Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Deputy Sheriff sex-stalks 12-year-old girl he meets on kids game "Minecraft"

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

A Texas deputy sheriff is in custody after cyberstalking a 12-year-old girl. He struck up a relationship with her after playing the online game "Minecraft." Pasquale Salas, charged with sexual exploitation of a minor, coerced the girl into sending explicit photos by threatening her family. Joining Nancy Grace to talk about case: Defense Attorney Troy Slaten, Former NYPD John Cardillo,  Psychoanalyst Dr. Bethany Marshall and Crime Online reporter Dave Mack. 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. The feds say the two met online when the girl was only 12, and prosecutors say this sheriff deputy would manipulate and threaten her all the way from Texas. A Texas sheriff deputy accused of cyber-stalking a Worcester County teenager through the popular video game Minecraft. According to the 13-page indictment unsealed Wednesday, the 25-year-old deputy would refer to himself as Gino and Daddy

and the minor as Baby Girl. Prosecutors say the two met online back in 2014 when the victim was 12. Over the years, authorities say the girl sent online back in 2014 when the victim was 12. Over the years, authorities say the girl sent him hundreds of explicit photos of herself. She's now 17 and reported to police this past spring she believed the Texas deputy was tracking her movements via social media. And he was allegedly threatening to publish her explicit photos or rape her sister if she didn't continue to send him nude pictures. Call him daddy. Oh, oh. And we are talking about a deputy sheriff. Just last night, my twins, 11 years old, were playing Minecraft with each other with me in the room. Can you imagine a sheriff's deputy cyber stalking a little girl on Minecraft? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Will it never end? Every time I help put one perv in, five more pop up. It's like a hydra with multi many many hands you not you cut one off and then there's 20

more a deputy sheriff in texas allegedly cyber stalking a little girl he meets playing minecraft what the he double l is a grown man doing playing minecraft to start with. With me, renowned defense attorney, joining me out of the Atlanta jurisdiction, Randy Kessler. Also with me, former NYPD from the Harvard Law School's Internet Safety Tech Task Force, John Cordillo. Also, right now to CrimeOnLive.com, investigative reporter Dave Mack.

Dave Mack, when you have a grown man playing minecraft that should set off all sorts of bells and whistles in your mind let's just start at the beginning who is this guy pasquale solace he is a 25 year old sheriff's deputy out of uh texas who five years ago was online playing Minecraft and started grooming this 12-year-old girl. Now, we just heard, according to Eric Kane joining us at WHDH7, that he had been meeting her through Minecraft, a video game message board. And it's very, very unusual to John Cardillo. How do you groom a child long distance if you're just talking online? I mean, it's really become the most typical way to do it with the advent of the Internet.

I mean, obviously, the last 20 years plus, Nancy, online grooming has been actually more effective for the pedophiles than in-person grooming because they can at first convince the kid that they're trustworthy. Right. Kids have been taught for years. Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk to other adults. But on the Internet, you're assuming a personality. You have a fake identity, live action role play identity, much easier to form that bond and begin the grooming process. Well, you know, to Randy Kessler, renowned defense attorney joining me right now, I don't know what kind of defense you'd put up in a case like this, but I spoke in depth with a now grown woman who, as a child, met another girl, a little girl her age, in a chat room. They talked and talked and talked for months. Finally, the little girl admitted age, in a chat room. They talked and talked and talked for months. Finally, the little girl admitted he was actually a little boy. Then he wanted her to come outside and meet him. She went outside to meet him. It was not a little boy. It was a grown man who forced

her into his car, tied her up, chained her to the floor, molested her, assaulted her, beat her, had her in a shock collar, and she believed he was killing her that evening. When she was saved, Randy Kessler, this freaky perv had been sending photos of her and live videos of her to another pedophile. And another pedophile was so worried he would murder Alicia that he called police. That's how her life was saved by the FBI. So it happens all the time. I don't know how you can mount a defense when the perp is allegedly luring a 12-year-old little girl.

Well, not only that, he's in law enforcement. So you're right. These are the most difficult cases to defend on one hand. On the other hand, this guy is not accused of doing what you just went through. He didn't have the physical interaction. He was not there outside. It's not much of a defense. There's no way to say he's a morally, you know, good person.

