Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Child sex perv with CONDOM, BOX-CUTTER and COOKIES IN HIS POCKET caught luring 8-year-old girl off trampoline

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

A convicted pedophile is caught grooming an 8 year-old girl. Police say he has cookies, condoms and a box cutter in his pocket. Watchful neighbors prevent an abduction. With Nancy Grace to discuss the facts: Judge Ashley Wilcott , Former FBI Special Agent Jeff Cortese, Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Dupree, and Former Federal Prosecutor Francey Hakes, and Reporter Joseph Payton with 14 News WFIE. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Hi there. I am calling kind of for, I guess, a welfare check. And there's a little girl sitting on her trampoline. She has a purple calf on her foot. And she's talking to a strange guy, like, on the other side of the fence. Okay, thank the Lord in heaven, this neighbor was paying attention to a strange man.

And, no, I've looked at his picture. He's sprouting horns. He's not green. There's nothing terribly odd about him, except she didn't know him. She didn't know him from the neighborhood. And he's approached a little girl who's by herself on a trampoline. Now, that's a whole other can of worms.

I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Francie Hakes, what about it? It's incredibly disturbing, though not surprising, to hear that he had cookies, condoms, and a box cutter in his pocket. This is what we might refer to as a kit of some kind. Is that his child lore kit? Is that what we might call a rape kit? Is that his crime kit? It looks like that is exactly what it was to me. That neighbor might have very well

saved that child's life in acting so quickly to call the police about a suspicious person around that eight-year-old little girl. Francie Higgs, the National Coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction. A lure kit? I've heard of kill kits. I've heard of rape kits, a lure kit. Let's just start at the get-go. Guys, with me, an all-star panel. I just can't say it enough. Starting with former FBI Special Agent Jeff Cortese, renowned psychoanalyst, and boy, she's seen it all working out there on Rodeo Drive, aka Rodeo Drive. Dr. Bethany Marshall joining us from LA. Francie Hakes, as I said, the National Coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction. Ashley Wilcott, Judge, Trial Lawyer at AshleyWilcott.com. Joining me right now

from WFIE Evansville, Indiana, 14 News, Joseph Payton. You know what? I hardly know where to start. When I get overwhelmed, be it in a trial, research, or just doing chores at the house and trying to deal with the twins, I start with one thing. I try to start at the beginning and take that first step. Let's start at the beginning. Joseph Payton, 14 News. What happened? Not in Ercini, Evansville, but in a pretty quiet neighborhood of Evansville. This guy has been walking around this neighborhood and he has his eyes on this eight-year-old girl. And as I was talking to the mom earlier this week,

the little girl has a bicycle that she rides around the neighborhood. She's been driving her bicycle around, and apparently this guy's had her eye on her. He said hi to her a few times. There's neighbors in the area that have seen him greet her, you know, have small talk with her. And so he's got his eye on her. I don't like the sound of that as a matter of fact take a listen to the mom of this little girl just as joseph payton is describing joseph payton uh with 14 news take a listen to what the mom says yeah like she just

thought he was a friend that was his third encounter with my daughter. A month ago, she was riding a bike around the corner, and he said hi to her then. They're all sick. I mean, that's just nuts to prey on little kids. I mean, there's other things to do in this world instead of prey on little ones. I was just mad and asking why would he want to talk to her and it's sickening, really sickening. I agree 300%. Dr. Bethany Marshall, why does an eight-year-old little girl need a grown man as a friend? I don't like it. Nancy, I do not like it either because what it sounds like is that he's a pedophile and with pedophilia, what you see is that there is more than five years age difference between the perpetrator and the victim and that the victim is prepubescent.

That is under the age of eight. So this definitely fits that profile. Not all pedophiles are predatory, but this is predatory. This is like a piranha swimming around a smaller fish or a gator, you know, crawling up the banks of a river to try to get to an antelope. It has such a predatory quality. Nancy, he's grooming her. That's what he's doing. And he's grooming her in a long and slow process by talking to her while she's on her trampoline and on her bike. He's probably talking to her about how cute she is and, you know, who are her teachers and who are her friends and asking very benign questions so she gets attached to him. And once she becomes

attached, then she'll be under his control. Back to Joseph Payton, reporter with WFIE Evansville, Indiana, 14 News. How does Pokemon Go play into this? Because I was just with my longtime friend, Dean, visiting him in New Jersey. Why was I there? Let's see. Oh, I was either doing some kind of appearance in New York, but I spent the night with him and his wife and his children. And he had had it with Pokemon Go. So I volunteered, not really, really knowing what we were doing. It was dark outside. I go out with his three boys with flashlights.

