Reflections on 'To Catch a Predator'

Chris Hansen Correspondent • Profile

We’ve been doing these investigations for almost three years and I’ve interviewed more than 200 potential sex predators from all walks of life and all ages.

In the beginning, I had no idea what to expect. I remember the first day of the first investigation. I had heard about Perverted Justice.  I’d heard about their work in the chat rooms posing as a 12, 13 or 14-year-old kids.  But I honestly wondered if anybody would show up. 

Frag, Perverted-Justice: The producer and Chris kept asking, “Is anybody really gonna show?”  We knew it was gonna happen.  But it was that, “Are you sure this isn’t a waste of time?”  and you know, of course people showed up.

When this first guy was walking up the driveway and it became clear that he was actually going to come in the house, my heart is almost beating out of my chest. And I’m short of breath.

With each guy who came in, you know I got a little better at asking the right questions. 

I wondered, quite honestly, whether or not everybody would just see me and run. Not because they knew I was Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, but you know whether it was a father who came home unexpectedly or was it the police?

But it turned out most of the guys stayed and chatted.

During that first day of that first investigation we had something like eight guys come in.  And it was almost as if they were coming on the hour every hour.  And it was difficult to keep up because I didn’t have it down to a system then.

So I’d be looking at one transcript thinking, "This was the guy who was coming in".  And I’d go to confront him in the kitchen, and I’d say;

Hansen: You came here for Rachel?

Steve: No.

Hansen: Jocelyn?

Steve: No.

Hansen: Laurie?

Steve: No.

It turned out it was the wrong transcript.  I had to go back to the dining room and get the transcript.

Hansen:  It was for Beth.

Steve: Yes.

And say, “Oh, you were here for the 14-year old girl.”  He goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that was me.” And continue on from there.

Del: I was the first decoy we ever used in ‘To Catch A Predator.’ When I had joined Perverted-Justice I had come onboard as a contributor in February of 2004.  And about a week later I got a phone call from Frag saying, “Hey, could you come up to New York this weekend?” And I showed up at the house and the producer took one look at me and asked, “So you’ll also be the physical decoy for this operation?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.”  So suddenly I was playing male and female and ages 10 to 15 and every ethnicity in-between.

Eddie was a classic. When Eddie shows up, he has this long, tense drawn out conversation between Del, posing as the teenage girl, whose standing next to me. 

Del: And I’m looking at Chris like “What do I do?”  And Chris you know tells me spin it out a little bit.  You know those little hand motions. 

And so finally he comes in and then I approach him. He tells me he’s a television producer.  And, at that moment—it was kind of a breakthrough for me because you know you’re always walking a fine line.  You want to be serious.  It’s a very serious topic.  But you can also be clever about the way you ask the questions.

Hansen (footage): Where are you a television producer?

Ed: I work independently right now.

Chris: Yeah, you know it’s ironic because I work in television too, with Dateline NBC. 

And right there, there was a flicker in his eye when he recognized either my face or my voice, and he realized what he was in for. 

Eddie: I haven’t done anything wrong at all. If you go into the transcripts.

Hansen: I’ve read all the transcripts.

Eddie: Everything that was said..

Chris: (reads transcript) "Picture this: Picture this you lying back I straddle your chest." It sounds like you’re looking to have a sexual experience with this girl Rachel who you were talking to on the Internet. I don’t know what other conclusion you can draw.

Eddie: You can search me for a condom I don’t have one on me. I wouldn’t have sex without one. Besides she’s supposedly a virgin so she’s never had sex anyway so you wouldn’t want to be the first (laughs)

Chris: It kind of sounds like you might have been excited about the the fact that she was a virgin in here.

Eddie: No, I don’t think so. you don’t see that in there.  And in fact all you see is just little test scenarios.

He then tells me then he thinks it’s great what we’re doing. 

Eddie: I’m very interested in your story I think it’s a great thing that you’re doing. I think uh its something that you should certainly do more and more of and bag people left and right.

The very first investigation I thought was pretty slick.  I mean we had 5, 6, cameras.  And they set up a mini control room in  like a little back room in the house.  And they’re all huddled in there with the monitors. 

Frag: Very first thing was quite an experience.  It was a lot different than they are anymore.  Dell and I were stuck in the corner of a stairwell-

Del: Of the house we went from Frag and I being perched on a single desk in a hallway at the top of the staircase— to having an entire room set aside where we’ve got out Web cams up, and we’ve got our phones verifiers in position.  And we’ve got all these new technologies that we’re using.   And Frag’s gone from having a hallway window to look out of, to having something like 7 monitors pyramided around him.

Frag: It was quite exhilarating that it worked out and that they showed up.  And that, you know, we got to expose it on national TV.

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