You don't want him to go to jail because if he's in jail, everyone in jail is going to hate him just as much as you hate him. And America hates people that do this kind of stuff. So he's got to do everything he can to stay out of jail, agree to go to whatever counseling, agree to in-house. But it's very- Counseling? Whoa, whoa, that cow is out of the barn, Kessler. Counseling? Mm-mm, mm-mm. And it's not that he didn't have contact with her. Dave Mack, isn't it true that according to the documents that we have obtained, this deputy sheriff, then 25-year-old Pasquale Salas, repeatedly ordered the girl to send him sex images and videos of herself when she's a minor and then started threatening her, threatening that he would

release those images publicly if she did not continue to send them. Actually, Nancy, if you go back to this whole case, it starts when she's 12 and he spends time grooming her. About the time she hits 14, she's already sent him some pictures, some sexually explicit videos, but she's regretting it. And she starts to cut the relationship off. And that was in 2016. That's when he upped the ante and started threatening and started demanding more and more and more to the point where he got control of her passwords for all of her social media. He was tracking her online, was able to find out where she was every minute of the day. And by the way, because he was in law enforcement, he had this girl convinced

that he had her under 24-hour surveillance and that if she didn't do exactly what he said, he claimed, I own you, you have to do what I tell you, that if she didn't do that, he would hurt her family and release all the film and pictures that she had already sent. And oh, the shame she imagined that would cause her parents to John Cardillo, former NYPD with the Harvard Law School Internet Safety Tech Task Force.

John Cardillo, what happened is my understanding, he meets her playing Minecraft, and then they start talking in a private Minecraft chat room. Explain to me how that works. Well, you know, it's an isolated environment. So the two players can connect to one another and then begin a private chat. This can be done under the guise of almost anything, Nancy, right? They're like-minded players. They're on the same team.

They're in the same faction of the game. Because these games are emulating life. They're a microcosm fantasy world of real life. But the two other guests touch on something very interesting. And I have to completely disagree with the counselor that this guy deserves counseling and agree with Dave. I mean, this is a sheriff's deputy. He went through a process to become law enforcement. He lied on his psychological evaluations. His department gave polygraphs. He lied there. And then he did the most heinous thing a cop could do. He used his authority, not only abused his authority, but used his authority and the cultural trust put in him by parents, by society. Run to a police officer, little boy, little girl,

if you're in danger. He abused that and put fear in the heart of a child by telling them they were under surveillance and they and their family were in danger if she didn't do the most vile things for him. He deserves life in prison, not counseling. He deserves life in prison for the public corruption and life in prison for what he did to this kid. I have zero tolerance, Nancy, for corrupt cops. Zero tolerance. Well, and John Cardillo, I guess, you know, this gives you job security, Randy Kessler, a defense attorney out of Atlanta. But John Cardillo, if we've got him threatening and intimidating and sending explicit videos and photos of himself to her, a grown man, it's like a cockroach, okay? If he's doing this now with one girl, in my mind, there's no telling how many others he's tried it with or done it with.

Yes. We used to, when I looked at these cases when I was active, and then again on that task force at Harvard, we speculated conservatively, and this was due to empirical data, that for every case we knew about, there were seven to eight victims we didn't. So Nancy, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I think that there are many, many other victims that could possibly come out of the woodwork once this guy's online identities are revealed to the public and other data points about it. Parents, kids might perk up and say, oh, man, we were chatting with this guy online as well, but his online name was ABC123, not XYZ234. So that's going to be left to be seen, but it would not surprise me. In fact, I would expect that to be the case.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. According to the 13-page indictment unsealed Wednesday, the 25-year-old deputy would refer to himself as Gino and Daddy and the minor as Baby Girl. Prosecutors say the two met online back in 2014 when the victim was 12. Over the years, authorities say the girl sent him hundreds of explicit photos of herself. She's now 17 and reported to police this past spring. She believed the Texas deputy was tracking her movements via social media. And he was allegedly threatening to publish her explicit photos or rape her sister if she didn't continue to send him nude pictures. You're hearing our friend Eric Kane at WHDH News 7.

And that's not all joining me right now crying online.com investigative reporter dave mack she believed he was watching her 24 7 365 is it true he would pick out her clothes for jewelry this is a 12-old little girl we're talking about. Absolutely. He actually had her so under his thumb for so long that he had her where she had to actually take pictures of what she was going to wear before she went out. She had to share passwords with all of her online things that she would chat with other people so that he could read and see her chats and who she was talking to. So it went beyond just what she was wearing, where she was going. He told her and convinced her that she was his property and that there was nothing she could do without his permission.