That should have been a tip off right there. And they all had devices. Okay. We were wandering through that neighborhood together I was a nervous wreck because I thought we were all going to get run over and sadly my long-time executive producer from HLM trusted me okay I did not know we were going zigzaggedy across yards. And that's what Pokemon Go is. And I remember actually covering some stories where some idgits walked off of a cliff playing Pokemon Go. So Joseph Payton, how does that game and my nighttime experience with three little boys and flashlights play into this scenario, Pokemon Go. That's one of the main topics of conversation that that little girl told her mom that Brian Williamson had with her.

She asked her daughter, she said, you know, what was he talking to you about? And apparently he was helping her install that app on her phone. So you don't really know what his plan was, but whether it was a conversation starter, whether it was something that he planned on doing further, that's kind of how he got her attention. The mom told me the little girl likes playing games on her phone like many little girls do. And that's kind of something that he was able to connect with her on. And that's what he was doing on her phone. How in the world did he get access to this little eight-year-old girl right under everybody's noses? Where was daddy? Where was mommy? I was vacuuming in my bedroom, and my daughter was out front playing in the yard.

He came up to her and said, hey, do you like Pokemon Go? And he downloaded two apps on her phone, and it's just scary. And I thought she knew better, and I'm always talking to her about it. And I mean, he could have had a kitten or a puppy, and she would have went. I mean, I thought she wouldn't, but she would have. You know, to Ashley Wilcott, judge and trial lawyer, you can find her at AshleyWilcott.com. How many times, Ashley, they've done studies on it. A million times they show it on TV where you tell a child, don't do this, don't do that. And then you do a test. You have somebody drive up to them along in their driveway.

Somebody they don't know go, I've lost my puppy. Help me. And they get in the car and the parents have just told them. It's just, you can tell an eight-year-old 500 times, don't do X. And they are so innocent. It doesn't register, Ashley. Yeah, that's the point, Nancy, is that they are innocent. So good news, bad news. The good news is kids are what they should be. They should be able to be innocent. They have an innate sense of trust. But that's the bad news, right?

As parents, even if we're vigilant, even if we tell them over and over and over again, kids are going to trust or they're going to think, oh, no, I hurt puppy or a found dog. I need to go with him and figure this out. That's what kids do, which is why predators like this man are scary. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. It's incredibly disturbing, though not surprising, to hear that he had cookies, condoms, and a box cutter in his pocket. This is what we might refer to as a kit of some kind. Is that his child lore kit? Is that what we might call a rape kit? Is that his crime kit? It looks like that is exactly what it was to me. That neighbor might have very

well saved that child's life in acting so quickly to call the police about a suspicious person around that eight-year-old little girl. Allure kit. Allure kit. cookies, a rubber, a condom, and a box cutter in his pocket as he is approaching a little eight-year-old girl on a trampoline. Where's mommy? She's inside vacuuming and why shouldn't she be? Where do we live? What state is this that we are living in where you can't vacuum in your home but your kid your child is out front if it hadn't been for this uh hi there i am calling kind of for i guess a welfare check and there's a little girl sitting on her trampoline she has a purple calf on her. And she's talking to a strange guy like on the other side of the fence. If it hadn't been for that neighbor, what would have happened?

To Francie Hakes, National Coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, what stands out to you about this scenario? Well, we find in a lot of cases where people are sexually interested in children that they're talking to various people online or people they know about obtaining a child to sexually abuse. Here, it looked very much like he may have been planning an abduction. And you don't often get the fruits of the abduction on the person in the planning stages. And that is the lure of the cookies, the box cutter for control, the condoms that indicate he planned to engage in sexual assault of the child. That is a very significant fact that I hope will mean, A, no judge will let him out on bond because he's too dangerous,

and B, I hope it will mean a substantial prison sentence. Back to Joseph Payton, 14 News, WFIE Evansville, Indiana. Joseph Payton, you know, good luck with him not getting out on bond. What do we know about this guy, Brian Williamson, just 31 years old. What's his track record? You know what I always say, when you don't know a horse, look at his track record. What is his track record, Joseph Payton? Well, Nancy, he's had a history. He's a convicted child molester already back about a decade ago. He was living with his sister back in 2000. And at that point in time, he was convicted of basically touching his three-year-old niece, and he had a seven-year-old niece that was in the room and saw this happen. She told her mom that he touched her where a little girl would go to the bathroom is what she said.

