Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 'Predator' Posing as 14-Year-Old to Have Sex With Teen Boys Has More Victims: Police

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Alyssa Zinger, 23, faces more charges involving allegations that she posed as a 14-year-old girl so she could have sex with boys who were 13 and 14. Zinger was first charged last November with assaulting one boy but Tampa's police chief said at the time he believed there were more victims. Zinger now faces additional felony charges. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with trial attorney Brian Claypool about defending Zinger and the damage the boys likely suffered in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host: Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Brian Claypool  https://twitter.com/Brian_ClaypoolCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Alyssa Zinger, a 23-year-old grocery store worker dancing on TikTok. She was already in legal trouble, accused of having sex with a junior high school student. Now she's facing more charges, and her parents could also be in trouble. We have the scoop. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Alyssa Zinger is a 23-year-old grocery store worker who was accused of posing as a homeschooled 14-year-old girl so she could have sex with a boy who was between 12 and 15 years old. We first told you about Zinger last

December when she was charged with two felony counts of lewd or lascivious battery and five felony counts of lewd or lascivious molestation. Now Zinger is in the Hillsborough County Jail in Tampa facing even more charges. She's now accused of having sex with five boys who are either 13 or 14. Now this isn't a complete shock because Tampa's police chief had said last year he believed there were more victims out there and he had called Zinger a predator. The investigation began last October after a girl reported that Zinger had sent a video of her having sex with a boy to her classmates through Snapchat. Police say the

boy told them Zinger appeared more mature than the age of 14 that she claimed to be. And now Zinger's parents could also be in legal jeopardy after a detective hinted in court that they may have tried to hinder the investigation. More on that in just a minute. Joining me to discuss this case is somebody who knows a lot about defending people. He's Brian Claypool. He's a trial attorney. Brian, the facts in this case and the allegations are pretty stunning. Alyssa Zinger is actually accused of posing as a 14-year-old girl so she could molest teenage boys. Yeah, that's just staggering. I mean, the thing that strikes me the most, too, putting aside her obvious nefarious behavior is how was she able to post a profile and pretend to be a 14-year-old? My point being, shouldn't we as a society be looking at these social media

platforms like Snapchat? A lot of this was happening on Snapchat, Instagram, and all these other media portals. I mean, there has to be some kind of new law legislated where, for example, the age of anybody that jumps on something like Snapchat has to be verified. That to me was one of the most staggering facts in this case. We do have some really young kids on Snapchat. I mean, that is a good point. And TikTok, That's how she's accused of reaching out to these kids. And then she's also accused of

sending a video of kids, other kids, having sex to other kids. So she's accused of transmitting child pornography, essentially, that she captured. So there are several things going on here, but we do have kids as young as 12 accessing these apps. That's a great point. I mean, I have a teenage daughter. I'm a single parent of a teenage daughter. And I have to tell you, the hair on my skin was rising when I found out she was on Snapchat a couple of years ago for the exact reason we're talking about. I pulled her aside and I said, you need to be careful because there could be people chatting with you in Snapchat who are not who they are pretending to be. They might be an older man who's trying to get after you or to seduce you. And that's kind of scary as a parent,

where you have to talk to your kids about looking at things like, is this person real or not? Are they who they say? And that's why I think we really need to clamp down on verifying ages of men and women who are over 18 who are having these kind of conversations with minors. That's just awful. And then look, another point I want to make is I do a lot of sexual abuse cases. I represent a lot of victims of sexual abuse, including minors and adult victims of child sexual abuse. And I had a case a couple of years ago. I represented four boys in the central part of California who were seduced and had sexual relations with a teacher at a school. And if you can believe this, one of the school's

big arguments in the case was, hey, these are guys. These are young boys. So it's not as bad as a man doing it with a young girl. And I found that argument to be just really irresponsible because as part of working these cases up, you get a psychological profile of the juveniles. In other words, you have them see what's called a forensic psychologist, and then you drop a report to find out how they've been impacted. And I will tell you, young boys under 18 who are molested by women, it's not a fun game for them when they become adults. They have trust issues. It affects their ability to be in a stable relationship with women when they get older.

They view women more and they objectify women when they get older. So there's lifelong trauma that's associated with young boys being molested by a woman. And I'm so glad you brought that up. We've discussed that many times on Crime Fix about how people say, oh, it's a boy, you know, they ha ha ha, it's like locker room humor about how they probably liked it. It does create major issues. And these are crimes that she is accused of.

And it doesn't matter that the gender of the person involved in this, the victim, is that it's a boy versus a girl. They're still a child. That's the point here. So Alyssa Zinger, her defense attorney in court said, this is somebody with some developmental issues. She's had anxiety issues over the years. So it wasn't like this is a 22-year-old woman communicating with a teenage boy or, you know, a 12-year-old boy or a 13-year-old boy, a 14-year-old boy, because she's got these developmental issues. The state, on the other hand, says, I don't think so. There are no signs of that in her educational records.

