The mom insisted that the photos she took with her pink cell phone were "fun," that her daughters, ages 2 and 6, enjoyed playing dress-up. She even showed them how to pose as strippers.

"Look at her smiling and laughing," she told Winona police about one of the pictures. "She loves it. I mean, they're happy."

Then, investigators say, Donna Mary Zauner sent the photos of her girls, their genitalia exposed, to Alec James Tafolla. It was what he wanted for giving Zauner and the girls rides, first from Las Vegas to New York and then from New York to Winona, Zauner allegedly told police.

A federal grand jury indicted Tafolla on Wednesday for producing and receiving child pornography. Zauner also has been charged in federal court with producing child pornography, although she has not been indicted, indicating that she may be cooperating with authorities.

The case came to light last October when Alan Light of Winona said he found an e-mail account on his computer that he didn't recognize. Light told police that he and Zauner had earlier met online and that she subsequently moved to Winona with her daughters to live in his house.

After about a month, though, Zauner decided to move out. On Oct. 6, Light told police, he came home to an empty house. He checked his computer history and found the e-mail account. When he looked at the sent e-mails, Light said, he found a photo sent to Tafolla's e-mail address of Zauner's 6-year-old daughter wearing only a T-shirt with her legs spread and her genitals displayed.

"I don't know him at all, but he came to pick her up," Light said of Tafolla in an interview on Wednesday. "He left the e-mail on the computer and I called police."

According to an affidavit filed in the case, Winona police found Tafolla, Zauner and her daughters at a Winona hotel. In an interview with police, Zauner allegedly admitted taking the photos of the girls in exchange for Tafolla driving her family across country.

She told police that she had met Tafolla after placing an ad on Craigslist, seeking a ride from Las Vegas to New York. Zauner said she was fleeing an abusive relationship. On the drive from Las Vegas, Tafolla allegedly told Zauner that "he had deviant sexual desires involving children." Tafolla told Zauner that he regularly viewed child pornography and that his ex-fiancee allowed her 5-year-old daughter to rub her vagina on his penis, according to a federal affidavit.

Three weeks after the trip from Las Vegas to New York, Zauner called Tafolla for a ride to Winona so she could move in with Light, investigators say. Tafolla allegedly agreed, in exchange for Zauner sending him pornographic pictures of her daughters.

In one of the photos, Zauner's 2-year-old daughter is seated in a car seat, wearing only a T-shirt. In others, an adult hand is seen on the girl's genitalia. Zauner admitted the hand was hers, according to the affidavit.

Tafolla and Zauner allegedly insisted to police several times that the girls enjoyed having their photographs taken. But at one point in her questioning, when confronted with the pictures, Zauner allegedly told police that she "should have erased those images yesterday."

James Walsh • 612-673-7428