So you think about you almost traumatized two little girls in that sense. He even admitted this in court, saying that the little girl told him that he liked it. And then he even admitted to masturbating to it. And after that, he was sentenced actually to eight years in prison for child molestation. And they told him he had a lifetime registry as a sex offender. So you think his issues even started a decade ago. And yet he is out walking free in this neighborhood to approach this little girl, not once on the trampoline, but many, many times, creating a so-called friendship between them, helping her download Pokemon Go apps on her phone, talking to her about God only knows what. It wasn't just this one incident. The mother has thought, what if? What if nobody had noticed Williamson's behavior that day? Even in the confines of her own front yard, she is now making sure she always has eyes on her

daughter. Only one foot separated that little girl from convicted child molester Brian Williamson. The mother says he caught her attention by talking about Pokemon Go. When officers arrived, they found cookies, a box cutter, and a condom in his pocket. Officers learned that Williamson had recently moved back to Evansville from Tennessee, but had not notified the proper authority. Okay, I don't understand. I don't understand how a registered sex offender can just move from place to place without any implications. I mean, to Francie Hakes, Francie, I don't understand it. Convicted sex offenders are required under what's called the Sex Offender

Registration Notification Act, or SORNA. It's a federal law that requires every state to have in place sex offender registries. And every state does have those registries in place. And when someone moves from one state to another, every state requires that they tell the local police and the jurisdiction they're coming to that they're there and that they register. And when and if they don't, they face federal charges of failing to register, which is a felony. It has a substantial prison term. But unless someone knows he's moved, he can be lost to the system. Now, the state where he came from should have reported that he was failing to check in on a regular basis and should have sent the information to the U.S. Marshals who are

charged by law with pursuing those who are failing to register as sex offenders. So we don't know all the facts in this case yet, but it's very possible that the marshals were already on his trail. Right, Francie. Jeff Cortese, former FBI special agent. A lot of good all that sex offender registering does when you could just pick up, leave, and go to a brand new state, a brand new jurisdiction, and start targeting eight-year-old girls on the trampoline. I don't feel good about this at all. Shame, shame, shame on his previous jurisdiction.

They obviously were not paying attention to the fact he was not reporting. No, absolutely, Nancy. It's beyond hard to imagine how this can happen, obviously, especially for folks on the outside looking in, so to speak. It takes a village, as they say. I think the number one takeaway from this for all of us should be to call the police if you see something that doesn't seem right. The neighbor's decision to take action, to call the police, could have dramatically changed the outcome of that young girl's life, could have saved her life, could have saved the lives of multiple other girls. You know, reporting suspicious behavior works, and this is a great example of that.

I mean, communities are the best resource multiplier for law enforcement. When the system fails, the community stepped up. And fortunately, in this instance, this neighbor ended up picking up the phone and making that call. Why are we just learning that you have to keep your eyes on your children? I mean, how many child murders and rapes and assaults will it take? I mean, Dr. Bethany Marshall, wait, hold on, Bethany. I got another tidbit I want to throw at you. To Joseph Payton, 14 News, WFIE, Evansville, Indiana. Just give me a little sampling of what we know about what was on his phone and his various Google searches.

When the police arrived, one of the neighbors mentioned they thought he might have been taking pictures of that little girl while she was sitting on the trampoline. And so when police arrived and they're talking to him, of course, he gives them a fake name and they ask him if they can look at his phone. And he goes ahead and admits to them that he has pictures of naked children on his phone. He admits that up front, but he says he got them from, quote, legal websites. And then as this investigation goes on, they get a search warrant and they start looking further. They did find that he actually did have over 50 sexually explicit images of minors on his phone. Now, none of them included any of that little girl he was talking to on that trampoline that day, but they did find over 50 pictures of other sexually explicit images of minors. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here.

A beautiful mom of two. In fact, I call her a Reese Witherspoon lookalike because in a lot of pictures, that's exactly who she looks like. The mother of two beautiful little children, including an eight-year-old little girl, is found dead in a bloody bathtub, a slip and fall. And her eight-year-old daughter, Anna, is the one that found her. This Saturday, six o'clock Eastern, 5 Central, on Oxygen, Injustice with Nancy Grace, we investigate the death of Shelley Daniszewski, because I do not believe this was a slip and fall. And from what I can see, there has been a grave injustice on many levels.

