Crime Junkie - NEW SHOW: Dark Arenas

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

Have you ever thought about whose job it is to track international fugitives, hunt child abductors, conduct espionage, or pull human remains from concealed mass graves? Every day thousands of good and decent people work in these Dark Arenas. They’ve chosen professions that grapple with the grotesque, deal with the deviant, and dodge the dangerous. In audiochuck’s newest original series, Dark Arenas, you will hear first-hand accounts of what it's like to investigate the darkest crimes and most violent criminals in society. This Episode: Devil in the DetailsSome federal agents' nine-to-five job is reviewing thousands of images and videos of child sex abuse material. Their meticulous work in this dark arena exposes details hidden within the images that help track and catch predators. In today's episode, we talk one-on-one with the FBI agent whose best tool against child sex predators is the predator.We’re releasing 8 more full-length, ad-free episodes every Wednesday, exclusively on Stitcher Premium! Just go to https://stitcher.com/premium and sign up using the promo code ‘ARENAS’ and enjoy one month of Stitcher Premium for FREE when you select a monthly plan.

Hi listeners, I have a new show out that takes a deep dive into professions that investigate the darkest crimes and pursue the most diabolical criminals in society. It's called Dark Arenas and it's exclusively available on Stitcher Premium. But we're unlocking an episode so you can hear it for free right now. Now I'll warn you, this episode might be hard to hear but this is the most important one because we've teamed up with the FBI to get some really important information out there. The FBI is looking for someone and they need your help so please listen through the hard to hear because we have to work together to keep our children safe.

The rest of this season covers different topics in the crime space. We interview a former CIA director who was a spy, a forensic anthropologist, a crime scene assessment specialist and so much more. This is a crime junkies true inside look at how the people we talk about every week actually solve the darkest crimes and catch the most deviant perpetrators. If you like what you hear and want to listen to the rest of the season, you can hear new episodes weekly on Stitcher Premium and there's a new episode to go listen to right now. For a free month, go to stitcher.com slash premium and use the promo code arenas

when you select a monthly plan. That's stitcher.com slash premium promo code arenas. But for now, enjoy the free episode. The content of Dark Arenas includes topics and subject matter that may not be suitable for all audiences. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast and do not represent those of audio check or its employees. Information discussed by the host and interviewees includes content related to crimes against children, abuse, acts of terrorism and violence.

Listener discretion is advised. Imagine you're putting a puzzle together, but all of the individual pieces are grainy and they're dark and pixelated. Many of them look identical. The majority of the colors are dark tones or neutral. There's few hints to tell you what exactly the master image is supposed to be, but with a little effort, you begin to slowly make out what it is. You finally get enough assembled to realize that the individual slivers put together

don't make a beautiful image at all. The picture you're staring at, the one you've spent hours piecing together, is of a child being sexually abused. The suspect in the picture has no fear. They want whoever views this image to know they hold the power in the scenario playing out in the grainy dark pixels. But you don't care what their motivation is. You care about one thing and one thing only, finding them and rescuing the victim.

But that's going to take work. So as hard as it is, you return to the image, put your head down and get back to work, meticulously piecing more and more of the slivers together. You've got a long way to go and there are more clues to find. Clues hidden within the image that will lead you straight to the crime scene. After all, don't they always say, the devil is in the details? Right now, you've never known that to be more true. In today's episode, we're going into the dark arena of what it's like to

parse through child sexual abuse material for a living. A big gulp of crisp fall air catches in my throat as I get out of my Uber in a large office park on the outskirts of Baltimore, Washington International Airport. I hear that faint uninterrupted roar of jet engines cruising low overhead. I glance at my watch, check the time, and honestly, I think for sure I'm at the wrong address. The office park is completely desolate except a small crew of landscapers working a few buildings away. I think to myself, this is where the FBI's Baltimore headquarters is?

It's an average looking sleek five-story office building at the end of a cul-de-sac next to a busy airport. I'll be honest, I was expecting a little more government security fanfare. A quick tug at the front door handle and I easily entered, fully expecting an annoyed security guard to be on the other side ready to chide me for being too quick for him. But there isn't a security guard to check my ID. There's no one. There's no cameras, not even a metal detector. The only things staring back at me in the echoey lobby are empty office suites

and a bench surrounded by dozens of potted plants, like way too many plants. In a way, the lobby reminded me of a funeral home. Not sure what to do, I slip a text to my contact with the bureau letting her know I've arrived. I adjust my face mask a couple of times to let some breaths of fresh air in. And once again, I'm hit with the invasive presence of all of these potted plants. They're huddled around me like needy shelter dogs. The smell of soil in them fills the air.

