February 2007 - Posts
by Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent
It was a perfectly sunny L.A. afternoon, a charming curb-side restaurant right there in the sweet spot of the Sunset strip, lunch with a couple of members of an extremely exclusive club.
And one of them popped up and was across the place — and back — before I quite understood what was up.
“______,” she told me, sitting down again. “He was the guy in the Paris video...” THAT Paris video.
A friend of hers, apparently. Or was he? As we had been discovering, the tight little world inhabited by the people who show up week after week on the covers of tabloid magazines is not quite the bright wonderland lots of us like to imagine.
Behind those velvet ropes, our lunch companions told us, it's a sometimes dangerous world, inhabited not just by the famous or the wanna-be famous, but by dark characters, bottom feeders and bad boys intent on making use of those very faces you see on the tabloids.
CONTINUED >>
This was Tuesday's live blog. These posts were meant to coincide with the broadcast.
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
7:55 p.m.
Meet a the guy who thinks he’s about to get away it, at least for a few minutes. Mohamed Abdalla walks into our hidden camera house oozing with confidence. Notice how relaxed he is talking with our actress posing as a young teen home alone. Even when I walk out to talk to him, he’s got his story all set and he’s sticking to it.
CONTINUED >>
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
Since we started our “To Catch A Predator” investigations almost two and a half years ago, I have confronted more than 200 men who had sexually explicit online chats with decoys posing as young teens before showing up for a date at one of our hidden camera houses.
Many of the men ultimately admit their intentions and sometimes go into great detail about their online addictions and compulsions that led them to our door.
But every once in a while, I run into someone who comes up with what he thinks is a plausible story-- an “innocent excuse” if you will -- for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. CONTINUED >>
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
Right before our broadcast of 'To Catch a Predator' in Murphy, Texas, we received this blog post from a council member in Murphy, Texas:
Below is my response:
CONTINUED >>
by Josh Mankiewicz
This week, two strange soap operas attracted an audience of millions. On TV, on the Internet, and in print, the sagas played out. And depending on how you see all this, you can choose your own storyline -- women gone wrong, women done wrong, or girls gone wild.
Singer Britney Spears, more than accustomed to headlines for her sexy onstage persona, found her image publicly deep-fried for behavior that could only be described as very troubling. CONTINUED >>
Even though the life of Anna Nicole Smith was defined by tragedy and high drama, the news of her death still came as a shock.
Controversy and scandal, success and failure trailed Anna Nicole from the moment she came into public view — make that full view — as a Playboy centerfold 15 years ago. Her sudden and still mysterious death today is a final ironic chapter for a woman who modeled herself after her idol, Marilyn Monroe.
And this week, it may have been one of the strangest court battles you've ever seen: Since the death of Anna Nicole Smith more than two weeks ago a battalion of lawyers has been fighting over her final resting place.
Meanwhile, another fight is raging over the question of who fathered Smith's baby girl, an infant who could inherit millions.
But it was the complex and often colorful court battle over Smith's remains that riveted the nation over the past few days. Click here to read the Dateline report on the legal drama. Click here to read the interesting quotes from Judge Seidlen.
Use the comments section, below, to share your thoughts on the death of a centerfold.
The horrific killing of a former officer in Russia's notorious KGB, Alexander Litvinenko, in November 2006, the radioactive trail that followed, and the international cast of potential suspects made front-page news all over the world.
Now, three months later, while many questions remain unanswered, "Dateline's" Ann Curry reports on the international murder investigation surrounding this man of mystery on Sunday, Feb. 25 at 7 PM, ET.
Curry sits down for an emotional interview with Litvinenko's wife, Marina, and investigates the events that may have led to the poisoning of Litvinenko and the events that have followed both in London and Russia.
In addition, the broadcast includes exclusive interviews with the Italian man Litvinenko met in the sushi restaurant and the Kremlin's archenemy, Boris Berezovsky. For the first time, Americans will hear from all the potential suspects involved in the murder.
Read the transcript to the report here.
Click here to investigate the case yourself via an online interactive.
Share your theories here.
This was Tuesday's live blog. These entries are meant to coincide with the broadcast.
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
7:54 p.m.
The online watchdog group Perverted Justice had worked before with the Murphy, Texas police Department to catch potential predators before, and received attention in some of the local newspapers. During our investigation here, which took place in the days before elections, the issue of online predators was raised in campaign ads that seemed to run every 10 minutes.
I wondered whether all this would keep men from showing up at our hidden camera house. As your about to see, it did not. 31-year old "sunsetliquid", who works in real estate drives more than four hours from Houston after chatting online with a decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl home alone. The man talked about kissing the girl all over and giving and receiving oral sex. He even says he could go to jail if he’s ever caught doing this.