Please join us in a search for the truth. This Saturday, 6 p.m. Eastern, 5 Central, Injustice with Nancy Grace. Thanks, guys. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. After further investigation, 59 sexually explicit images of minors were found on his phone, including a Google search of how to rape a little girl. I'm relieved that he won't be out hurting any other kids. They're all sick. I mean, that's just nuts to prey on little kids. They're all sick. I mean that's just nuts to prey on little kids. I mean there's other things to do in this world instead of prey on little ones.

Even now with Williamson facing federal charges of possession of sexually explicit images of minors and failure to register as a sex offender, the mother wonders why her little girl was the target. I was just mad and asking why would he want to talk to her and it's sickening, really sickening. You're hearing our friend Joseph Payton joining us today, 14 News WFIE Evansville, Indiana. Mom says there are other things to do in this world besides pray on little girls. Well, one of those things would be watching your child when they're outside alone. Your eight-year-old little girl. I'm not blaming mommy. She can't help that a predator is walking amongst us. But I can tell you one thing. I'm going to

watch my children. And if the mom is concerned about their children, watch your child. Rift a vacuum under the bed. Is that more important than your child out front alone? I just, I don't want to get into the blame game of blaming the mom because it's Brian Williamson's fault. He's the one with the box cutter. He's the one with the rubber. He's the one with the cookies. He's the one with the nearly 60 images of child porn on his phone. He's the one who's Googling how to rape a little girl. I mean, Dr. Bethany Marshall, help me. Well, the most significant thing to me, Nancy, is the fact that he had condoms. Don't you think that's an interesting detail? Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can call it interesting. I call it probative evidence of an attempted rape on an eight-year-old little girl.

Honey, I would pick that condom up and put it under the nose of 12 jurors and say, why do you think he had this? And cookies and a box cutter and child porn and Googling, how do you rape a little girl? I mean, interesting. My rear end. That's what I call evidence. For you, it's evidence. For me, it's behavioral evidence. And what that means is that, first of all, it's a perversion.

It's a crime to have sex with an eight-year-old. fact that in his sick, twisted mind, he thinks he needs a condom means that he, in his mind, is treating her as a much older child than she really is. You use condoms for two reasons. One is so you don't get somebody pregnant or you don't catch a disease. Or maybe in this case, he doesn't want to deposit any evidence that could link him to the crime. But I don't think he's that smart. I think somehow he thinks that she's an 18 or 19 year old. She could get pregnant and that she wants him. That's how all these sex predators feel. They feel that the victim wants them. It's such an extreme disturbance. How did you manage to weave in she could possibly be 18 or 19 years old in his mind. I mean, even if that argument was remotely feasible, which it's not, his Google search said little girl. It didn't say how do

you rape an 18 or 19 year old. Dr. Bethany, once again, I don't know where you're getting your facts, but hold on. Francie wants in. What and what i don't understand francy is how do you google how can you google a search how to rape a child and nobody picks up on that for pete's sake all of the search engines are weeding out political commentary they don't like what what you can't search or locate how to rape a little girl? Well, you know, that's a great question. It's a very complicated matter when you're talking about the synergy in this country of free speech and criminal inquiry, which is what that looked like it could have been. But here we know it was more because of his conduct subsequent to that. But, you know,

the internet service providers, the electronic service providers that exist, Google and the like, all these search engines, what is their responsibility to society? Should they have discovered that that was a search that was being made by someone and reported that information to law enforcement? Those search providers are immunized under federal law from being prosecuted for anything that is taking place on their sites unless they have direct and immediate knowledge of it. And so it is something that has been discussed with search providers for a decade or more about monitoring their systems. It's something that they say they do. But in cases like this, we often discover that if they're doing it, they're not doing it

concurrently, they're not doing it fast enough, and they're not reporting it to law enforcement quickly enough to protect children. It was a neighbor who was the reason that children were protected here. Francie Hakes, no offense, but Ashley Wilcott, free speech? What? Yeah. So Nancy, here's the issue. You have to also look. Yes, she's right. That's the premise of our country. That's the premise that people rely on. However, we also have to look at the danger to society. And when you have a perpetrator like this, who is a predator, who is preying on very young children, and I don't care how much education we do. There are always going to be people that do not believe or do not think about