Just as I'm getting overwhelmed with that smell, an elevator at the far end of the lobby opens up and outsteps a well-dressed woman who introduces herself to me as FBI supervisory special agent Karen Jurden. She's my interview for the day. We greet each other and Karen informs me that the media liaison for the bureau is en route and she'll join us shortly. We step onto the elevator and make our way up to higher floors that look very different than the lobby. There are way fewer potted plants and a lot more computers, filing cabinets, tables, and offices.

As we make our way to a large conference room, Karen informs me that we're now entering what's called an offsite for the FBI's criminal division for violent crimes. I think to myself, offsite. So that's why it feels so normal. It's supposed to be. But I quickly find out what FBI agents do here is the furthest thing from a normal person's job. I work crimes against children, predominantly victim identification. Karen is a supervisor of a team of agents who day in and day out review and catalog tens of thousands of images of child sexual

abuse material. These images are photographs and videos of adults sexually abusing or molesting minors. Our day-to-day is just constantly looking at these images. We look at images and those images may depict subjects who are abusing these victims and we're looking to identify them both nationally and internationally by working with the Office of Public Affairs and doing press releases to seek the public's assistance in identifying these subjects. Karen actually manages a website for

the Bureau's Endangered Child Alert Program, also known as ECAP. The webpage displays images of these violent crimes against children with the suspect's or person of interest face visible. But the sexual crime and victim's identity is obscured. We don't want to re-victimize the victim. We don't want to put their face out there. We want to protect those victims and also we don't want to expose the public to what's actually happening to the victim. It really seems like a troubling idea when you think about it.

I mean putting even heavily edited images of child sexual abuse material on the internet seems risky. When you go to the ECAP webpage, I'm not going to lie, it's disturbing to look at. But to Karen's point, the perpetrators have put their faces in these photos and videos. So why not use that against them to spread their pictures to the masses hoping someone will come forward and identify them? Honestly, it's the best and most necessary form of public shaming I can think of. The ECAP page pushes out new images every

few months with the end goal being figure out who the bad person is and simultaneously rescue the victim currently being assaulted or a victim who was assaulted at some point in the past. There's so many victims to identify that we may have to focus sometimes on the recent ones because we know that there's active abuse taking place. So we want to narrow down that scope. Not to say that we're going to neglect the ones that have been abused in the past. It's just there's just so many victims to identify that sometimes we have to

narrow down our scope until we can identify those set of victims and then move back. Is it more predominantly male offenders? How common are female offenders? What does that look like in terms of your experience of what you review? Only based on my experience of only I've mostly seen male offenders. But when I first started this violation, my first subject was a female offender. It was a mother abusing her children. I have actually about two Jane Doe's in my ECAP page where there are female offenders. I do see fairly older

males but we do come across younger males. We sometimes even teeter on as young as 18. So it just just depends. It does vary. That's a scary thought. Abusers as young as 18 and victims sometimes mere infants. It's painful. It's actually excruciating at times because it goes down to even an infant and those people can't speak up for themselves. And so it pulls on a heart strings. People of all genders are committing these heinous crimes. I think it's hard for us in the general

public to truly comprehend that because in some ways many of us, including myself, have that stereotypical old creepy guy in his basement description in our head of the type of person who is capable of abusing kids like this. But in reality, that stereotype doesn't even begin to accurately reflect the people who are sexually abusing children and recording it. I mean, Karen proved it to me. With only a few clicks in her office's database, she could access thousands of photos of child sexual abuse material

that she reviews every day confirming that the socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities, and genders of these kinds of offenders run the gamut. What I find super fascinating is that Karen and her team aren't just skimming through these heart-wrenching images to find the faces of the perpetrators. They're actually meticulously observing everything else in the images or video clips as well. They're looking at the stuff within view outside of the crime taking place. When Karen looks at these images, she's looking for details in the room,

car, or space in which the sexual crime is happening. A hat, a baseball cap, sometimes a license plate. Stuff that most people don't pick up on, stuff that when isolated by itself speaks volumes. Those elements can help us narrow down maybe a time frame, a location. Have you ever taken a nice photo of something or someone and you go back later and you look at it and realize that it was being photo bombed or maybe a bird was flying in the frame at the last second

or a sign was growing out of someone's head that you didn't intend to be there. We've all had that experience probably once or twice, right? It's inherent whenever you snap a picture or record a video and you're focused on the main action of whatever it is you're trying to capture, not what's in the background or inching into the side of the frame. Well, FBI agents reviewing child sexual abuse material obsess over the typically unwanted or innocuous background content. They're not annoyed by it like we are, they're appreciative of it.