What do you have to say about that? Is that a defense attorney basically just trying to represent their client and say, hey, my client's not so bad and she has some issues here, or is that a legitimate defense? In this circumstance, if I'm representing Alyssa Zenger, I would make that argument, and here's why. And by the way, I'm not defending what she allegedly did, but if I'm representing her and I've got to give a zealous defense, I have seen, for example, her TikTok video. I'm not sure if you saw that. There's one of her dancing in a bathroom. It was filmed in a bathroom and it looked, you know, my visceral reaction was, this looks like a 13 year old, not a 22 yearold. That's one example.

So I did think, is there something mentally not right with her? And then there was another example where she and one of the boys that she allegedly had a sexual relation with, I think he was 14 or 15, they were caught shoplifting at a Nordstrom store. Zinger's confronted by a police officer, and she lies to a cop and says, here's my name and I'm 14 years old. Here's my birth date, making her 14 years old. The cops figure it out. That's not her. That's her, but she's not 14. She's in her 20s. My point being, she is that psychotic that she's going to lie to a police officer and think she's not going to get caught. So I think there is some type of argument to make. She needs to undergo a mental health exam.

And maybe what her lawyers will argue is a doctrine called diminished capacity, which it doesn't absolve her of the crimes, but it would lead to a lesser crime. Because what that means is basically her mental capacity was impaired enough to destroy the intent to sexually molest these young boys. And then she would get charged or convicted of a lesser crime. There are predators everywhere and they can look like the person next door. Heck, they can look like the person at the grocery store and they can even live next door to you. Or maybe they can even have access to your children. You have to do whatever you can to keep yourself and your family safe.

Truthfinder.com can help you with that. Truthfinder is a website that allows you to search public records to look for any red flags that will help you get information about the people that you meet every day. Log on to Truthfinder and search a name. You'll get a person's address, both past and current, any possible criminal records results, and even traffic tickets. Maybe you want to search a neighbor, a new friend, or someone who's going to babysit your kids, or maybe it's just somebody you met while you were out and about. Truthfinder will even show you sex offender statuses for people who live in your neighborhood. The cases I cover each day make it clear that you can never take too many steps to keep yourself

and your kids safe. Now, if you'd like to check out Truthfinder, and I think you should, you can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix and start accessing information about almost anyone. She's being held without bail right now. And during a hearing this week about, you know, her alleged crimes and things of that nature, it was brought up that her parents could possibly have some exposure here because they may have, according to a detective, and I think that we have to say may have because they have not been charged with the crime, may have tried to hide a cell phone belonging to her and may not have turned it over the proper cell phone

when they came to the home the detectives did with the search warrant. So we've got that aspect of this, too. So do you expect the parents to be charged after the detective actually brings this up in court and shows body camera footage of the police at her home with the parents, you know, and as they're that happened, parents should minimally be charged with what's called accessory after the fact. What does that mean? It means that the parents were not involved directly in Alyssa Zinger carrying out these alleged sexual assaults, but they helped her evade prosecution in this case. They helped her evade justice in this case by possibly hiding evidence. That's what accessory after the fact is. And if that happened, I hope they get charged because that leads to another point I wanted to make, which is I'm not sure that we've heard the full story about the parents or other individuals who may have been enablers of Alyssa Zinger carrying this out. I have been involved in, I've represented hundreds of sexual abuse victims, and a couple of those cases have been with multiple victims happening multiple times. Why is that important? Because usually there's somebody on the inside, a family member, a friend, an associate who is enabling this behavior. And one of the boys that Zinger

allegedly has sex with, it happened 30 times. That means that investigators should be looking, for example, where did these take place? Where did the sex take place? Did it happen in somebody's apartment, somebody's house? For example, did that happen in a hotel room? Should a hotel be responsible for seeing a grown woman walking into a hotel room with a young boy? And according to the police, it's all on tape, Brian. So this is a tough case. If you have her on tape on these videos having sex with these kids, and they are kids. And then she's sending a video of other kids having sex, my God, to other kids. I mean, this is a tough case to defend. Yeah, no, no, you raised another interesting point in California where I'm at in the LA area.

It's a felony to, to, to have a, a, an adult send any pornographic, even a naked picture to a minor, let alone a video of sexual intercourse happening. That's a felony separate in and of itself. And if she, how many, count how many times she did it, maybe it's once, who knows. But those are separate individual charges that carry sentence, you know, certain number of years in jail. So this is an extremely serious case for Alyssa Zinger. And the way I see it is her only, you know, bona fide defense here is the mental health aspect. And by the way, that is going to be a difficult defense if, for example, she hasn't had any therapy before this, right? Because that's what we look at, too, even with victims.

You know, when they come to us and they say, hey, I was molested when I was younger. Have you ever seen a therapist? If she hasn't, if Zinger has never talked to anybody about this, about her mental development, then that's going to hinder her defense. But that said, if she's got a good lawyer, they're going to have her set up with what's called a forensic psychologist, and they're going to do a detailed mental health exam of her. And I expect her lawyers to make the argument that she was mentally incapacitated and she's behaving like a teenager, not an adult for a mental health reason. Well, we will find out as this case progresses. She'll be back in court next week. Brian Claypool, thank you so much. You bet. Thanks for having me. And that's it for this

episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you back here next time.