the fact there are bad people in the world and they literally have to supervise their children at all times because of individuals like this man. So there is an interest and a societal interest that I would argue outweighs the right to free speech or privacy when it comes to these predators. To Joseph Payton, 14 News, WFIE Evansville, Indiana. Joseph, what I always loved among so many things about prosecuting felonies is when I got to read the indictment, which is the burden of the state at the beginning of a trial. And I always loved it when the defendant had a lot of aliases, like Jackie Howard, aka Hot Pants, aka Busty Blonde, aka, it goes on and on and on, all of her aliases. But the jury starts looking over at the defendant thinking, I don't have an alias. Why does he slash she need

more than one name? So in this case, I find it very interesting. Then when cops say, who are you? When they come up based on this neighbor, not mommy, not daddy, but a neighbor notices a weirdo is on the other side of a fence with a a phone apparently taking pictures of a little girl with a a cast on her foot on a trampoline they go who are you when the cops arrive and he gives a fake name tell me about that joseph payton obviously he gives them a fake name and it's because he knows if he gives them the real name they're going to find out and know exactly who he is and that he's a convicted child molester. Of course, that's not a good thing for him for what he's trying to do.

And the way that the cops are actually able to figure out who he was, they start being very observant. And they're looking at him and they're looking around and they're starting to figure out, OK, things are adding up. He's not in our system under this fake name that he gives. And so they noticed he had a tattoo on his shoulder. And it was a tattoo of the Tasmanian devil. And they started running that back and asking people back at headquarters at the police station, do we have anyone that we know has a Tasmanian devil tattoo on their shoulder? And lo and behold, they figured out Brian Williamson does. They start looking into it and it matches up. Of course, they see the previous conviction. It matches up with the call, they see the previous conviction.

It matches up with the call that they're on right there where he's talking to an eight-year-old little girl. And that's how they were able to identify him pretty quickly at that point in time. Well, during all this, where was mommy? Did she come out from the vacuum cleaner? Did she notice cops were in her backyard? Mom is inside at this point in time. It's a really small front yard. It's a really small front yard. It's a really small house.

And really, you could probably hear a lot of what was going on if a child was outside playing and being loud. But a small, quiet conversation that she was probably having with Brian Williamson, the mom wouldn't have been able to hear that. So the mom said she was inside just doing normal things in the kitchen. It was about 6, 7 o'clock in the evening. And, yeah, she was just outside playing on the trampoline for 15, 20 minutes. And, you know, this happened. Well, you know what? I can't say, in all honesty, I can't say that my children have never gone in the yard

and I came in to do X, Y, or Z, get a drink, get a treat for the dog, turn off the stove. I don't know what. So before I rail on the mom too much, we've all done it. I think we've all done it, and that includes me. So, okay, this is what I'm gathering, Joseph Payton, that this guy not only had an open arrest warrant in Tennessee from the Dunlap Police Department, but also he had the child molestation conviction in Indiana.

So that's telling me he had more than one, let me just say, euphemistically brush with the law. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. crime stories with nancy grace a small front and backyard mom is inside just a matter of 15 20 minutes and it's around six or seven o'clock that means it's still daylight you know i've got another question to you dr bethany marsh, we know that he has this guy, Brian Williamson, approach the same eight-year-old little girl three times, at least. How do I know there's not more? How do I know he hasn't already molested her in some way? And not only that, they're like roaches,

child sex offenders. If he has been approaching this little girl three times, I guarantee you, there are others. Like a roach where there's one, you see one, there's a hundred. You just can't see them. Well, Nancy, the research backs this up, that there are multiple victims, especially when you have an extra familial offender, meaning this little girl is not a part of his primary family. And you have an intrafamilial offender, meaning he molested a three-year-old who is his own biological relative. When you have intrafamilial offenders, the victim count goes way up. So yes, we have multiple victims. And also, even if he didn't touch her, just the fact that he approached her, seduced her, and she engaged in conversations with him, she knows he's creepy.

