Updated

A Pennsylvania medical student told a classmate he was trying to recruit a New Zealand woman and her 4-year-old daughter to be his sex slaves and an FBI search found him to be in possession of child pornography, authorities said.

Jeremy Noyes claimed he wanted to use the woman and her daughter to start a "society" of sex slaves that would live on a farm or an island, the classmate told the FBI.

The FBI said in an affidavit filed Aug. 13 that it began investigating Noyes, 30, of Erie, after someone tipped them off about his efforts to recruit the New Zealand woman and girl to come to the United States.

The tipster, using a pseudonym, submitted a complaint on an FBI Web page in June in which she wrote, "Noyes has threatened to kill me and my family ... (and) will not rest until we are dead. All the evidence you need is in his computer and that little girl's mind. Please save her."

Investigators got warrants to search Noyes' two e-mail accounts and found "numerous images of prepubescent minors engaged in sexually explicit activity," the FBI wrote in the affidavit.

The images Noyes is accused of sending and receiving do not depict the New Zealand woman or her daughter. Special Agent William Crowley, the FBI's western Pennsylvania spokesman, on Tuesday could not say if authorities have determined whether they even exist.

Noyes was in custody Tuesday and faces a hearing before a federal magistrate in Erie on Thursday to determine if he will remain jailed until he stands trial. He is represented by a federal public defender whose office has a policy of not commenting to the media.

The tipster's note said Noyes claimed he had been instructing the girl's mother to train the girl to perform bizarre sexual acts, to expose her to pornography and to mete out "extreme punishments such as locking her in a closet with no food for three days."

The note led the FBI to interview a woman who attended school with Noyes at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine. The classmate told the FBI she had dated Noyes and acted as his sex slave.

She also detailed Noyes' plans for the New Zealand woman, who is pregnant, and her daughter, the affidavit said.

Noyes wanted them to move in with him and that "his long term intent was to assemble a 'family' of female sex slaves that would begin with" the woman and her daughter.

"Noyes intended to impregnate (the 4-year-old) when she was between the ages of 8 and 14 and then continue to breed the future offspring that would result from his plan," Noyes' classmate told the FBI. "Noyes intends to buy a farm or an island where he could put his new society together."

The FBI investigation said it found women who corresponded with Noyes online and, in turn, the child-sex images in his e-mail account earlier this month.

A spokesman for the medical school said that confidentiality laws prevent him from commenting on Noyes' status at the school.

Noyes faces up to 40 years in prison if he is convicted of the child pornography charges. The magistrate on Thursday must determine whether he too likely to flee prosecution or too dangerous to remain free pending trial.