The searches included such things as baby vaginas, and underage girls.

Were these just searches or were there CP images recovered? I can't recall from my prior reading of the details.

If it's searches, well that isn't a crime. Also it's unlikely to find any real results for those illegal categories on Google, Yahoo, Excite, AOL whatever, even back then. You can type "baby vagina" and "underage girl" all day long, but you're not going to find those things readily on the "clearnet" internet. Even prior to 2005 there were very strong filter laws in place for illegal images, both at ISP and search engine level.

As far as gore pics, or any adult based porn, none of that is illegal.

None of this is excusing anyhting, I'm just trying to sort the facts out.