Chris Hansen: Why To Catch a Predator Really Ended

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1:03But we took it to a different level. There has never been anything quite like the show that you do and that we could combine our ability to wire a house and their ability that converted justice to be decoys, posing as children online. I didn't know if anybody was going to show up. So we rented a home and in two and a half days. Who are you? Who are you? You tell me first? What did you think was going to happen? On Chris Hansen. On Chris Hansen. Don Chris Hansen. The host of the infamous Tecacher Predator. Take a seat. No, I don't want to take a seat. Have a seat. Robert Pattinson is playing him in a new movie. You see how this looks, right? How has it changed your view of humanity making this show? We've changed sex tourists in Cambodia and counterfeit pharmaceutical salespeople in China and we're doing an investigation into the gaming platform Roblox, a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. Wadley popular with children who have found all kinds of disturbing behavior. You think it's about toughest. You're trying to keep child victims quiet.

2:03How could you not be outraged? All you making crimes happen that otherwise would not have happened. And give you an example. He's never been in trouble before. This is going to ruin his life. He's so sorry. He'll never do it again. And then you look in his backpack. And then you find a loaded pistol. What happened with the man who took his own life? Chris Hansen, welcome to the show. Well, thank you Andrew. It's a pleasure to have you. It's nice to see you in person. I know. I know. Over the pond is usually chat. Yeah, it's not usually nice for most people to see you in person. Exactly, especially in a warehouse like this. You think I'll be doing a sting. It is scary. Like seeing you just come out of a room. It frightens people. It frightens people. So you're still doing to catch a predator, but it's under different names. Well, we call it takedown with Chris Hansen now. So we've got about 250 new episodes of takedown. We do this all around the country. And we expand just about every month, the different law enforcement agencies with which we work. And so people can watch this on my streaming network, TrueBlue, which is

3:07watchtrueblue.com. And then we have a YouTube channel. And then on my podcast, we update on predators I've caught all the previous cases up until the ones that we do now, what happens to these guys, what sentenced did they receive? What have they done with their lives and all sort of thing? And the other podcast is have a seat with Chris Hansen, which is more of an interview type podcast. I see it's I don't know if everyone's seen the show like a lot, maybe half the audience would have seen it and half might not have. I was like 12 years old, 13 years old, or glued to the TV with my little brother. We're just watching episode after episode because there has never been I don't think anything quite like the show that you do and did. Well, you know, we didn't know what we were getting into quite honestly. I became aware of an online watchdog group called Proverted Justice. And I started to think if we could combine our ability to wire a house with cameras and microphones and their ability to be decoys, posing as children

4:13online, it could be compelling. Now, they were already doing this. And when somebody would agree to meet a child and exploit them, they would post their identity on their website. And sometimes law enforcement would take action. But we took it to a different level. Still, I didn't know if anybody was going to show up. So we rented a home not far from here and that page, Long Island. And in two and a half days, 17 men, including a New York City firefighter, surfaced in that investigation. And that was before we partnered with law enforcement. We had a security man there, Ron Knight, who you've seen in many of the episodes. I think a warm out. He's retired now, but he was there and took precautions. But each of these guys showed up, was confronted by me and left. And the only one who faced criminal charges was the firefighter because, you know, he was well known and the FBI picked up that case.

5:13And so we did it again in Washington, DC outside of DC and herned in Virginia. And even more guys showed up and more prominent guys showed up. And we still didn't work with authorities. But the Fairfax Virginia Police Department and the FBI did make a lot of these cases. But it became very clear after that point that we needed to partner with law enforcement. And that was the only socially responsible way to proceed because you want these guys to face justice. Yeah. And so fast forward to today, hundreds and hundreds of guys later, we always partner with law enforcement. Law enforcement provides the decoy posing as the child. And that way there's no chain of custody evidence issues. It's a clean prosecution. I still get to do my part, of course. We collaborate closely with law enforcement. But, you know, that's why we have a 99 plus percent conviction rate. That's a successful prosecution rate.

6:14I think one of the things I really always liked about your show is that, because you do see these kind of, especially now with the internet, Instagram stuff, the Pido Hunters or whatever we're talking about. And they tend to be very aggressive and they get these guys and they go, what have you done? Right with an English accent or whatever. You've got kind of a Louis through, you know, Louis through here. And then you can see the British presenter just this kind of calm. Right. Throw it would be Louis the row, maybe don't know. But, but, uh, hey, have a seat. And you actually look on it. What is it? Look on it. Yes, it is. Exactly. Yeah. Was that planned? Where does that come from? Well, I think anybody can come out and beat these guys over the head, you know, uh, and shame them and embarrass them. And of course, there is shame and embarrassment. And there should be what a man has caught doing something like this. And it's not going to be a long with it. If you don't want to be shamed and embarrassed, don't show up to try to sexually exploit a child. Right. What did you think was going to happen? And what about the shame and embarrassment that the child faces throughout the years after being exploited?

7:14So, uh, but my goal has always been and continues to be today to get inside these guys' minds. Try to have some sort of a discussion that allows us to understand how the mind of our predator works. You can understand that whether it's a sex crime, a crime against children, a financial crime, anything else, you can better protect yourself. And that's always been my mantra when it comes to this. And, and, you know, again, anybody can beat them up. And I do that sometimes. And sometimes it's justified, but mostly I want them to talk to me. And we see this because in different jurisdictions, Andrew, we have different methods of operation. In some law enforcement jurisdictions, they like to secure the man first, have a word with them, and then we get a chance to talk. In others, we get to do as we've done traditionally, make the first contact, have the conversation, and then law enforcement steps in. Some jurisdictions, it's a bit of a hybrid situation.