But, when I confront him with the chat log--his words in black and white-- he claims he thought the girl was 18. He also says that he would never have had sex with the girl; he was just there to visit and take some pictures of her. He does have camera equipment in his car. Watch as he admits to me that he's seen an episode of “To Catch a Predator” and how he thought it was disturbing that so many men would try to meet a teen. Perhaps what will disturb him more is what's about to happen to him when he leaves our house.
CONTINUED >>
Preview tonight's upcoming report.
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
As our “To Catch a Predator” investigation continues here in Murphy, Texas, we continue to see a trend that amazes me: men who have heard about our investigations before -- and some who have actually watched them—still show up at our hidden camera house.
Take the case of 31-year old Eric Rubalcava. During the online chat, Rubalcava talked about how he wants to have sex with the girl and how he’ll kiss her all over. When he showed up at the undercover house, he had camera equipment in his car and an excuse when he meets me. Rubalcava says he thought the girl was 18, but it’s clear from the chat log the girl told him she was 13.
As the conversation continued, he recognized me and talked about seeing the “To Catch a Predator” series once before. I asked him what he thought about the show. He told me it was disturbing to see men go after young girls, but there he was allegedly doing the very same thing. The difference, he claimed, is that he really wouldn’t have had sex with the girl, although he admitted that he might have taken some photographs of her. Like 23 of the other men who surfaced in the Murphy investigation, he’s charged with online solicitation of a minor.
You’ll also meet a man, alleged to have committed the same crime, who made a tragic choice. CONTINUED >>
In dramatic display, pop princess Spears shaves her head and gets a couple new tattoos.
Dateline is watching this story. Last year, before her divorce, a defiant Britney spears took on the tabloids in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer.
Weigh in and sound off on her new look (slideshow here.) Can fame drive celebrities over the edge?
by Jesamyn Go, Dateline Web producer
After every ‘To Catch the Predator’ broadcast, the Dateline inbox always gets this question from viewers: Where are the female predators?
“They are out there,” one e-mailer wrote. “I find it hard to believe given all the teacher scandals that there are no female Internet predators.”
Perverted-Justice has only ever encountered one female predator, according to Del Harvey, who has been a Perverted-Justice contributor since 2004 and who has acted as a decoy in the group’s investigations. The contributors use decoy profiles that are of girls and boys, but only men have shown up for meetings with what they thought to be underage teens.
Robert Weiss, executive director and founder of the Sexual Recovery Clinic in California (and who has been featured in one of our episodes), says that while their center treats both male and female offenders, sexual compulsions on the Internet do seem to be a male-dominated thing. “Women, in general, seem to look for relationships and not necessarily sex – although female offenders will have sex with a minor. They’re just less likely to seek someone out randomly online.”
CONTINUED >>
The report on 'The Milkshake Murders' first aired Sept. 30, 2006 on Dateline NBC -- and repeats this Saturday, Feb. 17, 8 p.m.
by Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent
Hong Kong was lit up like an X-Box game on double espresso. Green lasers slashing the skyscrapers Kowloon side, red and gold beams rippling off Victoria Harbour. Driving in, craning our necks like hicks from the sticks, looking straight up the facade of the Bank of China cross-hatched with bars of light for umpty-ump stories.
Maybe residents get jaded with their city’s nightly sound and light spectacular but even jetlagged and dazed as producer Marianne O’Donnell and I were after a 14-hour slog, we realized that arriving in Hong Kong at night is a “whoa” experience.
But we weren’t shop-op tourists. We’d come to Hong Kong to try to make sense of the Pink Milkshake Murder case. That’s what everyone there called it.
The detail of the pink milkshake—the one laced with knock-out nasties like date-rape drug—had captivated Hong Kong all through the monsoon summer a few years back.
The concoction had been blended up by an American banker’s wife, served to the millionaire investment banker unwittingly, by their child.
CONTINUED >>
This was Tuesday's blog during the broadcast. These posts were meant to coincide with what was on air.
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
When I first walked into our Texas house, I thought it was perfect for one of our "To Catch A Predator" investigations. As you’re about to see it’s in an upper middle class subdivision in a bedroom community of Dallas, easily accessible by several major roads.
The guys have once again outdone themselves with the hidden cameras technology. Everything is set. One of our first visitors never comes into the house and what he does is a new twist for us: He’s "dallasbadboy2002: and he’s rolling up in front of our house in a big red luxury pickup truck. He wants our decoy to come outside so he can give her a present-- a Web cam so that she can perform for him. Watch closely and you might be able to see that he’s apparently got other Web cams in the truck as well…all the while he’s got his laptop up and running.