You see because it's their job to notice stuff in the background. Every single pixel of an illicit photograph or someone sexually abusing a child is important to the agents on the FBI's ECAP team. We have certain programs within the FBI that we can run their faces through to try to identify them but in interim we still look at the images that they're in and look at clues in the background to see if we can narrow down where in the United States or in the world that they may be. We just look at

the basic image itself, right? The image can give us a lot of data in the background. There's certain coding in the background that can give us certain time frames, what it was taken by, what camera versus phone, certain things like that. We also look at the images to see if there's a picture in the background, if there is a a bottle in the background or soda can that can give us a time frame. In some of these images we may have a coke bottle and you know throughout the year this coke has changed the outside of their bottle so we may reach out to

Coca-Cola and go what years was this bottle distributed? When did you sell this bottle? And they can give us a set of years. So now we have a time frame of where maybe how old that child might have been to where we are right now. Those things help us. You know a shirt we may look at a shirt and go oh maybe this was sold by Coles and so we'll reach out to Coles and say hey at what time frame did you sell this particular shirt? It looks like it's a Sonoma shirt and so they'll give us a time frame as to

when they sold that shirt and that gives us a time frame or maybe where in the United States they might have sold that shirt so that helps us as well or versus where in the world. What are clues in some images that indicate the abuse is not taking place in the United States? It could be something like a plug in the background right? We're in the United States so our plugs look different than the European plugs overseas so we can look at a plug in the background and see maybe there's periodicals in the background maybe there's a bookcase and there's books in

the back if they're in English versus another language we'll look at that it may be a box there's one case that we have where the box has what it appears to be a Spanish written shoe box so now we're narrowing down what Spanish countries are looking you know so we'll put that out there. In the United States things are large things are big words overseas there's sometimes certain areas they're small and you just look at certain patterns in the background certain scenery and we'll look at our geospatial unit and say hey

what is it that you see here and they may give us a location of where they believe that child might be or that subject might be. So supervisory special agent Karen Jurden and her agents in her office are essentially running a forensics lab but instead of swabbing q-tips and using pipettes they're hunting for visual trace evidence that's hidden within the content of a sexually illicit image of a child. The backgrounds of these images aren't benign they're potential bingo moments. It could be items in the background where it shows a certificate to a school

right well we can't make clear of where the name might be but we might be able to see the name of the school sometimes so that tells us the location. Has there ever been anything in a case where it was clear? Oh yes as day. Yes clear as day it could be something that they're wearing that's like a jersey to a team so there was one set of images where we saw that they were wearing something that led us to michigan and so we knew clear point that they were in michigan

so that gave us a clear target. The ecap website has a seeking information page that's home to dozens of pictures of items bed spreads walls furniture belongings paint you name it these are all items that if the right person were to look at them they would be able to identify a possible location or who some of those items might belong to. That tip would help the FBI learn a lot more information about the image and where it came from. In some cases tips lead FBI agents with ecap

outside of the United States. We do deal a lot with the international community on a daily basis because of course this is online so it crosses international borders all the time so I deal with our international counterparts all the time we get referrals over here versus referrals over there we send. Perfect example we identified a subject that we've had for years. He was our John Doe 30 no actually 31 a subject or one of our ecap subjects but he had a victim of course and he was in Russia so we sent it to our

legal attache and sent Russian authorities out there and they were able to successfully identify the subject give us anything that you may have a knowledge on we'll definitely look into it at my team takes their time looking to each tip inventing through each tip to make sure that we can identify that subject and as has happened out of 41 14 of them have been identified due to the public one of them we were able to identify this year and that was a case that dated back to 1998.

In the event that there isn't anything in the background of an image that helps narrow down where it was taken or when there's always another tool the FBI has of its sleeve an advantage of the modern digital age in advances in technology a word called metadata. Is there anything in the data or the metadata of the image that can link to its origin or is there just so much passing and trafficking of this material that knowing where it originated is almost impossible to know. No there's certain things in the metadata

the metadata can also tell us the time frame as well as what camera was used if it was a cell phone and maybe we can carve it deeper down and reach out to the organizations that own those phones to say we're in the United States that you sell that phone we're overseas that you sell that camera and that can help us narrow down a location whether it's here overseas. But Karen says even with advancements in technology and all of the resources that the FBI has at its disposal criminals are working just as hard

and they too have tactics and tech skills. We do have some perpetrators who are very smart in the technology realm that try to hide their activity. We have to be careful when we walk in because we can do something simple as opening a door and it'll wipe out everything because they have certain things in place to wipe out stuff. Some of these tech savvy perpetrators use programs to recopy or manipulate an illicit images origin date to hide when it was taken and where.

