Prosecutor Kills Self During NBC Sex Sting
 

(AP) MURPHY, Texas A sting in which police teamed up with "Dateline NBC" to catch online pedophiles was supposed to send a flinty-eyed, Texas-style warning about this Dallas suburb: Don't mess with Murphy.

Instead, it has turned into a fiasco.

One of the 25 men caught in the sting ? a prosecutor from a neighboring county ? committed suicide when police came to arrest him. The Murphy city manager who approved the operation lost his job in the ensuing furor.

And the district attorney is refusing to prosecute any of the men, saying many of the cases were tainted by the involvement of amateurs.

"Certainly these people should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but the fact that this was all done for television cameras raises some questions," said Mayor Bret Baldwin.

It is the first time in nine "Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator" stings across the country in the past year and a half that prosecutors did not pursue charges.

"Dateline" has made prime-time entertainment out of contacting would-be child molesters over the Internet, luring them to a meeting place, and videotaping their humiliating confrontations with reporter Chris Hansen.

"Dateline" works with an activist group called Perverted Justice, which supplies adults who troll Internet chat rooms, posing as underage boys and girls, and try to collect incriminating sex talk.

City manager Craig Sherwood approved such an operation in this well-to-do community of 11,000 after being approached by "Dateline" and Perverted Justice, but he never informed the mayor or the City Council. He said secrecy was necessary for the sting to be effective.

Over four days in November, 24 men were arrested at a two-story home in one of Murphy's newer neighborhoods after allegedly arranging to meet boys or girls there.

Some other suspects contacted Perverted Justice decoys online but never showed up at the house. Among them was Louis Conradt Jr., an assistant prosecutor from neighboring Kauffman County, who allegedly engaged in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy.

As police knocked at his door and a "Dateline" camera crew waited in the street, Conradt shot himself.

His sister, Patricia Conradt, told the City Council that police acted as "a judge, jury and executioner that was encouraged by an out-of-control reality show."

Then, last month, Collin County District Attorney John Roach dropped all charges. He said that in 16 of the cases, he had no jurisdiction, since neither the suspects nor the decoys were in the county during the online chats.

As for the rest of the cases, he said neither police nor NBC could guarantee the chat logs were authentic and complete.

"The fact that somebody besides police officers were involved is what makes this case bad," said Roach, who was informed of the sting in advance but did not participate. "If professionals had been running the show, they would have done a much better job rather than being at the beck and call of outsiders."

As details of the suicide emerged, Murphy's mayor, City Council and most of its residents learned for the first time that potential molesters were being lured to their city. Many were furious.

"They can chase predators all they want, but they shouldn't do it in a populated area with children, two blocks from an elementary school," said Lisa Watson, 33, who lives down the road from the sting house and has three children and another on the way.

Bryan Whorton, who lives with his wife and baby across the street from the house, said his neighborhood was put in danger. Cars sped up and down the street and police sprinted from hiding spots, guns drawn, to arrest suspects, he said. One suspect dropped a bag of crack, Whorton said.

"This is a family community. It didn't look kosher at all," he said.

Two weeks ago, the City Council voted to buy out the city manager's contract for $255,000.

NBC's Hansen said Murphy is the only place the show has encountered such resistance.

"I don't want to get involved in the DA's business or the police business," he said. "I can tell you in the other locations, these issues did not come up."

Eric Nichols, a Texas deputy attorney general, said that when law enforcement authorities pull an Internet sex sting, officers posing as decoys follow strict rules. Detailed chat logs are kept to ensure that "sex talk" is initiated by the potential predator. That way, a defendant cannot claim entrapment.

Eric Chase, a defense attorney specializing in sex crimes, said stings are the job of police, not TV crews. "Police should not be abdicating a very important function to either private organizations or entertainment organizations," he said.


for those of you that want to read it on thier page!


I knew it was a matter of time before something like this happened.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~jaherne...s/destruct.jpg

Did he use this to kill himself?

Yup who didnt see this coming?

Well, luckily he saved the tax payers a bunch of legal fees

I was thinking that he might have. You know the state guys have all the good toys.

