John Zeretzke


John Edward Zeretzke is an American teacher, flute player, composer, and convicted sex offender. After conducting flute making workshops with school children for many years, he was accused of lewd conduct with children in 2017 and other sex charges in 2019. Many of the charges are related to his flutes.

Teaching

Zeretzke taught music to children and young adults for over 30 years through the Los Angeles Music Center. He also taught summer programs through the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County.

Flutes Across The World

In 2009, Zeretzke founded and directed Flutes Across The World, a humanitarian and educational organization. It is a 501 charitable organization that registered in 2013.
For the program, Zeretzke taught students to make flutes out of PVC piping, corks and hot glue. Each student decorated two, to send to children in the least developed countries. These flutes wound up in the Philippines, Central America and Haiti.

Film scoring

Zeretze composed the soundtracks for:
Zeretze was arrested in 2017 by Los Angeles county police and federal postal inspectors, who accused him of lewd conduct with children, coercing a girl to produce child pornography, attempting to entice another person to send him sexually explicit images, receiving child pornography over the internet, and traveling to the Philippines to engage in sex with minors. He plead not guilty to all charges and was held in the Orange County Jail. The California state attorney general announced on July 8, 2020 that he was sentenced in Orange County Superior Court to 18 years in state prison after pleading guilty to six counts of committing lewd acts against five girls under 14 by tainting their flutes with his semen. The acts were committed between January 1 and April 30, 2017.