NBC Universal sued over suicide of alleged perv

[Dr. Whiplash]

NEW YORK—In the Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator show, men accused of having explicit online chats with people they think are underage children go to a house to meet them, where TV cameras, host Chris Hansen and police await. Louis William Conradt Jr., of suburban Dallas was suspected of being one of those men, except he didn't show up at the house. That didn't stop the TV producers and police from showing up at his, though, and as officers knocked on his door and a camera crew waited in the street, Conradt shot and killed himself.

His sister, Patricia Conradt, sued NBC Universal Inc. in U.S. District Court in Manhattan yesterday for $105 million, accusing it of taking over police duties and then failing to protect her brother. In the lawsuit, Patricia Conradt accused NBC Universal of engaging in a pattern of racketeering activity by bribing police across the country to let it film encounters with suspects it lures to a home where it has set up cameras. She said in the lawsuit NBC "steam-rolled" police to arrest her brother after telling police he failed to show up at the rigged house 35 miles away. She said her brother was unable to defend himself when police, NBC employees and associates swarmed his yard, creating a relationship between NBC and her brother similar to the relationship a prison guard has with an inmate.

A spokeswoman for NBC Universal, Jenny Tartikoff, said: "We have not yet received the lawsuit, but we plan to defend ourselves vigorously as we believe the claims in the suit to be completely without merit."

The lawsuit said Conradt Jr., 57, an assistant county prosecutor, shot himself after he was accused of engaging in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy. It said a police officer at the scene of the shooting told a Dateline producer: "That'll make good TV." In the lawsuit, Patricia Conradt said NBC was "concerned more with its own profits than with pedophilia."

Conradt Jr. became a target in a program in which NBC and the activist group Perverted Justice set up shop for four days last November in a two-story home in Murphy, Texas. Perverted Justice staff posed as boys and girls online and arranged to meet men there. Two dozen men were arrested, but the district attorney refused to prosecute any of them, saying many of the cases were tainted by the involvement of amateurs and that he lacked jurisdiction in most cases because neither the suspects nor decoys were in the county during the online chats. The city manager was fired for approving the arrangement without telling the mayor or the city council.

[Lester]

Wow... I hope NBC gets blasted into the next century with that one.

A: So maybe ole boy was a perv, but when it came time, he did the right thing and they hunted him down anyway.

B: "...but the district attorney refused to prosecute any of them, saying many of the cases were tainted by the involvement of amateurs and that he lacked jurisdiction in most cases because neither the suspects nor decoys were in the county during the online chats." So these guys are out there, with this hanging over them (ready for re-runs and Court TV), with no trial to clear their names. If the prosecutor won't touch it, could these men have been lured in thinking something other than sex with a young kid? We'll never know now.

[SPIKE NESMITH!]

A: So maybe ole boy was a perv, but when it came time, he did the right thing and they hunted him down anyway.

Yeah, well... kinda. By the time these guys come to the house, the crime has already been commited. It's the solicitation and the setup of the appointment that's illegal (as is sending nekkid pics of yourself to someone you know is underage and in this case, the guy was using a webcam), them turning up to the house is just a way to get them where they can be arrested. It's a pretty old trick, too - letting the mountain come to Mohammed. But that's why the decoy asks them to bring specific items; condoms or wine coolers or the complete works of Shakespeare, it makes prosecution even easier because there's proof that they are that person in the chat. Coming to a specific address is usually good enough, but the items help.

Big Boy was a public figure. They don't go chasing down every Joe Schmoe who doesn't turn up to the house, the reason they went for this guy was because he was a 'name'. So yeah, there was a definite bias towards getting this guy in the name of better TV, but I still think that what they were doing was, intrinsically, right. I mean... they had some pretty compelling evidence that the crime had been committed. The police were there with a search warrant. I'm finding it hard to be sympathetic that a bad guy who did a bad thing (and was apparently going to do more bad things) got a bad rap.

But here's another point to chew over in the case. Why is she suing NBC? The sting operation is set up by a group called Perverted Justice and the local police. All NBC do is set cameras up and record it, they're not involved with the actual investigation. Why is $he $uing a multi-million dollar corporation in$tead of the people who ma$terminded the inve$tigation...?

[Arp2]

Factoid: Left out of the coverage of this, not surprisingly, has been the fact that Conradt was a Democrat politico and office-seeker.

As a result, if you go to places like Democrat Underground, you see big support for Conradt and his sister, little or no condemnation of pedophilia or molesting, and attacks on NBC for "taking the man down."

It's really, really scary.

That being said, though, I'm not a fan of "let's do shaky-camera ambushes 'cause we feel cool when we do it" journalism and wouldn't mind one bit if NBC or someone else got a little spanking for it.

[PassiveObserver]

That's because, frankly, it's not journalism at all. Perverted Justice is employed by NBC, not independent of NBC. While the guys caught in these stings are creeps, they are still owed a fair trial, and the NBC cameras sort of ruin that automatically. Most of the time Perverted Justice entices the men in the chat rooms until they finally decided to come over, which smells of entrapment. The American Journalism Review recently took the show to task.

[AmpedNow]

I'm a huge fan of this show. Most of these pervs deserve what they get.

But I have seen cases which i thought bordered on entrapment, such as when the "decoy" encourages the conversation to continue. On some of the chat logs, it appears that the pervs would've bailed out of the conversation and moved on had the decoy not encouraged it to continue.