8:16All of them work. All of them are compelling. I'm fine with each. But what we see sometimes is when law enforcement gets to the first approach, they tell the law enforcement people to pound sand. Yet when I walk in to pound sand, I'm not going to talk to you, you know, go away. I don't know the expression. F you, you know, that's a universal sign, F you, right. And then they get star struck with me. They become a fanboy and they'll talk to me for an hour. So it works differently with different guys and different situations. But I think part of the reason why they talk is because of my approach. There's almost nothing like your show. That's why I keep saying it because there is this kind of dilemma. I mean, there are several dilemmas. I'm sure you've addressed them all a million times. But the one when I'm watching it, I'm thinking, okay, this guy's come in, he wants to do horrible things to a child. It's terrible. He needs to be arrested. And then you're saying, have a seat. You want to talk. So now there are two kind of incentives as the incentive for good television, which is why you do this in the first, you know, you're making a show, right.

9:19But then there's the incentive for the police officers to like just arrest the guy. Right. And I've seen the officers helping you. They're saying to the guy, go go and sit down and talk to Chris. How is that legally and what is going on there? Well, legally, I mean, they've given up their regional expectation for privacy when they walked into a strange house or walked into a public place trying to commit a felony. We've seen the commission of a felony in real time. But what about the from the police's suspects? Of course, maybe they're a cause. They've witnessed the crime. They've got the chats. The chats are committed. Why they helping you? Because I think that because we coordinate with them, it encourages them to go do this work that's important. It creates a deterrence, hopefully by showing these guys on television. And it sends a message to each individual community that this sort of activity isn't going to be condoned here. So there's a kind of symbiotic relationship. The police now look like Chris did a cooperative relationship.

10:20And again, it works differently in different jurisdictions. I see what you're getting at. You know, and I know that the rules of media engagement with law enforcement are much different in the UK than they are here. They have a lot more latitude with which to work. I don't think we can do the show the way we do it in the UK. And people have wanted me to do that in the UK forever and ever. I know it's very popular over there. And the podcasts are outside of the US, the most popular in the UK. And I appreciate that. You know, we have a good audience over here. You can't do it. You can't do it. And you can't... Not the way that we do it. Because the police would just be like, no, okay, we're not doing the show. It's not so much the police don't want to do it. I think the police understand the value of doing it. I think the laws in terms of identifying a suspect before the case has been completely adjudicated are different in the UK than the US. I think that's the rub. So are you able here to release the episodes before? He's charged with the crime.

11:20Wow. I mean, it happened. It's reality. We watched it. We can't even report online. We can't even understand that. That's the big difference between the US and the UK. It can be very frustrating. We're waiting to hear who just killed a politician, for example, in the UK right now. That's happening. We're like, what's happening? We want to know. Yeah. We deserve to know. Right. But then I suppose they... Well, I was going to say they might not be guilty or whatever. But I mean, we've actually watched... Right. We've seen the show. And, you know, there's the opportunity to say this is what happened. I was found not guilty trial for this reason. You know, but this isn't some really nearly accusatory situation where we don't have evidence. We do investigate reporting all the time here that points to culprits of all sorts of sorted acts, where there haven't been criminal charges. And because we have that freedom of speech here in the United States and the freedom of the media,

12:22the media is actually able to take the lead on some of these cases. Epstein, right? Without civil lawsuits and lawyers going after damages for their clients who were abused in the Epstein scandal, we wouldn't see these criminal charges take place. Without the reporting of, for instance, the Miami Herald, we wouldn't have seen Epstein indict it because the Miami Herald got these survivors to speak up and go public. A lot of them were Jane Does in these lawsuits. So we have a more proactive situation here, historically. And it's important, I think, to be proactive on this stuff. You know, look, law enforcement is tired of responding to sex crimes against children, right, when it's already happened. It wants to be proactive, prevent these crimes from happening.

13:22And if you find these predators in a sting like this, the chances are they can be successfully prosecuted, punished, and maybe stop them from committing crime in the future. Is it a problem that they don't go away for long enough? In some cases, it is. I think it's a problem. You know, and it varies from state to state and even county to county. We have jurisdictions where, for instance, in Polk County, Florida, there was a guy who was arrested, and they also found trial pornography on his phone. And so that enhanced the criminal case against him. He was offered a 10-year plea deal. He refused. He went to trial. He was found guilty. The judge sent him away for natural life in prison. Gone. And this is a relatively young guy. I think it was in his 30s. So that's a pretty serious sentence.

14:24You know, we have other guys who have been caught in the gun probation and registration is a sex offender. I see that as a win. Maybe it's not justice in my eyes. But I see it as a win because we know who that person is. They are on the radar of law enforcement, and we can keep track of them. It's hard watching, isn't it? Because you watch it, and there's part of you that's going, oh my god, this guy's life's over. And you feel almost sorry for them. You know, sometimes I have to remind myself that this guy was about to abuse a child. I'll give you an example. So we're down in Livingston, Parish, Louisiana. Very successful sting. Great law enforcement agency. And a young man comes in, 2021 backpack. And yeah, he swoops in and tries to make a romantic advance on the child. And he knows he's been told that this is somebody who's 14, 15 years old. And I go to interview him, and he's giving me the sob story about, you know,

15:27how hard his life is, and he was just trying to have a relationship and trying to meet somebody. And on and on and on. He's never been in trouble before. There's going to ruin his life. He's so sorry, he'll never do it again. And you do. I mean, you know, I'm a man of a certain age who has children older than that. Right? And then you look at his backpack. And then you find a loaded pistol in his backpack. And then you have to wonder, what would have happened? How would he have used that pistol if the girl didn't agree to make the porn video as he wanted? Or if it had gone bad in some way and he wanted to get rid of the girl, the evidence? What would have happened then? What was the purpose of having that loaded pistol in his backpack? And suddenly you feel a little less sorry for that fellow. Do you have to remind yourself of that as well because they're giving you a lot of sub stories?