And by the way, Nancy, you mentioned something a minute ago about others, possibly. One person has come forward. She's 15 years old. The police are investigating that one right now. Let me ask you this, Dave Mack. What was his his online handle did he have a fake name he used online he actually used um gino actually on facebook i went and tried to pull up his page um he wanted her to call him either gino or daddy oh please gino g-i-n-o yes ma'am. 7-4. Repeat, 617-748-3274. Now, it's my understanding a cyber-stalking charge has a sentence up to five years behind bars and a fine of $250,000. This guy does not have $250,000,

but that's cyber-stalking, which he obviously did. But what about enticement of a minor and ludicrous behavior? And I would consider this to be purveying and exchanging child pornography. What about that, Kessler? With me, Randy Kessler, renowned defense attorney. What about it, Kessler? I think this guy's in trouble. You know, you and your guests are commenting about how this guy shouldn't get counseling.

I'm not saying he should get counseling. You asked me, how do you defend him? You threw everything out there except for jail time, because when he's in jail, it doesn't matter what the sentence is. Once he's in jail for one day, the other prisoners are going to take care of him. No, please, not jailhouse justice again. I've only known in my life of three people that got jailhouse justice out of the millions of people that go to jail.

Who talks? And I'm not even including Epstein in that because he may, may, M-A-Y, capital M, have committed suicide. So I'm not relying on inmates to do my business for me. I want to put him in jail. I want to sentence him. I don't want to count on them to do it. And you did, in fact, say get him counseling.

You did say that, Counselor. We all heard it. You asked how to defend him i said you throw out every option because when he's in jail he's in trouble so that's absolutely what you do you throw out every single option every kind of counseling every kind of program every kind of environment that keeps them from being in jail where people are going to do jailhouse justice and you know what happens and you can talk about it or not talk about it but he's not going to be a leader in the jailhouse that that's for sure. No, no, he won't be.

To John Cardillo, former NYPD with Harvard Law School's Internet Safety Tech Task Force. Again, explain to me how you can innocently go from playing a game of Minecraft, because my son, I love him so much. He's always building me mansions on Minecraft. It's like, look, mom, look at this mansion I build out of pearls. Let me just say that. Or diamonds. I build this for you, mom. Look, it's got this, and it's got that, and it's near a lake, and it's got an underground bunker, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's so innocent and so sweet. And now he's got his sister. They play it together. I don't know how you do that. But how do you go from playing an innocent game to you're in a private chat room with a perv?

Oh, you know, look, these people are very manipulative. So your kids are about the same ages as my niece and nephew. My nephew's 14. My niece is 11. And my brother is constantly deleting their social media because they're kids and they do innocent things. They've got a pool in the backyard. My niece will put on Instagram pictures of her in a bikini jumping into the pool. That throws my brother into a livid frenzy and he deletes them because we know from the work I've done that, you know, there are- It's a pedophile's dream.

They would exploit that, right? And so the key for parents, it's very easy for the bad guy to chat up the kid because like I said previously, they already have a mutual interest. They're playing the same game. He's got his in. And I say he because in the cases we've come across, over 99 percent of child sexual predators are men. Women are very rare. And typically when women are involved, they were coerced into it by the man. They're typically beaten and were a victim prior themselves. Similar we saw in the epstein case and and so what we have here is they're very manipulative and these guys are very smart the other problem nancy is there's really no profile on them i was sitting in a

steakhouse not long ago and a friend of mine said i can't wait to find out how you're going to work you at a steakhouse into this story but please please go ahead. I'm all ears. I'm one big ear. We were sitting in a steakhouse, me and a couple of guys about my age and similar backgrounds, education. And one of them, we were talking about these cases and they said, well, what's the, you know, what do we look for with our kids? What's the profile of a pedophile? And I said, us, every other guy in this room, there really is no, there really is no profile. Oftentimes you'll find they're middle class, upper middle class affluent because they need a private place to do these things, access to technology. And in these cases, going back to your point, they already have a