In this case, I think someone messed up, and someone else will wind up very rich.

Rightly so.

Factoid: Left out of the coverage of this, not surprisingly, has been the fact that Conradt was a Democrat politico and office-seeker.

As a result, if you go to places like Democrat Underground, you see big support for Conradt and his sister, little or no condemnation of pedophilia or molesting, and attacks on NBC for "taking the man down."

It's really, really scary.

I don't know if this has any bearing on what actually happened. It could've just as easily been a republican.

[Zak Tyler]

I don't know if this has any bearing on what actually happened. It could've just as easily been a republican.

GASP!!!!!!!!!! never! republican's are chemically castrated at 18 years old... luckily i joined the air force instead...

(not that i'm that much of a republican anymore, probably closer to a libertarian. which means i CAN have my cake and eat it too)

[Lester]

I don't know if this has any bearing on what actually happened. It could've just as easily been a republican.

Yes, but I don't suspect the conservative websites would be as relentless in their support of him had it happened. They have a tendency to cut folks loose when things like this occur.

[SPIKE NESMITH!]

The pervs could have bailed on the conversation... but they didn't. The pervs could have decided not to come to the house... but they did. No-one forced them into doing anything.

Again, by the time they get to the house, the crime has already been committed. Perverted Justice may often be a little slapdash in their methods, and there's plenty of criticism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverted_ ... #Criticism - but the crime, as I said before, is the solicitation of a minor and sending dodgy pics to someone you know is underage. By the time they make it to the house, they're already knee-deep in it.

According to the Perverted-Justice.com website, they do not consider their methods to be entrapment, claiming that they initiate nothing, and instead wait for their target to come to them. They contend that not one entrapment defense has worked in a case with evidence brought by the organization. In a case in Riverside County, a judge rejected the entrapment claim. According to a report in the March 2007 issue of Law Enforcement Technology, "The judge ruled it differs from a police officer presenting a handful of drugs to a subject and asking if he wants to buy some. In this scenario, the person's being invited to make a snap decision. In contrast, driving to a meeting location afforded these Internet offenders plenty of time to change their minds."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11131562/

Clearly, no arms are twisted to get these men to engage in sexually explicit online chats. And since the stated intent of the house visit is to have sex with a minor, the ultimate responsibility lies with the men who come knocking on the door, no matter who initiates the meeting. These men should not go there, period. But for any of you who might be curious, as I was, about how these meetings are set up, Perverted-Justice keeps a record of every online exchange and detailed notes of each phone conversation. The transcripts show how the online contact begins, progresses and culminates in a date.

In many cases, the decoy is the first to bring up the subject of sex. However, the transcripts show that once the hook is baited, the fish jump and run with it like you wouldn't believe. These Internet prowlers not only seize upon the sex talk, they take it to disturbing levels of lewdness with startling speed. In fact, most of the chats become so ribald and rank that Dateline only broadcasts a small portion.

Clearly, the Perverted Justice decoys are experts at enticing these men. And whether it's online or over the phone, they do mention windows of opportunity for actual meetings. But it is usually the men who seek to turn these online contacts into meetings. Enticement? Yes. Entrapment. I don't think so. The closer I look at the online conversations (which are available on Perverted Justice's Web site) the more obvious it becomes that these men are not first-timers when it comes to engaging minors in graphic online chats. They tend to be remarkably matter-of-fact in their approach, as if it is part of an all too regular routine. These men seem to feel little compunction until they are caught. As for their frequent claims that they only came to the house to "comfort" or "console" a lonely, troubled child, viewers can decide for themselves how much credibility those carry.

Here's some of the chat logs: http://www.perverted-justice.com/wanker ... arning=off

Most, as you might imagine, have NSFW language.

[The People's DJ]

In other perverted news, MySpace deletes 29,000 sex offenders.

I got to go with Spike on this. These pervs didn't say "no". They went ahead with it.

[AmpedNow]

I got to go with Spike on this. These pervs didn't say "no". They went ahead with it.

I do agree. They've already done the crime by just showing up.

But a snarky lawyer could potentially make an entrapment case out of some of these instances.

How about that 60-year old guy, if anyone watched it tonight... He showed up, but he didn't, in a way. He parked far away and was unsure the whole time. The decoy had to coax him for 5 minutes just to come to the fence. He would've probably just drove off if left alone, because he was definitely having an internal struggle with himself. He knew it wasn't right.

Again, I'm not defending him, or any of them... But I cannot imagine this show going on much longer without legal challenges in our sue-happy society.

Just sayin'.

Now that dude who showed up with a tube of KY in his pocket really creeped me out...

[AmpedNow]

Another thing about these would-be child molesters...

It seems more like an addiction/compulsion that these guys have. They know it's wrong. They also know the huge risks of getting caught. But yet, it's clear that these guys would craw over six miles of broken glass and take the legal risks just for a chance to get some jail bait ass.

It's unreal.

[Zak Tyler]

Now that dude who showed up with a tube of KY in his pocket really creeped me out...

oh come on.... doesn't everybody carry KY with them???

[Lee]

Here's another thing.

Do these guys actually think that some 14 year old girl would want them? If you're 50 years old and some 14 year old girl wants to hook up with you...either she's retarded or it's probably Perverted Justice luring you to be on TV.

These guys seem to have no common sense.