16:29Right. There are a lot of sub stories. And I think that's why, you know, these cases are so fascinating. You know, and we just finished the most recent thing which took place in Marion County, Florida, Neural Caled. We had 58 guys surfaced in six days, which is a record number. Now you would think that as time has gone by in the 22 years we've been conducting these investigations, you would think that the numbers would start to dwindle. And sometimes we do a sting and we don't see anybody for a day. But then the next day we see four, five, six, whatever it is. Different areas, different times, different circumstances. There's no template for this, right? But to get 58 and six days, and this was a massive effort, a lot of different law enforcement agencies involved led by the Marion County Sheriff's Office, is stunning to me. And the kinds of cases that we saw there, things that I've never seen before in 22 years.

17:29Guys, work a day guys with jobs who showed up in the parking lot of a mall, you know, to meet somebody they thought was the dad of a seven and 14-year-old child, wanting to go into a target store and watch them, surveil them, and then agree to go back to their house for, you know, unspeakable, sexual acts against children. I mean, this stuff is going on out there. And the fact that these guys are so comfortable entering into a discussion about this in a sting operation scenario leads me to believe that it's happening in real life, that there are adults trafficking children for these nefarious purposes. How has it changed your view of humanity making this show? Well, I've always been... That's a good question. I've always been very careful, I think. This is careful as I am capable of being, to not adopt too dark of a view of humanity. I mean, you know, I'm still pretty optimistic guy in spite of it all,

18:31in spite of the things we see and we've seen. I've been around the world. You know, we've chased sex tourists in Cambodia and counterfeit pharmaceutical salespeople in China and child slave labor directors in India. I mean, we've seen it all. Al Qaeda is selling blood diamonds in West Africa. I've seen a lot of stuff. And, you know, continually with the takedown investigations that are on true blue, my streaming network. But, you know, you have to get away from it for a minute. You have to, you know, understand that you have a duty to do the job that people expect you to do, and you do it well, and then you have to escape it for a minute. And realize that, you know, as much of it as there is, it's not definitive the whole society. I mean, it says some things about our society, but it's not everybody who's involved in it, obviously. I think I heard one in a hundred attracted to children.

19:32You know, I'm always hesitant to assign a number like that. I remember back in the early days of the Predator investigations, there was a number floating around that at any given time, there are 50,000 Predators looking for children online. And somebody called it into question and it became a huge national debate. The harmony out there, well, we don't know. It's the honest answer. It's a ubiquitous problem. Could be five million. Could be five thousand, depends on what time of day and who's out there and what's happening. But what I can tell you is, it's growing. It's become a bigger problem over the last 22 years we've been investigating it. And the reason is, because there are so many more social media platforms, upon which adults can approach children. They're gaming platforms. We recently, and we're doing another episode on this, completed an investigation into the gaming platform Roblox. Yeah.

20:32And we call it dangerous games. And we found all kinds of disturbing behavior on Roblox and a lack of diligence in some aspects when it comes to policing the platform by this, the leadership of this multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. Wildly popular with children across the board. We talked to Schlepp, who's an advocate, who was abused as a child and went back to expose predators on the platform. The company had a great opportunity to enlist him as an ambassador. They chose not to do so. They battled with him and banned him from the side. Summer is kids meant freedom. No homework, teachers or school. Mint Mobile Summer Sale brings it back. All plans even unlimited are $15 a month. Freedom from big wireless gimmicks and gotchas. When I'm in the US, I use Mint. Easy setup, reliable service, great coverage and real savings. You get high speed data and unlimited talk and text on T-Mobile, the nation's largest 5G network.

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22:34Your California to Vegas connection. Details at Yamavar.com must be 21 or older to enter participate. Please gamble responsibly. What does that tell you? They don't know if they're being sued by attorneys general across the country. They're paying millions of dollars in settlements. They're trying to keep child victims quiet and get them into arbitration hearings with settlements that keep them from speaking out, gag orders. They refuse to sit down and have an interview with me. Now, I've interviewed a lot of corporate executives in very difficult situations. The smart ones will say, look, there was a problem. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Here's what we're doing to fix it and thank you for your diligence. Move on. Do the best they can. The arrogance of Roblox. Combined with the potential fear of having to answer serious questions, was palpable in this case.

23:36Why do you go through all this? Why do you have all these Zoom calls with your chief security officer and your press people to then not put your CEO out there to defend your product? They're afraid and they're angry. They think they've created this community and they know what's best for it. Can't they just get rid of the chats feature? They've done some things. They've added age verification and facial recognition and other things. Why won't they allow law enforcement to conduct investigations on the platform? Do you get the same kind of ethnicities or as a variation? It depends on where we are. If we're in an area where there is a concentration of one particular ethnicity, we may see more of that. I get comments on social media all the time, how come there's never any black people? There's no white people. Why is it all you're picking on this? We don't choose these guys. They choose us.

24:39So we have no control from sting to sting, who shows up, who doesn't show up? We never had a woman show up. We know there are female predators. We see it all the time here in the US about teachers exploiting young male students. There's a ton of that. I can't tell you why there's been so much of it. There's been more reporting of it or whether it's tied to the internet or fantasy stuff or whatever. I'm sure it's a multifaceted reason behind it. There's a reason. But I can tell you that's a big issue. The experts, the shrinks tell us that we don't see them because female predators don't like the anonymity. Female predators like to know their prey. So you see the teacher and the student. They know who it is. They can see them. The male predator gets off on the anonymity. The image he has in his mind of who he thinks is going to meet is the 13, 14 or 15 year old girl.

