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In Texas, 'Catch a Predator' suspects off the hook

The prosecutor says evidence is tainted. Meanwhile, the city seethes.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 29, 2007

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

Instead, it 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.

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.

Other suspects contacted decoys online but did not show up at the house. Among them was Louis Conradt Jr., an assistant prosecutor from Kauffman County, who allegedly engaged in an explicit chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy.

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

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.

As details of the suicide emerged, Murphy's mayor, City Council and most of its residents learned 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.

Eric Nichols, a Texas deputy attorney general, said that when authorities pull a sting, officers posing as decoys follow strict rules. Logs are kept to ensure that "sex talk" is initiated by the potential predator. That way, a defendant can't claim entrapment.

[Last modified June 29, 2007, 00:51:49]