Im not so sure about that. This could turn into a real legal nightmare.

While the idea behind what Dateline is doing is a good one. It's gotten out of control now and just seems like a baited witchhunt to me.

wasnt this on tv like 4 months ago?

That's exactly what I was thinking.

booo fuckin hoo, fuckin' pedo kills himself because he has a high position job and doesnt wanna live through the embarassment, he shouldnt have been looking for little kids to fuck in the first place, may he burn in hell.

Is this a new suicide or the same one that happened many moons ago? are we up to two suicides resulting from the show now?

yeah.... maybe its the lunar cycle or something but people keep posting old news like it happened this morning.

annoying.

this happened last year .... aired 3-4 months ago


I posted about it back then when I seen it on the actual Dateline Show

Dateline started with a pretty good idea. That good idea has all but been lost in a charge to keep ratings and keep people tuned in.

I applaud then for their work, but they really need to be watching the professionals do the work and not setting these things up themselves. The prosecutor in that area is probably right to say that "amateurs" shouldn't be involved. If the Sheriff or DA wants to set up a sting, dateline should report and possibly run hidden cams... but putting thier guy in the front and running the setups themselves is pretty questionable.

Can you imagine Dateline signed on here, soliciting for toolbar installs and traffic from trojans? Too many people here would go down.

Odd that your source is just reporting on it now. This happened back in November.

yeah this happened a while ago i thought

Dateline only does it for the ratings...whenever they air those predator shows, the ratings go up...

Do the predators get paid for their appearance on the show? Do they have to sign a release for the footage to be released?

LOL too funny, 'cause it's true.

I just found that, and it was just posted on the site. Dont bitch at me about it being old.


As for the show, I think that they may very easily be fucking with the chats that they show and all sorts of tricky shit. Someone should scam them a bit, and see if they are

yeah, this happened a LONG ass time ago

Precisely what I was thinking. :thumbsup

Okay, maybe the Dateline sting is somewhat out of control (as they say), but who mourns for a dead pedo or the fact taxpayer money doesn't have to pay to charge, convict and house this scum in prison.

And how many potential child victims have been saved by his suicide?

Boo fuckin' hoo is perfect.

Personally, I don't give a fuck what their motivations are. If if succeeds in putting even one pedophile behind bars or curtailing the actions of would-be pedophiles, then I think it's great.

I was kinda wondering the same thing. How the hell are they getting away with showing these guys faces on national TV.

I guess it's because they call it's a news investigation or the likes.. We all know it's nothing more than reality TV at this point.

Fuck anybody that will protect pedos in any way. Dateline is doing a very good thing.

I'm glad you posted this because I didn't hear about it when it happened. I stopped watching it after a while.

I hope they keep doing it...

Yeah. Fuck that constitution with its ridiculous right to a fair trial and protection from cruel and unusual punishment. We don't need no fancy "laws" and "judges" and "trials". All we need is sensationalist reporting.

Amirite?

God, whenever someone mentions the word "pedophilia", it's as if everyone suddenly loses 50 IQ points for the duration of the discussion.

Fucker deserved it.

One less fuckup in the gene pool.

He shot himself. He was his own judge, jury and executioner.

I was responding to a post about the Dateline perverted justice thing. Something that punishes suspected pedophiles without a trial by giving them the rather cruel and unusual punishment of nationwide, televised humiliation.

I know nothing about this case, so I can't say anything specific about it. However, I could imagine that even an innocent person might consider suicide when faced with the prospect of being portrayed as a pedophile in front of his entire family, all his friends, all his coworkers and pretty much the rest of the country.

My point isn't that this particular guy doesn't deserve his fate, but that the entire Dateline Predators thing is a disgusting example of vigilante "justice" without any legal basis.

and what about if it accidently gets innocent people ?


Ill give you a "hypothetical " scenario.

Some guy gets on a chatroom late on a friday night after he gets home from the bar.. starts chatting up the women. starts chatting away to someone in an open chatroom. Lets say he goes of to the bathroom and misses the message where the cop/plant says she is 15.

Thats all it takes. , now buddy comes back and agrees to meet the girl thinking she is over 18 , and bam he is suddenly a child molester..