25:43Interesting. What goes through your mind when you're doing one of these stings and the decoys out there. Sometimes it's a bit scary because they go for the decadent. What are you thinking? Your backstage? What's going through your mind? A whole lot at the same time. I mean, I'm watching initially the moment, you know, listening intently to the conversation between the predator and the on-side decoy. Trying to gauge the moment when I interrupt, when I go in. Sometimes it's a law enforcement issue. They think it's no longer safe. They go in and settle it. And I get out of the way because ultimately we need to keep it safe. Ultimately, we need to make sure these cases can be successfully prosecuted. TV comes in, you know, later. It's important, obviously. But, you know, you got to step back. You got to make sure everybody's safe. You got to make sure that the constitutional protections are there for the accused.

26:45Although that's a little, you know, for the down. We sort that out later to make sure that's right. But, you know, we got to make sure everybody's safe. And there's a strict protocol in every jurisdiction in which we work as to when they engage, when they don't engage. And when I get a chance to walk in. But a lot of it's just a feel of it. You know, you got to know when it's, you don't want to miss a moment. You want to hear everything they have to say. Because often it's when the predator is having this discussion with the on-side decoy that you get the real picture of who that person is. You know, we had a doctor who showed up in Louisiana for anologist, a kidney specialist. And he comes in and tries to give a big hug to this girl. I mean, right away. And she pushes him off, he sits in the chair. And then he goes on to explain, like he's, you know, talking to an adult in a coffee shop, what he does for a living,

27:47and what a kidney doctor does, and who he treats. It's like, you learn a lot about a human being that way. So you let it play out, and then he's got to come talk to me, of course. And that's a different conversation. But I've seen that. So now I know how to treat him based upon his interaction with the on-side decoy. Do you often have ones that just fail? Like how many of them, you can't do this as TV for some reason? How many that fail in terms of... In terms of, this person must have, I wasn't able to come out and have a conversation with him, so it wasn't really TV worthy anymore. I think it's all TV worthy. So there haven't been ones that you've gone, like, for some reason, technical problem. Very rarely, if ever, is there somebody who doesn't make the show? Now, we may find somebody more interesting than somebody else. We may have three non-English speakers who get combined into one episode that we look at as immigration reasons, right?

28:50You can't make something interesting that... I think on space. That challenging, right? Now, I know a little bit of Spanish. I can get through it. I can use translators. Sometimes as a translator there, we figure it out. But to me, it's more interesting if there's a character who's worthy of exploration. If we've got a monosyllabic person who really can't communicate that well, he's a danger. He deserves to be exposed, but he might get grouped up with two or three others. So in terms of similar nature, just pure entertainment questions, not about the rest of it. What are you looking for? What is your ideal... I mean, that pizza guy, for example, was... We can't make that up, right? Yeah. Some of it is just spontaneous combustion. I mean, some of it you can't control. You know, before I came over here to chat with you, I was putting it together one of my podcast episodes for predators I've caught.

29:50There was a guy, 62 years old, who came to me to 14-year-old girl, who brought two happy meals. Right, you can't make this up. And on the happy meal, it says, let's play. I don't know how it is in the UK, but when my children were younger, it was a frequent stop. When we went on road trips or vacations because the kids loved the happy meal. And I think of that as giving to two children who are sitting in the back seat in child safety seats. And so the fact that this 62-year-old was bringing two happy meals to a 14-year-old after a sexually charged conversation in which he sent graphic photos and videos of himself is just jarring to me. Yeah. And when you see that, you know, you want to make a moment out of it because people will relate to it. And what's this guy thinking, bringing it? He's acknowledging that he is going to violate somebody who's way too young to be violated in the very act of bringing a happy meal, which is designed for a child to the sting house.

30:53And when you find out that he's also brought a jar of weed, it just creates this moment of realization as to who this human being is. So we always try to, you know, mine those moments and remind people who these folks are, who these predators are. And we do that by being aware, by being a good interviewer, by listening intently and making sure we get the most out of this guy so we can understand who he is. I sometimes wish when I watch the show that you could do a decoy and you can't because the decoys don't look like that, but like nine years old, ten years old. Because I wonder if you miss out because they're 14 and 15 a lot of them, right? That's what they're posing as. Maybe you miss out on a whole section of these guys who are more interested in the nine years. Well, you know, we experiment with that, right? And I was just telling you about the case in Marin County, Florida where the guy showed up to meet the father to get at his 7 and 14 year old.

32:01I mean, he was very precise about what he wanted to do to both the 7 and the 14 year old. And it was just disgusting. But I can tell you this, that he wasn't playing around. I mean, he was going to take advantage of this situation if it was available to him. And we found evidence after the fact that he had done this before with other people who are underage. That's a married guy. It's a married guy who worked as a contractor at people's homes and businesses, who you would never give a second look to in a market or store. Are you holding back rage when you speak to them sometimes? Sometimes a little bit. I think it's just a five-o'-rage. I think it's a focused outrage as to what this guy is doing. And I think you'd be not human if you didn't experience that.

33:03As a journalist, as a guy of a certain age, as a parent, as a citizen of this planet, how could you not be outraged? This behavior is unacceptable from anybody. And you can claim that you're mentally ill or you're made this way or you can't control it or the girl wanted me to come over. And I've heard every excuse in the whole world, it doesn't justify it. It doesn't. There's no justification for it. It's one of those crimes where there is no justification. Would you tell them, if you were there, lawyer, would you tell them, don't speak to you, presumably? Because they always talk to you. That's extraordinary. Why do you think they talk to you? I think they have a chance to explain themselves. I think it's a combination of things. Initially, not everybody knows who I am, although more and more people do. Most of the guys walk in and have seen the show.