Sometimes we can look at the metadata sometimes we can't because sometimes it's manipulated or it might be several images down the line. Some suspects have realized that the authorities are on to them and that ECAP is alive and well so they try and obscure their faces and identifying marks. They're getting smarter these days they're trying to actually eliminate their faces at times but if we can we try our best to even just get anything a side view a tattoo or anything out there so that people can

help us identify these subjects. Some suspects even go as far as hiding illicit content in massive volumes of computer memory in an attempt to overload the FBI's ability to process through a storage device. There are times that they do placelik and and try to find ways to renaming things manipulating images and trying to hide certain things. It may not be on the machine but it might be in the cloud it might be somewhere else in the house that they're accessing.

There's terabytes of information and so we are looking at still like thumb drives computers. We are looking at the cloud you have to look at the cloud. There are certain drop boxes certain things out there that they're using storage that we don't have we don't have access to on the actual device. We now have to be creative on how we look at things and what we look for in things because the volume is so significant and we do have tools that can process that data

to help us now go through it much faster. According to the FBI in the United States people who get caught possessing manufacturing or soliciting child sexual abuse material are all viewed relatively the same in the eyes of the law. At the hands of the American federal justice system many if not all of the people prosecuted and convicted of these crimes face some of the harshest penalties in the world. According to the 2019 publication of the United States sentencing commission report

the minimum penalty for sex trafficking a minor is 10 years. If you travel across state lines intending to have sex with a child and they're under 16 years old you get a minimum of 15 to 30 years in prison. If you produce child sexual abuse material you could be looking at a minimum of 10 to 15 years. Buying, selling or otherwise transferring children for the purpose of producing child sexual abuse material will get you at least 30 years and this is all for folks who don't already have criminal records.

Punishments for prior offenders or felons can be even harsher. Oh and don't think that just since you might be living outside of the United States that you're scot-free. Everybody knows that United States is pretty extensive with their sentencing but in certain European countries they may get maybe as much as three to five years so it's put significantly less and so we work a lot with those countries with that because for example we have a case right now where we're looking to extradite the guy and bring him here bringing them here and having them

prosecuted here because we had victims that that person overseas exploited. Karen says a good portion of extradited suspects who would normally face lenient sentences overseas for this kind of crime are usually perpetrators of sex distortion and may have never even physically touched an American minor. A subject can actually be an offender but not be a hands-on offender. A sex distortionist as the FBI calls them convinces children to send them explicit photos of themselves over the internet.

Then the sex distortionist turns around and threatens to expose the child if they tell anyone or if the child decides they want to stop sending the sex distortionist images. America hands down harsh sentences to these kinds of offenders as well. Some of them have gotten much as 50 years in jail. There's actually two that I can think of that they've got close to 50 years in jail. The fact of the matter is whether it's hands-off abuse or hands-on the FBI isn't subjective.

Agents know the law and when they identify and arrest suspects they enforce the law impartially. It's production. It's the production of it's not child abuse is usually on a state level but on the federal level is because you put them in an image you memorialize their abuse in an image so we can get you on production we can get you on distribution which is trading it with other people passing it on and we can also get you with possession basically having it in your possession storing it and keeping it

so we can get you on those three things federally on with regards to this violation. For Karen the most disturbing aspect of these criminals is that many of them express no remorse for their actions. She says even under weight of criminal conviction or the looming threat of facing federal prosecution many perpetrators aren't convinced they're doing anything wrong. They're normalizing it they're talking amongst each other as if this is something that's natural and normal and not dark to them

while we're on the outside looking at it and seeing it as dark. The chatter that you see when they exchange is awfully disturbing but they think it's normal. One of the most common normalized places this crime is happening within the four walls of a family's home. A lot of them what we see if it's a set of images with different victims and maybe siblings. One thing any detective or investigator in law enforcement will tell you

is that it's usually a person who is close to a crime victim who's responsible for doing bad things to that victim. It's someone with close access and relationship to the victim and has power over them. Now there are certainly always exceptions but typically crime victims are targeted by people that they know. And according to Karen Jurden that is often the case when it comes to people who sexually abuse children and photograph or videotape it. One of her first arrests for the FBI's violent crimes division

was a stepfather who sexually groomed his stepdaughter over a period of years and through a series of dark web backdoors advertised the images within child sexual abuse material forums. It was a case that we had for a number of years because unfortunately we saw age progression in the images so we saw the child growing up but from there just doing the same thing over and over again just reverse images look up and all that stuff we were able to

