More Long Beach, Calif. behind-the-scenes
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. He told me that he politely declined the transvestite’s offer and scooted out the door and you won’t believe what else he’s about to admit to me. Later Blagg pleaded no contest to an attempted lewd act on a child.
8:11 p.m.
One of the benefits of working with Perverted-Justice is that because it also conducts online investigations on its own, in some cases PJ has already had contact with a man who later shows up in a Dateline investigation. Such is the case with 29-year-old Farzad Kalantari. Kalantari arrives at our house after a sexually-charged conversation with a decoy posing as a 12-year-old girl. When I confront him he, at first says he thought the girl was 14. Then, he says he was just coming over to teach the girl about the importance of a good education. When I ask if he’s ever chatted online with underage girls before he says “no.” What he doesn’t know is that PJ has already told me about a chat he had with one of its decoys posing as a 14-year-old girl two weeks earlier. This is when his story really starts to unravel. Eventually Kalantari pleads guilty to an attempted lewd act upon a child.
8:21 p.m.
It’s still startling to me that more and more of these guys walk right into our house and immediately try to show some sort of physical affection toward our decoy. Watch as 27-year-old Josiah Walker does just that with a decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl in our Long Beach house. He swoops right in, but when the decoy back peddles and I enter the room, he steps back. We’re about to be presented with a challenge though because as I am asking Walker about his obscene chat and he’s admitting to me that in fact he had planned on spending the night-- there is another man heading toward our front door. Walker leaves out the back and is arrested by police. Moments later here comes 26-year-old Joshua Larios. Online, Larios had asked a decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl to expose herself to her father and her teacher. He’s explicit about the sex acts he wants to perform with her. But once Larios sees me, he bolts. And because many of the officers are still in the back of the house, he actually makes it to his expensive Lexus. As you’ll see he won’t get far. Larios and Walker have both pleaded not guilty to an attempted lewd act on a child.
8:38 p.m.
Sometimes things happen during these investigations that are impossible to predict and that makes it critical for us to think on our feet and react quickly. That’s what we do when we hear that 48-year-old Frank Sierras wants to come meet our decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl. As it turns out Sierras and Perverted Justice have a bit of a history together.
8:45 p.m.
We’ve come to find out that Sierras was chatting with our decoy weeks earlier leading up to our previous investigation in northern California. And wait until you get the story on how PJ first came in contact with him. PJ says he solicited one of its decoys two years earlier before any of our To Catch A Predator investigations. (Sierra was never arrested or charged with a crime in that instance and said he was innocent.)
Unlike many of the other men in this investigation though, Sierras didn't want to come to our house. He wants to meet in a nearby park. This is always a tough call because if we hustle hidden cameras, the decoy, and me to the park and he doesn’t show up, we could miss other men who will show up at the house. We decide it’s worth taking the chance. It takes about 40 minutes to get everyone in position. We were on the lookout for a white SUV, the vehicle he told the decoy he’d be driving. Instead he arrives in a rental car, so we don’t notice until the very last second that he’s approaching our decoy sitting on a picnic table. We figure he must be the right guy. I head over to confront him and he bolts… right into the arms of the Long Beach Police. Sierras pleaded not guilty in this case but you’re about to hear that he has a criminal past.
8:50 p.m.
A final note: Just two weeks after our investigation, officials in California strengthened the laws against adults who target children online. The new laws protect all minors up to the age of 17, and prosecutors say it should now be easier to win convictions in these types of cases.
9:10 p.m.
In our investigation in Long Beach, of the 38 men who were arrested, the district attorney decided to prosecute all but three. Under California law, attempting to have sex with someone under the age of 14 is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.
Of those who were charged, at least 12 of the men have pleaded no contest. They have been sentenced to probation ranging from three to five years. And some of those men will be permanently registered as sex offenders.
As our series "To Catch a Predator" continues, next week we'll be setting up a house in the lone star state -- Murphy, Texas. You'll meet men ranging in age from 23 to 63, successful businessmen to unemployed, a middle school teacher, and an assistant district attorney in a nearby county who refuses to open the door for police and later makes a tragic decision.
Most of the men say they really weren't going to do anything, tune in next week and you decide.
Thanks for writing in. Keep the comments coming...