34:05They say in the messages, this isn't a Chris Hanson thing. Exactly. Because if they name the sheriff, it's from the show. If that's what they're doing, they should bloody know who you are. They can't get excited. It's really you. One night told me, he said, I just came over here because I knew it was you. I wanted to meet you. I think we both know that's bullshit. The stuff they'll say. Do you differentiate between, like, you know, sane and insane, you know, as some of them turning up, they might have, they might have a learning disability. Some of these guys is that. Well, we get there sometimes, you know, a guy I'll be on a show and his mother will write an angry email to us and say, you know, he's dyslexic or he's, you know, not the brightest guy in the world. That's a one more. I understand that. Right? But that doesn't diminish the danger he poses to a child. Right? What's the difference in the danger posed by a guy who has a lower IQ

35:07to a guy who is a medical doctor? It's the same danger. You're removing that danger from the street. Now, it might be more interesting to us and to our viewers, if the guy's a doctor or the guy's a celebrity of some sort. We had in a recent investigation in Maryland two high-profile men show up within weeks of each other. We had a guy who was a lieutenant with the Washington, DC Metro Police Department who was in charge of Dignitary Motorcade Protection. This guy was at knowledge of the president's motorcades, visiting dignitaries. And for 30 plus days, he spoke to a 15-year-old in a most graphic way, pictures from his office, at Metro DC Police Court. It was crazy.

36:09And he shows up. And now they took him off outside because there was a likelihood that he could have been carrying a weapon. And you worry in those cases about him harming himself or others. So the two of them came in handcuffs and I interviewed him. Now, he didn't say anything. He requested a lawyer. He knew who I was. He knew why he was there. And he knew he was in trouble. And he's still eating baloney sandwiches in the county jail today because he didn't get out of bond. Two weeks later, in the same jurisdiction, a guy in his early 60s shows up who was teacher of the year in the Baltimore Public School System. And currently, when he was arrested, he was head of gifted and advanced learning programs for the Baltimore School System. And here he is chatting with somebody who thinks as a teenage boy. He's been in the most graphic terms. And I have the chat in front of me, right? So every time he makes up an excuse,

37:09the next line in what he said to the child, who he thought was a child, contradicts his excuse. So he said, it was his fantasy. I really wasn't going to do it. And then you say, this isn't fantasy. I need this. I mean, it was just, it was almost like it was scripted. Shit, man. It really does make you, I know you're saying that you should, you know, you've got to live your life and not. But it does make you worry about where you send your kids to school. Because also, I think those guys are attracted to positions where they're going to be around kids. Well, I think so. And we find out later, you know, they do a deep dive on his, his media, his computer, his phones. There appears to be a pattern of staying in contact with students in a relationship building that continues into their adulthood and getting them involved in relationships. Now, by the time the relationships happen, there are adults. And technically, there's nothing illegal with that.

38:09But it's creepy to think that the guy who's your high school teacher is grooming another kid, hoping that when he turns a page that they can have some sort of a relationship. I mean, that's not what the education system is supposed to be. We had a couple of teachers who turned out to be pedophiles. That might, that might, that might, high school. It's, it's just rampant. But that's my concern. Yeah. There'll be people watching this who have that, you know. What would you say to them? People who have their inclination who are watching this? Yeah. Get help. I mean, go to, go to a therapist. What I don't get is like, there are... I mean, maybe that doesn't even the right answer. You know, I think some people can be helped. I get mail correspondence from people occasionally who say they have a predisposition in a sexual attraction children.

39:09But they go to a therapist, they manage it. They can't explain why this happened. They don't, at least, disclose that they were preyed upon as a child which, you know, sometimes creates that situation. They don't know why. Someone told me... But they, they get treated for it and they don't offend. Someone told me recently that that is actually a lie they often tell that they were abused as children to create symptoms. I think that's probably true. Yeah. I mean, I, I, look, the, you know, children have been abused sadly for generations. So at some level, there's going to be some truth to that. You know, you, you act out as you were once treated, I suppose. I don't think that's a good excuse. I mean, if anybody should know what it's like to be a victim, be somebody who faced that as a child, right? You just think you would devote your whole life to make sure it doesn't happen to anybody else. And I think in many cases that does, I mean, I can't go out in public without, at some point, during the week, somebody saying,

40:09hey, you know, I just want you to know this happened to me. And I appreciate what you do. And every time I see you do it, it allows me to have some sense of justice. And I dream of having my abuser getting caught in one of your investigations. Now, you know, you take your time and you listen carefully and you, you know, you console them as best you can and you say, I'll keep doing this work. But, you know, that's a lot of what drives us. I mean, when somebody tells you that, that's pretty significant. And we've been doing it long enough now. We had a full circle moment in this most recent investigation of Florida. A young detective was working as a chatter, who was a decoy online. And his chat led to an arrest. And I interviewed the guy. And I chatted with him afterwards and he said, you know, I became a lawman, I became a police officer,

41:10because I got motivated by watching your original series. And now here I am today and I caught a guy who you're about to interview. That's pretty cool. Let's go. You know, when you think about it, you know, that you did something that inspired somebody to do good for others and that you were able to connect and close the circle. I mean, I don't know how often you get a chance to do that in your life, but it's pretty, pretty cool. That is a beautiful thing. And I think the question you get asked all the time, the difficult one, is people saying, well, are you making crimes happen that otherwise would not have happened? They were not often, I imagine, 14-year-olds, girls or boys. We're surprised. We're just alone at home for two days and not for enough time for guys to come over. Well, I think there are a lot of scenarios where children are vulnerable. And I can't give you the exact number. I don't think anybody can.