Maybe the prosecutre who killed himself was actually doing his own sting , or maybe even thought he was trying to help a confused kid and didnt plan on any molesting.. Once he got busted he knows nobody is going to believe him..

Now im not saying this always happens , but if it happens once, then it kind of defeats the purpose.

The main problem is the people behind these "stings" are PAID to produce results.. meaning the more results the better exposure the more money they make. if they cant find any victims they dont get paid..

Police arent paid this way (per arrest )for good reason..

This whole thing is getting sensationalized and totally out of control. People watch something on TV and don't understand what the heck it is and think the world is full of pedos.

If you think a 16 yr old girl is hot these days, you are considered a pedo.

American "justice" and the do gooders are out of control.

best eva! xD


mmm, riiiight...

Im sorry, but in many countries a 16 year old girl is LEGAL. That does not make anyone a pedo.

A PEDO is for guys who like prepubescent children. A guy who digs high school chicks, is not a pedophile. A pervert, yea, but not a pedo.

Though it may be illegal in some countries, in others it is not. Hardly worthy of ruining someone's life over, when just in your own country (USA), just 100 years ago grown men would marry and breed 13 year old girls, legally.

American media and law is fucked up beyond repair.

Good example. Another one:

Nerdy college guy of, say, 23. Has never had a date (they exist - I've met them), and for the first time in his life, he thinks a girl wants to actually meet him. "Girl" says she's 15, he's not specifically planning on doing anything other than meeting her.

Is that guy a dangerous pedo? Or just a desperate guy who thinks "hey, she'll be legal in a year, so I'll just keep dating her for a year and I'm in!"? If it's the latter, should his entire life be ruined because of it?

I'm all for the police making an effort to catch and lock up child molesters. However, vigilantes setting up dubious traps and using media exposure as a form of punishment that is not controlled by fair trials simply isn't the way to stop the real problems here.

The same goes for a number of US states.

but they haven't put anyone behind bars and they haven't curt tailed action...have you seen the repeat offender?

Even so, I was mainly pointing out this country's fascination with pedophilia...remember the ratings for Maury Povich when he had wild teens on the program? When he stopped doing those shows, his ratings slid.

Our fascination with it has gotten so big that we have a lot of people who want to take away due process and fair trials...we've created this mob mentality and while that seems like a good thing, it becomes a huge problem.

I heard about this a while back.

Good riddens I hope he suffered while he sucked his last breath.

Not that I take Wikipedia as the authoritative word - it IS interesting to read their definition of pedophile as I tend to think it is in line with the way many folks also think of the definition:

"Pedophilia or pædophilia (see spelling differences) is the paraphilia of being sexually attracted primarily or exclusively to prepubescent or early pubertal children. Pedophilia is described as a mental disorder by standard diagnosis manuals, including the DSM IV and ICD-10. A person with this attraction is called a pedophile or paedophile.[1]

In contrast to the generally accepted medical definition, the term pedophile is also used colloquially to denote an adult who is sexually attracted to children or sexually attracted to adolescents below the local age of consent,[2] as well as those who have sexually abused a child."

He took the easy way out. There are too many sick bastards in this country. While it is heartless to say (or some would think), I'm glad that he is dead.

Whats a "Sex Sting"?
Gawd damn Media outlets keep making up fucked up wordz...

Pisses me off.

On a related note, I starting watching some of this shit for the first time on YouTube today, and it's fucking insane. It's hilarious hearing what these guys have to say, then watch them getting tackled by the police. I guess it's a fresh change from watching the crackheads and domestic abusers on COPS.

The crazy thing is that these guys are all from different walks of life, from teachers to students, from criminal investigators to doctors... no adult webmasters yet. :1orglaugh

rerun or another guy?

One day one of these guys is going to be carrying a gun and when Chris Hansen walks out he's going to blow his face off.

When you commit a crime you waive your rights. I am not sure, but I don't think they have to get a release or pay them an appearance fee since they are in the midst of a crime. :2 cents:

I agree. :thumbsup

.50 cal desert eagle - BOOM!