I mean, she began to become a victim before he ever laid a finger on her. So she is already a victim. You know what's also interesting, Dr. Bethany Marshall, and I need to shrink. I may need a whole team from Vienna on this one. I feel that somehow that the fact that she had a cast on her foot, that purple cast, I feel that in some way that ties into him picking her. Because, I mean, look at, for instance, Cherish Periwinkle. Her mom, Rain Periwinkle Cherish, was taken out of a superstore by a perp, brutally, brutally tortured and murdered. He picked her out because she had a problem. She was in an underprivileged family,

a single mom who was overburdened at that moment trying to buy clothes for three all little bitty girls, didn't have enough money. He picked her out like a hawk up in the sky, spots a rat under a leaf. They see an infirmity. They see a problem, an issue, a deficiency, and they zone in on that child. I think that's absolutely true, but not only that, but it gives him something to talk about.

Oh, tell me about your cast. Oh, what did you do to your foot? Oh, can I autograph your cast? I mean, there's two layers to it one a little girl who's in her front yard on a trampoline without the parents so extremely vulnerable and she now cannot run away i mean she is a sitting duck so yes i do think that they prey on children who have vulnerabilities and not just sadly a child with a cast on their leg, but children who have maybe mental defects, are anxious, shy, unable to defend themselves.

Nancy, they prey on whole families who are vulnerable, like single moms. And as you pointed out, families who don't have enough money. Anything that makes the family weaker in society makes them a more attractive target for the perpetrator. Joseph Payton, 14 News WFIE, question to you. We know of at least three prior instances where this convicted child sex offender, Brian Williamson, age 31, had approached this little girl. Three priors would make the fourth mom and daddy on those instances because i mean i'm certainly not a mathematician but in my mind this means there are now four instances of this child being unsupervised unwatched while a convicted sex predator gets close enough to her to get her phone is around her long enough to download an app

and who knows what else am i am i wrong in my math or is this not the fourth time she has been unsupervised and this perv is around this little angel yeah you're absolutely right and and what's wild about it is when i was talking with the mother, she had no idea that this was, you know, another encounter that she had with this man until after it had already happened. Of course, this little eight-year-old girl didn't think to even tell her mom. You know, obviously you heard the mom say in the story there that she thought this man was a friend. Now, she did mention it to her grandmother is what the mom told me. The little girl had had a conversation with her grandmother that, you know, a man said hi to her, but people just must not have thought that there was anything to it. Obviously, people in the neighborhood that were watching thought maybe this is a little bit suspicious, but they must have just given this man the benefit of the doubt, and one other thing I wanted to mention that is even more scary about this is there's a four-foot fence in this yard, but the trampoline fits even with that fence.

So really, if this man was sitting right in front of her as she's on the trampoline talking to her, there was nothing preventing him from just going ahead and grabbing her and taking her wherever he wanted to. I've managed to get to the bottom of a few more facts about Brian Eugene Williamson. He is classified as a violent against children sexual offender. He's been convicted of child molestation in Indiana. In April, he was arrested by the Dunlap Police Department for indecent exposure. He was released from custody on that offense just a few months ago, and here he turns up in Evansville, Indiana, approaching an eight-year-old little girl. What? What, what, what? Ashley Wilcott, this is the fourth instance of this little eight-year-old girl being unsupervised. That we know of.

And I find it very hard to believe. One of the few math classes that I remotely liked was statistics, okay? Statistically, I find it very hard to believe that on four occasions only, he managed to find this little girl and have conversation with her, get close enough to download apps on her phone.

How many times has he been around her? What may have happened that we don't know about? Well, that's what really worries me is especially to do the downloading of apps. It means that a parent is not just saying like all of us do like, oh, it's OK. They're out playing on the trampoline. I'm going to vacuum real quick and then grab them. All of us do those things with our kids. However, it had to have been to an extent that he had the opportunity. These perpetrators picked their victims. They prey on those who are vulnerable. He knew, he had already identified that this little girl was left alone more than once, was available for him to not only see, not only sit next to, but to spend time grooming. And that's the problem. This child was vulnerable because he knew she was left alone too often, too long, and he could groom her.

To Joseph Payton, 14 News WFIE Evansville, Indiana. What now? Where is he? Right now he's being held without bond in the Vandenberg County Jail. And after the search warrants came out and they found all these images on his phone, they bumped his charges up. He's facing federal charges now. So, of course, he could serve a pretty steep penalty for all of this. So right now, he's not going anywhere. They're keeping him without bond in the Baderford County Jail. Where he belongs. If you have any information on this or any other offense toward a child, or if you're even suspicious, dial 1-800-4-A-CHILD. 1-800-422-4452.

Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.