42:10There are plenty of predators out there who will try to take advantage of them. And, you know, if people stop showing up, that's great. I'd love to do a cooking show in Italy. You know, I think that would be great. I would go to my Scandinavian roots and do something exploring over there. But I don't see this changing anytime soon. I mean, there are a lot of topics that we are chasing. You know, whether it comes to fraud and government waste and other things that happen online in real life. I mean, we have a big list of things that we're working on, documentary-wise. But I think as long as this problem exists, we'll continue to do these sting operations. And look, it's very simple. They don't have to show up. You know, this is not entrapment. Entrapment is when law enforcement induces somebody to commit a crime they wouldn't normally induce. They wouldn't normally commit. That's not what this is. People don't have to chat with kids online. They don't have to have sexually explicit conversations with children.

43:13They should be doing it anyway. And if they don't do it, they're not going to end up in one of my sting operations. It's very simple. You could make the same argument about entrapment, couldn't you? If they don't do the thing the police are pushing on them. Right, but we're not pushing them. First of all, the decoys in these scenarios do not make the first contact. The predator has to reach out first, has to initiate a sexual discussion. Pursuing the adults. They're the adults. The adults. The adults have to initiate. But they presume that the decoys are adults when they start messing. Sometimes, sometimes they don't. How does that work? Sometimes it takes place on a site where you're supposed to be 18 or 19 to be on. And very quickly in the conversation, the decoy will say, well, I got to tell you something. I'm only 14, 15. And the proper thing to do is say, well, we can't chat. Sometimes what they say is, well, that's kind of young for me, but they're interested. Then the decoy has to give them multiple opportunities to back out.

44:13I'm 15, are you cool with that? I don't want any drama. I want to make sure you're not the police. No, I'm cool. It's always been a fantasy of mine. Okay, the gate's open now. If they say, well, I don't want to be involved with this. This sounds immorally legal. Then they're gone. They don't get prosecuted. They don't follow up. They don't say, well, wait, please come over and have sex with me. That's how this works. There are enough cases out there that are solid prosecutions, the law enforcement. People don't have to push these cases. They happen on their own. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to give the impression I'm sitting here, fitting sorry for these guys. No, no, no, it's a good question. It's a fair question. You don't want to get people caught up who didn't actually have the intent to commit a crime. There could be people who are tempted their whole lives and are able to keep it under control. But then they meet who they think initially is an 18-year-old online, who then tells them they're 15 or 16, they're not. And then conversation should end. The conversation should end. But with the entrapment analogy, I suppose, let's say the police were doing that to set someone up for cocaine.

45:18And they said, the police were selling, oh, here's a hot dog and they go, okay, well, I'll buy a hot dog. And they said, by the way, it has a bit of cocaine in it. Yeah, but that's not what this is. It's not doing that good. It's not doing it close. I don't know. In that case, whether it was cocaine or whether it was predator behavior, it wouldn't make it past the first hearing. Clearly, it flagged his entrapment. But the tram didn't even come into play here. But instead of the hot dog, they think they're talking to an 18-year-old and instead of the cocaine, they go to the scene. But once they find out that, first of all, that's not the way it always goes. I mean, oftentimes it is somebody approaching a 14-year-old and they know that. It depends on the platform that is being used by law enforcement in that particular investigation. Much of the time, they know exactly the age where they're approaching an adult who's a guardian of a 14 or 15-year-old. They go to these sites where they can find adults looking to have fun with kids, play dates. I mean, they're all kinds of little nicknames that they have. All the websites like that. Yeah.

46:18There's websites, there's platforms, there's places on social media where you can find these things. I mean, some of these activities. It's taking place on very routine social media sites. Instagram, Facebook, you've had cases on all of them. And the decoys working on those platforms. We've kids are hanging out, then they get approached and groomed by adults. How does frequently? It's a political question, then, because the concern in the UK at the moment is that our government is very authoritarian and they want to get involved in every aspect of our lives. The other argument about internet intrusion and having them being controlled and everything is... Yamabah Resort and Casino, it's San Manuel is bringing the biggest laughs to the stage. Break Taboos with Ali Wang on August 28th and 29th. Enjoy Ralph Barbosa's Dry Humor on September 18th and 19th. And don't miss Nikki Glacier's unapologetic comedy November 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamabah Theatre dot com.

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48:24Well, that can stop children being manipulated by adults. How should we weigh them? Adults have a certain amount of freedom online. In each society, each country has to decide what age is the appropriate age for children to have this freedom. Have France recently made it 15 to get on some of these chat sites to be able to use your phone to access them. I understand the urge to set those minimum mandatory levels because a lot of bad stuff is happening. But I think the more important thing is for the tech companies to give parents control over access. For instance, Apple's new phone that's going to roll out next. You have the ability to buy a phone that is white labeled.

49:25In other words, it doesn't have access to these things. The parent has to add the access. Right. So it's not like the parent has to go. We in a limit access, it's reverse engineering this for a parent to make it simple. That's great. So here's something that you can use and you can call home. You can call 911. You can call grandma. And you can text this list of people. And if you want to do anything else, like go to a social media site, I have to add that on. I have to click the button as opposed to go in and limit the buttons. And I think that's a great first step. I think the social media companies, the gaming companies have a responsibility that they're not meeting in some cases to make these platforms safer. And the issue really, I think, comes down to engagement. If they limit engagement, they limit profits, especially a place like Robox. Understand it. You make money from your podcast. I make money from my television streaming network. And I get capitalism. I get it. We all need to get paid.