just go down a hole that just led us from one step to the next step that was one that was very that I remember because I was an essay just a regular agent working the case I wasn't the program manager over the program at the time it was something where I almost had to hold back my tears because of how appreciated the little girl was. That was a tearjerker you know to watch her disclose what happened I interviewed the mom mom didn't know it was a stepdad and from there things just fell into place

we were able to arrest them we worked with the locals to arrest them and the person and the facing 18 years in jail. One of Karen's biggest fears is that in light of the COVID-19 pandemic more families have been staying inside or have merged to include extended family members or friends due to financial strains. She says this kind of scenario opens the door for perpetrators of these crimes to have access to more children. In our interview she predicted that ECAP's caseload will skyrocket in 2021.

It's pretty nerve-wracking I can't even imagine I feel like our scope of work will increase significantly because they're home and sometimes they're they're safe haven can be school. I can only imagine when things lift that our numbers will increase significantly in terms of identified victims. It's a sickening thought but one that Karen is trying to prepare her office to handle. That's why she's continually adding more and more photos of suspected perpetrators to the ECAP web page.

New ones just went up this month at www.fbi.gov forward slash wanted forward slash e-c-a-p we'll link that to the show notes as well. As Karen and I wrapped up our interview I paused to ask her an obvious question a question I'd ask myself if I signed up for her job. How do you guys have this stomach to do this what's that? It takes a certain kind of person not everybody in the FBI can work this violation it's a volunteer violation they can't make us work it sometimes I have to take off the video but then at the same time

you have to listen to the sound because you may hear something in the background that can help us identify a tv playing anything so it is taxing I will say when I started working this violation it was very hard for me there's certain matters that you'll just hit a set of images that you just can't take so with that in mind we kind of work in stages and eventually you do get numb but it never takes away the fact that we are still hurt by what we see. What are some of those images that really can become too much?

Well without being in detail I mean certain things like video for me that's very difficult because it's not just images they're video and you hear sound and you hear effects that you just find very disturbing that can impact you and so with that in mind it kind of varies based on image based on the heinous things that these predators do to these children that people just cannot imagine I didn't even imagine walking into it I was actually pretty naive to it until you actually walk into a set of images and it just

throws you back and then you have to take that moment to step away sometimes even take the day off because it can get impactful and it can affect us mentally. We have certain measures in place where we have safeguarding where we have to meet with a counselor to ensure that we are mentally okay that we can take this violation. Do you have kids? I actually don't I don't have children I think it for me it's easier that I don't have children I don't know if I could be a mom and work this violation I would have to face that when I come

down the line I think it may make me more passionate to want to work even harder even though I don't think I can be any more passionate than I am now. I can't speak for moms I can only speak for myself in saying that it is hard regardless and it makes you look at life differently it does impact us I find myself being more protective in terms of my friends who have children I find myself advising them on certain things that may be very innocent on their end that they can't that they shouldn't do something of taking a picture of their

child in diapers and posting on social media I tell them not to do that because these perpetrators they look for that stuff so I find myself educating my friends on how to take pictures or how to be alert and be focused on what your child's doing asking how your child's stay is and just so that because you have to be living on people of trust because some of these offenders are in a position of trust they're not just parents they can be uncles they can be anything they can be mothers they can be aunts and so

it's almost being mindful and so I find myself educating my friends a lot on that. In her line of work I don't know how Karen does it. It's for sure a dark arena that more people need to be educated about but I just don't think I'd have the stomach to do it. I think so many of us don't want to admit or be reminded that production and possession of child sexual abuse materials exist so prevalently all over the world but especially here in the United States. I think we all need to be engaged with

efforts like the FBI's eCAP program to help the FBI catch predators it's just one small way we can help protect the innocent. These are the thoughts that I stood on while I waited for my uber to pick me up after the interview. I didn't wait in the lobby with all the potted plants. I wandered outside and gripped my coat jacket because the wind had picked up at that point. As I sat on the bench nearby my legs shook resting against the cold metal feeling a chill and honestly a little overwhelmed

I looked down and noticed a small flower it was a bud poking out from the ground at the corner of the bench leg. The landscapers who'd been by earlier hadn't cut the ground around where it was blooming. They'd purposely left it alone to grow unharmed and untouched. If you work in a dark arena and are interested in being featured in a future season email admin at audiochuck.com That's A-D-M-I-N at audiochuck.com. This episode of Dark

Arenas was written and produced by Delia D'Ambra with writing assistance from executive producer Ashley Flowers. You can find pictures and all of the source material for this episode on our website dark arenas.com Dark Arenas is an audio chuck original show. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?