk joined the following year as one of fewer than five officers with no computers at their disposal.

In 2003, the section made its first huge bust, rescuing a 6-year-old girl from an abuser in the U.S. using skilful detection work. Krawczyk still has a copy of the letter the girl’s family sent their team, thanking them for the difference they’d made — for saving her.

Since then, Toronto’s team has grown to 16 officers who have become worldwide leaders in this sort of work. In 2010, Krawczyk headed the international task force in charge of the massive Project Sanctuary that rescued 25 children and netted 57 of the bad guys.

Only a year later, Krawczyk had his sights set on one more.

Hundreds of pages of search warrants released by a Saint John court that include sworn affidavits by local police officers and chat logs between Krawczyk and the user also detail a painstaking investigation that was taking place on the ground.

As Krawczyk continued to track the user online that spring, local police were also narrowing in on a Saint John home on a street that cuts up a steep hill in the city’s east side — Martha Ave., just a short drive from the small city centre.

On May 10, after tracing the signal to the home shared by a family of four and running criminal checks, Saint John police executed a search warrant. But inside, there was no evidence of child pornography.

Officers soon realized they’d been duped. But the IP address associated with Krawczyk’s online user were confirmed to be coming from the house, leading them to believe someone close by was hacking into the password-protected wireless Internet.

Back in Toronto, Krawczyk said that moment was a “game changer.”

“I do not like them to get away. I don’t want to be outsmarted online. I take it personally,” he said. “You got us once; you’re not going to get away again.”

He wondered why someone would go to the trouble of stealing secure wireless. “What has that person got to lose?”

Donald Snook , a native of Newfoundland, left the province in June 1997 when he was appointed to the Family Services branch of the Salvation Army in Saint John, said spokesperson Maj. Wade Budgell.

In May 2008, he ran for council in Ward 3, encompassing three poverty-stricken neighbourhoods, surpassing the incumbent councillor to win by almost 600 votes.

That year, Snook was listed as living at 575 Martha Ave. by Elections New Brunswick, a subdivided, white vinyl-sided building with blue shutters.

Reportedly a never-married bachelor, Snook raised an unknown number of foster children for 25 years. He became known for advocating for Saint John’s youngest, offering a popular hot lunch program called the Chicken Noodle Club.

On March 23, 2012, two months before Snook would be re-elected as one of three incumbents to keep their seats, the user’s chats with Krawczyk resumed.

“i’m 100% boylover . . . forbidden passion that haunts me,” the user said, according to chat logs contained in the warrant files. “we r not free to love without paying a price sometimes.”

When Krawczyk asked, “where did you find the boys?” the user told him: “all over the place.”

The user also told the officer he was willing to travel with the boys to meet and had nude pictures to trade. Later, Krawczyk saw 1,370 images of what he considered child pornography being made available to other users.

“the hunt of my life,” the user called the constant search for new pictures. “god, it’s a wonder I can do anything else.”

These chats, while heavily blacked out, offer a rare glimpse of the rabbit hole into which Krawczyk so frequently descends.

“I think some people might look and go, ‘That’s gross,’ and ‘How can the police even talk like that?’ ” Krawczyk said in an interview. “You have to do what you have to do.”

In May 2012, the user disappeared again for several months. Krawczyk worried he might have lost contact for good.

“You could tell he was scared of jail and had lots to lose,” the detective said.

But on Sept. 5, the user returned again and resumed chatting.

“u have kids?” Krawczyk asked the user, the logs from that day show.

“no but i do have a few boys i know,” the user said. “I have boys everywhere.”

On Nov. 29, after the RCMP had taken the lead in the investigation, police installed a surveillance camera on a hydro pole that looked down on Snook’s home, the warrants show.

By December, Krawczyk said the user was ramping up his online activity, divulging several details: the person was single, had access to several young boys and lived in New Brunswick.

In Saint John, the investigation was also accelerating.