50:28The companies in the media paid. Stockholders need to be satisfied. But the best way to do that is to be socially responsible about it. And to create these safety measures in place, we have in this country, a system where all the platforms, all the social media providers, they have mandatory reporting. They detect an inappropriate contact between an adult and a child. They are mandated by law to report that to the National Center for Missing Exploded Children. They have a great organization, phenomenal job they do. And they go through that information and they direct it to different law enforcement agencies. Funny gets investigated. But the question is, are they doing that all the time in an inefficient manner? And can they do more? How my argument would be, they do more. They all get called in in front of Congress for hearing on whether or not these platforms are addictive.

51:31Whether it's too much engagement for children, the all promise are going to do better. They all look back at the victims and their parents and they say, we're sorry. And then over the next six months, lobbyists come in and they'll water down the legislation. It's never as good as what they promise to do. It happens every year here. It's an annual ritual. And you think it's about profits. It's absolutely about profits. But you can be profitable and safe at the same time. You know, there's a way to do that. I mean, I don't, you know, look, I'm not big on having a government in your nickers. Right. And you know, everybody should have freedom as long as you're not breaking the law and harming people. But I don't see a problem in allowing a law enforcement agency to run an investigation on one of these platforms. Let them do it. Send a warning shot across the bow of these predators. Let them know that if they're acting up, they could get caught.

52:31What happened with the man who took his own life? Because my, my lot of my viewers won't know about that. So there was a guy who surfaced during an investigation in Texas 20 years ago, who was an assistant district attorney. He was a prosecutor. He was online. He reached out to two different decoys posing as young teen boys. He entered into sexually explicit conversations with them, which in Texas was a violation of the law. It was a felony. He never showed up at the stinghouse, but the police department who was involved in the sting decided that his actions constituted a felony. They got a warrant and they went out to arrest him the following day instead of being arrested and facing the charges. He pulled out of gun and shot himself killed himself. Nobody wanted to see that, of course. Later in the investigation, they found that he had child pornography on his computer. And that as a prosecutor, that obviously would have not only been embarrassing, but he would have faced potentially 10 years in prison for each image that was there.

53:45There was also some information uncovered by law enforcement that there was evidence on that computer, non-sexual, non-child-focused that led to the criminal conviction of this man's boss for other matters. This is much deeper than I mean, when it first happened, look, we reported it right away. There's no attempt to cover up what happened. The thing about the predator investigations from the very beginning to today, we have been painstakingly transparent about our methodology, what we do, how we do it. People ask all the time, what's the most alarming thing that ended up on the editing room floor? Nothing. You see it all. Now we may edit for editorial reasons or production reasons or whatever, or maybe move this around or move that around, but it doesn't change the meaning. And you see virtually everything that happens.

54:51So there's nothing left behind. There's nothing shocking on the editing room floor. Was that why the show, because of this district attorney was what the show was going to continue the show after that. I mean, that's one of those things that gets fire and reddit. Or got canceled because of guy coming to the service. And they could say he was a senator. I mean, it's so much misinformation gets out there, but I was there. So I can tell you that after that, we went on to do multiple other investigations. And the series, the show in the eyes of the executives at the network at the time, was decided it ran its course. Now I think the reality behind it was that it became very expensive. And one of the reasons the production costs were so high in that show was because ABC tried to hire all the people away to do it there. They wanted to steal the show. And so at the time, these robotic cameras and things we used were much more specialized, much more difficult to come by. Today, it's very simple. The technology exists. It's plug and play. It's not as expensive as it was to wire house.

55:58But in those days, it was. We also had this nonprofit of perverted justice that was getting paid, which we disclosed, you know, for its work in this. And they coordinated the chats and did the chats with the police work. We don't use them anymore. They're not in existence. But there was a time and I was involved in the negotiations to keep them at NBC and not have them get hired away to go to ABC that a lot of money was thrown around to both the entities to the camera people and to the and they were private production companies freelance. They can work for the network into the perverted justice. And so they would get these production bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I think what the network ultimately decided was we have all this material. We pre-packaged this in a way when it aired initially that was pretty tightly produced. We can expand this for years and do predator on cut on MSNBC and make a lot of money without having to do anything.

56:59But March, Chris Hanson into a studio to to narrate the extended versions. And so they did that for four or five years. It's very good content, smart business move. But, you know, I'm not saying that the the suicide had nothing to do with the decision. I just think that they saw a way to continue to get attention and create revenue from the franchise without having to go out and do anymore or take any risk. Now, you know, we've been doing this for four years at True Blue. We did it again when we did Hanson versus Predator series that aired on a syndicated crime show called the crime watch daily that I did for a few years. So it's, you know, we've taken breaks, but it's never really stopped. You know, we've taken a couple years off here and there. But, you know, we've been going for four years now. We've got, you know, close to 250 new episodes of takedown on True Blue. And, you know, we're out shooting every month. It's such an addictive show. What is it's dramatic, you know, and it's it's, you know, I suppose the dark nature of it, you know, the inherent potential risk of it is part of what draws people in.

58:12I can tell you that we've made it absolutely as safe as it could be. I'm still here has a decoy been attacked ever. Now, I mean, I'm trying to think of the the area situation we've ever been in. I mean, people have brought guns into this thing house. Nobody to actually threaten me. But some states have a very easy ability to carry a gun concealed weapons. And, you know, it's alarming when you see somebody's got a gun in their belt. And, but nobody's ever drawn down on me. You know, we're pretty careful. If there's talk of it or if it's like I mentioned before with the law enforcement, you know, the tenant from DC, you know, we take precautions. You know, the whole thing is set up in about as safe as ways I can imagine. But, you know, look, there's a dark element to it that I think is attractive people. I think there's a darkly humorous element of it is attractive to people. And I lean into that admittedly.

