The man who oversaw the New Orleans Police Department’s child abuse investigations in the 1970s and 1980s, before he was revealed to himself be a pedophile, landed back in jail Wednesday for allegedly breaking sex-offender registration laws.

Four years after he was ordered released from federal custody, Stanley Carl Burkhardt was arrested on accusations that he left suggestive comments under pictures of young men on a photo-sharing website without having first provided his email address and Flickr.com account to authorities, as he is required to do.

Burkhardt’s arrest comes several months after one of two men who accused the former cop of sexually molesting him decades ago publicly claimed that Burkhardt had also bragged about having a hand in the killing of a teenage boy found dead in the Mississippi River in New Orleans in 1982. Those new allegations prompted the NOPD’s cold homicide case squad to give the drowning death of the teen, Edward Wells, a fresh look last fall.

+4 Mysterious 1982 death, new accuser become part of probe into convicted pedophile and ex-NOPD cop The New Orleans Police Department is intensifying its scrutiny of a man who oversaw the force's child-abuse investigations before he was unmas…

This spring, Louisiana State Police, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office and investigators in Mississippi began re-examining the cases of three other teens who were killed in a 21-month span in the late 1970s and who were known to frequent the same sections of the French Quarter as Wells.

Officials have been careful to avoid calling Burkhardt, 68, a suspect in any death or killing.

But the State Police detective who obtained the warrant leading to Burkhardt’s arrest Wednesday is among the investigators revisiting the strangulation deaths of Dennis Turcotte, Raymond Richardson and Daniel Dewey, who were found dead in communities around the region between February 1978 and November 1979.

A State Police spokesman on Wednesday said detectives had also searched Burkhardt’s home in connection with the recent online commenting and that “additional charges may be possible” as the investigation continues. He didn’t say what those charges could be.

According to court records, a New Orleans police detective told state troopers that an anonymous informant in June reported that Burkhardt was using a photo-sharing website and leaving “disturbing comments” under images of young boys published by other users.

One comment from a user named “Stan Burkhardt” said “long legged laddie looking for luv :)” under a photo of a shirtless boy on Flickr.com, State Police investigator Raymond Hughes wrote in the court documents. Another comment from the same user read “Boys in their unguarded moments are essentially sensual,” under a photo of a boy in a T-shirt who had apparently just run a race.

Investigators later established that an email address tracing back to Burkhardt was associated with the user name in question, which was set up in May, Hughes wrote.

Hughes said he also secured evidence showing the user name had been accessed from a cellphone associated with Burkhardt, as well as from a computer at a Bywater library. The library’s surveillance system captured footage of Burkhardt there about the same time, Hughes wrote.

While the material he commented on was apparently legal, Burkhardt had failed to share his email address and Flickr.com account with authorities — something he was required to do after a series of child pornography and abuse convictions dating back to the 1980s and 1990s required him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, Hughes said.

Further, Hughes said, he suspected Burkhardt had somehow removed a stamp identifying him as a convicted sex offender from his driver’s license.

The stamp was on a copy of the driver’s license on file with the NOPD, which is in charge of monitoring his sex offender registry. But the stamp was missing from a copy of the driver’s license he provided when he applied for a job at Harrah’s Casino in the spring, Hughes alleged.

The casino let Burkhardt begin working on May 14 in an undisclosed capacity while a background check on him was in progress, wrote Hughes. The check determined Burkhardt was a convicted sex offender, and he was suspended on July 1, Hughes added.

All of that led Hughes to ask Orleans Parish Magistrate Commissioner Brigid Collins on Monday to sign off on a warrant accusing Burkhardt of failing to register as a sex offender or to provide notification that he was one. Collins granted the request, and Burkhardt was booked Wednesday morning.

Burkhardt largely ran the NOPD’s child abuse investigations in the 1970s and 1980s. But he was ousted from the force and imprisoned in 1987 after being convicted of mailing sexually explicit images of underage boys to undercover agents.

He later pleaded guilty to molesting a 9-year-old relative as well as receiving child pornography, landing him in federal prison.

To keep him behind bars, federal authorities resorted to a law enabling them to secure lifelong commitments of people deemed to be “sexually dangerous.”

A federal judge in North Carolina in 2011 found Burkhardt met those conditions and ordered him committed for life. However, after Burkhardt underwent nearly four years of treatment, a different judge ordered him released, though still under lifetime federal supervision.

At the 2011 civil proceeding, a man named Richard Windmann testified to being sexually abused as a teen by Burkhardt. Last year, Windmann described to reporters how Burkhardt would brag about killing Wells, would show him photos of Wells’ body and would threateningly ask Windmann if he wanted to end up “like Eddie” — whose case Burkhardt was investigating as a possible murder at one point.

About the same time, a man named Vic Groomer told police that he was about 8 when Burkhardt began abusing him. He said Burkhardt would menacingly show him crime-scene photos of various dead boys, including one who matched the description of Wells.

Authorities haven’t booked Burkhardt on Windmann and Groomer’s accusations of abuse, which date back to the 1970s.

Burkhardt’s bail following his arrest Wednesday was set at $10,000. He could face prison time if convicted of breaking the state’s sex-offender registration law.