On Dec. 16, an RCMP technological crime forensic analyst tested the signal strength of devices connected to the router at the Martha Ave. home traced to Krawczyk’s user.

They determined one device with weak signal strength was connecting from outside the home, according to search warrants.

After drive-by signal tests, the analyst determined the device’s signal strength reached its peak outside 575 Martha Ave.

On the morning of Jan. 9 this year, with several centimetres of snow on the ground and an unseasonable wind chill whipping across the hill on Martha Ave., the user was online again proposing a possible webcam session with Krawczyk and one of his boys.

The user’s key for the letter “e” was broken, the search warrants show, making the chat clumsy.

(09/01 07:30) : today aftr school wnat to cam?

Krawczyk chimed in:

(09/01 07:31): man … u must live in a great place that you can just get these kids

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The user responded in a flurry:

(09/01 07:32): ys

(09/01 07:32): vry opn

(09/01 07:32): th boys around hr r vry opn

Several minutes later, the user told Krawczyk there was someone at the door and he had to go.

At the same time, an undercover officer reported knocking on the door at 575 Martha Ave. with no answer.

Krawczyk grew concerned about the prospect of the user bringing a boy home to abuse live on camera.

It was a scene he couldn’t watch play out again.

“Six years ago, someone abused their kid live online in front of me,” Krawczyk said, his voice softening. “He got seven years.”

This time would be different.

“If I know abuse could potentially happen, how do I sleep at night knowing we’re going to let it happen? As a human being, it’s difficult,” he said. “You don’t want to create the problem, you want to stop it.”

Krawczyk contacted his counterparts in Saint John, who he said agreed the risk was too great.

That afternoon, at 4:15 p.m., police said Snook was seen on surveillance camera returning to his home.

Officers moved in on the house again, knocking on the front door and announcing themselves as police before entering “due to exigent circumstances where [blacked out] could be at risk,” according to search warrants filed later.

The warrants detail that Snook, after grabbing his laptop, went dashing for the back door.

He would not escape.

In the morning , as Saint John grappled with the news, many curious spectators and fellow councillors packed a standing-room only courtroom, divided in support, united in disbelief.

Ron and Marie Smith, who live across the street from Snook, said the man they voted for mostly kept to himself.

“It’s just like a ton of bricks hit you between the eyes when you hear something like that,” Ron Smith said.

Local children are also struggling to understand what’s happened, said Bobby Hayes, who runs a non-profit group that supports at-risk youth.

Shortly after Snook’s arrest, Hayes picked up several children for a hot meal when one girl, about 10, left her seat to wander to the front of the bus.

She tapped Hayes on the shoulder. When he turned around he saw she was crying, with 15 other sets of eyes peering out from behind her. Darkness had just fallen and she was scared.

“She said, ‘Bobby, what if he comes after me?’ ” Hayes said. “With everything else they’ve got to tangle with, now they’ve got this.”

Snook, waiving his right to bail, penned a handwritten resignation on lined paper. His lawyer delivered it to Mayor Mel Norton on Jan. 17.

“Regretably [sic] due to the current circumstances I find myself in, I am no longer able to continue in my role as a councillor in the city of Saint John, representing Ward 3,” the letter read.

He will appear again in court on March 11.

For Krawczyk , the hunt is over. But he went to bed the night of Snook’s arrest not sure if all the evidence was there.

Since then, police have seized dozens of items, including computers, hard drives, memory cards and VHS tapes from Snook’s basement. His black 2011 Ford Escape and a Starcraft camper parked in his driveway were also seized.

Despite all he sees online, the detective said he tries not to take his work home with him.

“I always liken it to, I get in my spaceship, I go to work, I go to my planet,” he said. “I do my work and I get back in my spaceship and I go home.”

And he thinks of the girl they saved the first time, a decade ago now.

“I remember the hair standing up on the back of my neck, and just being so excited. And it feels the same every time,” he said. “That’s what we do the work for.”