59:14It's about you do. Yeah. Because it's it's it's it's you know, you go mad if you didn't have some humor in it. But I think you you can't you can't do this in a in a journalistic vacuum. You've got to take the totality of it and tell the story like it happens, you know. Yeah. And that's why I say and I'm adamant about this that we've been completely transparent about this from the get go and continue to be today. There's nothing hidden here. I do find it really funny. I'm fine myself laughing out loud and you're very quick and it it's it's but it makes people want to who are you and you you were parody done South Park. But I don't think in a necessarily critical of you way. No, it's it's how part does look at you know, if you're going to be thin skinned about it, you're in the wrong business. Right. I mean, you know, I've been a public figure from a very young age. I've been a television reporter from the time I was 21 years old. I'm 66 now. That's a that's a long run and I'm not even close to being finished yet. So if you're going to get pretty about, you know, satiric comedy cartoon doing a show about you, then you're in the wrong business.

1:00:29It's mostly parody. It's just it's you saying take a seat and big right. But it's it's you know, there's a look they they take shots at society. This you know, is a big deal in our society. This show has become somewhat iconic in some ways. So they take shots at everybody. I think quite honestly, you know, as long as it brings attention to a very important topic. I'm fine with it. You know, what do you think was the most shocking moments on the catch of predator and what you're doing now. Well, I think it's about a hundred way tie for first, you know, the pizza is probably the most iconic. Pizza is the most iconic, I think. What was that for those who don't know? So guy was coming over to me to 13 year old girl. He had talked about a marriage contract. It was very graphic sexually. She had asked for pizza. He stopped it. Pizza joined along the way and he walks in. He comes in for this big hug and then the onset decoys very good. I mean, she kept her cool throughout the whole thing.

1:01:35And she would have been 18 19 20. She was 20, I think, in real life. But they look, they look very choose. She was it she was a theater student dead nearby college. Who's great. So that's very good. She's very good. Yeah. And so he comes in sets a pizza down. He goes for a hug. The habit should chat and she disappears. I come out and he's startled. And he thinks I might be the dad. He has no idea who I really am. And so he opens the box and nervously starts eating the pizza during the interview. And I'm asking him question after question. I'm reading in the transcripts and he offers me a piece. And then the crew comes out and they offer he offers them a piece of pizza and we go through this whole interview and he's filling us face with the pizza. And it became so notorious that he went to court after he served his prison sentence.

1:02:42And he tried to change his name from just so called. And the judge not only denied that request. He denied the request to seal the court records of it. So people had to know that he tried to change his name, which I thought was fast. Wow. Yeah, you can't have the whole people need to know who these people are. Right. Well, people can change their name. It's a legal process. If you want to do it, one of these guys, you shouldn't. He's a registered sex offender registered sex offender can't go change his name. You lose that right. Yeah. That's what I've seen it a few times that kind of reaction on your show because I think are they trying to hard they're panicking on the inside and they're trying to be too overly casual to play down how big this is. Well, I think that's part of it. You know, they want to play it down. They deflect. They minimize what they've done. They rationalize what they've done. They will come up with a story about knowing that there was a vulnerable child. And they were just trying to help them. They're going to be the savior, you know, all kinds of excuses. I've heard of all. I hear them, you know, over and over again.

1:03:54We'll put the links down below. Yeah. What's where should people go? So the streaming network is true blue. TRU BLU and that's watch true blue dot com. The two podcasts are predators. I've caught and have a seat with Chris Hansen. Those are available wherever you get your podcasts and the YouTube channel is have a seat with Chris Hansen. So people can watch on YouTube true blue also as a YouTube channel. You can go to watch true blue dot com and see that too. Okay. I'm going to put those links down below. I want people to please go and watch Chris's show because it's just there's nothing like on TV. And yeah, and the point about that is I think one of the reasons for that is you're very ready to get to see the moment a real moment where somebody's life goes from being, you know, fine. Well, I think what you see is, you know, and what makes it unique and has made it unique for some years is that you see the commission of a felony. Right. You see a crime tape plays.

1:04:54Then you see the criminal held accountable for it. Right. And then you see justice in the arrest. Take place right on camera. And then we follow it up either in the individual episode or in the podcast with what happens next. You get the whole thing. Yeah. It's closure. It's it's it's it's it's that it's also you're seeing someone's eyes change. Yeah. From being a respectable sometimes a teacher a priest of rabbi or whatever to being like own your, you're not going to be imprisoned. And also, you know, it's like a lot of these guys, I think, are worried the whole time they're heading over there and think what if this is this? You know, what if it is that show? What if it is a sting operation? I mean, law enforcement does this around the country. On its own every every week. Right. So there's always the chance to get caught there. I mean, we've had guys, we've seen guys who've been arrested in federal stings that we have had nothing to do with. And the first question they ask is, is Chris Hansen here? No, he's not. Thank God. You know, wow.

1:06:00It's crazy iconic. Well, people go check that out. Like I say, the links all down below. Like this, this video as well. And keep watching this channel. The second Mustang dark horse ever produced on September 26th, two properties, six winners only at Yamaha Resort and Casino, your California to Vegas connection. Details at Yamaha.com must be 21 or older to enter participate. Please gamble responsibly. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived today? People are fighting back with support from the Gates Foundation. American scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them, helping cut malaria rates in half. The result is safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential, search Gates Foundation.org slash mosquito to learn more.

1:07:09The end tool is now available everywhere in the US. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places. May this year, most rewarding season ever with Fandruble. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. CFandru.com for eligibility. Gambling problem called 1-800-Gemma. If you enjoyed that, hit follow on Spotify or Apple and on Spotify tap the bell. If you can, leave a quick rating. It helps a lot. Thanks.