Wednesday, November 11, 2026 -Thomas Markle, the estranged father of Meghan Markle, was sent back to jail on Tuesday, November 10, after cutting off an electronic ankle monitor he was ordered to wear as a condition of home confinement.
US Magistrate Judge Lindsay Griffin found that Thomas Markle
had violated the terms of his pretrial release and ordered him returned to
federal custody without bond at a hearing in Tampa, Florida, court records
showed.
Thomas Markle, 82, had been arrested and charged
on Friday with a single federal count of possessing child s£xual abus£
material, including two explicit photographs of himself posed with an undressed
underage girl and other images of him with children in various stages of
undress.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in court as part of the
criminal complaint lodged against him, one of the photos showed an unclad girl
in a room that appears to be part of a motel chain in the
Philippines, where Thomaz Markle previously resided and where authorities
initiated an investigation of him last month.
The affidavit says federal agents seized the material in
question, including photographic slides, film negatives and books, from two
storage units Markle had rented in Los Angeles since 2008.
Commenting on the case on Friday, FBI Director Kash Patel
said Markle "targeted innocent children and sought to steal their
innocence through his criminal actions."
Markle, who most recently resided at an assisted-living
facility in Lakeland, Florida, near Tampa, denied possessing s£xually explicit
photos of children when such allegations first surfaced, telling the Daily Mail
they were untrue and "sick lies."
No plea was entered during Markle's initial court hearing
last Friday, Novmber 6, and the judge permitted him to be released from
custody on condition that he submit to home detention and the wearing of an
electronic monitoring device.
But federal prosecutors said they asked the judge to revoke
home-release and keep him locked up pending trial after he was found to have
cut the ankle bracelet off early Monday morning, November 9.
Agreeing that Markle's housing situation had "become
untenable," Griffin granted prosecutors' request. Markle was then re-arrested
and returned to federal custody, according to the US
Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, where the case against him was brought.
The judge stipulated that Markle was to be kept in a
detention facility "separate, to the extent practicable, from" the
general jail population. She also ordered Markle to undergo a "prompt
medical evaluation."
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