CONTINUED >>
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
For our ninth To Catch A Predator investigation, we’re set up in a large brick house in an upper middle class subdivision in Murphy, Texas-- a bedroom community outside of Dallas. It will turn out to be one of the most challenging environments in which we’ve ever worked.
First off, it’s the weekend before election day and one of the most high-profile campaign issues in the race for Texas Attorney General is cracking down on computer predators. In fact as we’re putting the finishing touches on our hidden camera house, we see the campaign commercial running virtually every 10 minutes showing an Internet predator being hauled away from his computer by police and put under arrest. If that’s not a deterrent, I don’t know what is.
But, the next thing we know, Del and Frag from Perverted-Justice are telling us our first visitor is just moments away. CONTINUED >>
Seven of 20 men in the Harris County, Georgia leg of the 'To Catch a Predator' investigations pleaded guilty yesterday. They were sentenced to prison plus probation.
Click here to read the full story from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
On Dateline Saturday, we reported on the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith. Included in the 3-part report was an interview with Trim Spa CEO Alex Goen, a close friend of Anna Nicole and Howard K. Stern.
In the interview, Goen revealed that Smith's house in the Bahamas was broken into, but that the baby is safe and that Anna's will is in Stern's hands.
Here are a few more quotes from that interview.
CONTINUED >>
Today, one of the men featured in our "To Catch a Predator" report posted a "mea culpa" on his Web site.
28-year-old Alvin King was seen in “To Catch a Predator” Long Beach last Tuesday. He was arrested, although he never entered the undercover house. He was picked up by Long Beach police at a nearby park as he met a decoy pretending to be a 13-year-old girl. We later learned that he runs a site featuring pictures of women's feet.
He pleaded no contest to one count of an attempted lewd act upon a child, and to one count of attempting to send harmful matter.
He posted a message on his blog...
CONTINUED >>
This (live) blog was meant to coincide with the broadcast.
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
7:56 p.m.
I’ve read some of your blog comments and a few of you asked me if confronting the men who come into our hidden camera houses gets tedious. The answer is no. Not just because I am genuinely curious about what brought the men into our hidden camera house, but also because of the things these guys admit to me.
Take the case of one of the first men your going to meet tonight in Long Beach, Calif. Corye Blagg is a former Marine who works for a computer company in San Diego. Blagg told a decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl on line that he wanted to take her virginity in the hot tub. But when I start asking the questions, he says he was just coming over to hang out. He also tells me that this isn’t the first time he set up a date with someone he met online, although he says the others were of legal age. He even makes a surprising admission: that one of his dates ended up being a transvestite. CONTINUED >>
by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent
Long Beach, California is our eighth “To Catch a Predator” investigation in two years. You’d think by now that potential predators would get the message -- not so.
In Long Beach, we saw the second highest number of men in any of our previous investigations. 38 men showed up in three days. 35 of them were charged with crimes including an attempted lewd act upon a child. So far, 12 of them have pleaded no contest or guilty.
We did see something in Long Beach that we didn’t see in our previous investigations and it forced us to adapt behind-the-scenes: Some of the men, perhaps having heard about our earlier shows, were afraid to come to the house and instead wanted to meet at a different location.
CONTINUED >>
Jesamyn Go, Dateline Web producer
Think your teen knows more about computers than you do? You are not alone. According to an i-SAFE America study (.PDF here), 53 percent of parents surveyed felt that their kids were proficient or experts in computer use; while 30 percent of students felt their parents' Internet skills were either “weak” or “very weak.”
And it’s not just a question of who’s more tech-savvy– there’s also a cultural gap. A lot of parents don’t understand the allure of MySpace, FaceBook, or instant messaging.
CONTINUED >>
What did you think of Matt Lauer's interview with Miss USA Tara Conner? Does she deserve to keep her crown? How do you feel about her realizations on alcoholism and recovery?
Sound off here.
CONTINUED >>
A woman in the midst of a bitter divorce is found shot in the head. Her family is adamant that she was murdered, but evidence suggests suicide. However, when new information is revealed about her husband's past, her grief-stricken family sees their opportunity for justice to be served. This report airs Dateline Saturday, Feb. 3, 8 p.m. on NBC.
Here is Rob Stafford's blog entry from when the story first aired on October 2006.
I covered a plane crash years ago. The scene was horrendous but I did my best to block out my emotions and to report the facts in an accurate professional way. My dad was watching and later said something that was as close as he gets to advice. “Remember there were people on that plane,” he said. “People with families.”
I know what it is like to lose someone you love. CONTINUED >>