common interest with the child. So now you have somebody that's relatively well-educated. They're playing the same game. They know the characters the kids gravitate to. So they've got that in, which as an adult, it seems very rudimentary to us. But to a kid, it's relatively sophisticated when they begin talking to them and explaining the nuances of the character and how they also like them. So for the grooming component of it, for the pedophile, is very easy. A kid, for lack of a better term, is an easy mark. You know, I'm thinking this through. Is it true, Dave Mack, that he would call her every single night and threaten her with what would happen if she did not pick the phone up? Yes. And Nancy, it was even worse than that because as she got a little bit older, she started cutting off ties. She wanted to separate from him a couple of years ago and he then started getting sneaky. He started using other phones. He used numbers and

he used programs that could mask who he was calling from or where he was calling from so that she would answer the phone. He was just all about tying this girl up in knots in every way that he could. And it was multiple times a day, not just once a day that he called her. He would call her and keep her tied up so that she could do nothing else. He is accused of soliciting this little girl starting at age 12 to send him hundreds, hundreds of sex images and videos of herself through multiple social media platforms. And then he, in return, sent her sex explicit photos of himself to this little girl. Now, in a statement, the local Matagorga County Sheriff's Office said he had been relieved by the department.

I guess that means fired. It was a total surprise to them when the FBI notified them about his arrest. He had no recorded, notice I said recorded, issues at the sheriff's office. How can that be to John Cardillo? How can that be that he seems so normal? You know, we had a case like this with a North Carolina deputy several years back, similar situation, a well-regarded guy, community resource deputy. He was the guy that would go around to store owners in schools and get them anything they needed. It's impeccable record, community awards. He wasn't on the radar. See, these are the crimes that keep police awake at night, Nancy.

You know this is a prosecutor that kept you awake as well. These ones you can't see coming. By all rights and accounts, this guy was a vetted, qualified, certified law enforcement officer in the state of Texas. His peers didn't see anything abnormal about him. And this is typically and terrifyingly what we see in these cases. They're very good at covering their tracks. I mean, had he given any indication that this was his proclivity, he wouldn't have been hired by the sheriff's office. But he didn't. He passed with flying colors, got his badge, got his gun, and he was really the ultimate predator. Once you have that law enforcement authority, that badge, that gun,

that patch on your shoulder, you really are the ultimate predator if you're a nefarious person. 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, five Central on Oxygen, Injustice with Nancy Grace. We investigate the death of Shelly 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. The indictment alleges years of manipulation and control where he would force her to follow his rules. Some of them included when going out, outfit must be approved by me. No guys around, period. And he told her, you belong to me. You're my property, so I can treat you however I want. If she did not comply, he threatened her with sexual violence.

The deputy is now in custody. The deputy under arrest will go before a judge in Texas tomorrow. Eventually, he'll be extradited here to Massachusetts to face the cyber-stalking charges. You're hearing our friends at WHDH Action News, and that was reporter Eric Kane, who has been investigating this along with us. Not only that, this sheriff's deputy, Pasquale Salas, also threatened punishment on this 12-year-old little girl, including gagging her, choking her, and other sex-explicit actions. This all started when she was just a little girl and he would threaten to send the photos of her to her family, her friends, to intimidate her into sending him more sexually

explicit material. He threatened her not to change her passwords or her social media accounts so he could continue to access them. He threatened to physically harm her and rape her and her sister if she did not obey every single one of his orders. She tried to break it off, but every time she was met with threats, according to the affidavit she provided that we have obtained, she said that, quote, Gino called her almost every night and required her to stay on the phone with him for hours at a time in the middle of the night. That she could barely function during daylight hours and struggle to maintain a normal life. Now hold on just a minute. Where are the parents during all of this? Randy Kessler, you've raised children before. Now, true, you are a defense attorney, but Randy Kessler, how come the parents didn't know she's on the phone in the middle of the night for hours on end?

Well, you're a parent, too, and kids are smarter than parents nowadays, and kids understand technology better. Well, speak for yourself, knock on wood. I bet you there's some stuff you don't even know your kids are doing. Even Nancy Grace has, you know, what they may be doing is listening. You shut your mouth right now, Kessler. I bet your kids are doing great. Just leave John, Dave, and Lucy out of this. They've done dirty jokes and things, but your kids are better than average. That's for sure, 100%.

But I'm sure all kids, it's a natural instinct, right? Do stuff we don't want Mommy and daddy to find out about. Mommy and daddy don't know stuff. They're old. That happens. And that's unfortunately what this guy's preying on. Look, aside from him being a horrible person, being a law enforcement officer, it's double, you know, bad for him.

If he goes to jail, he is just going to get it. And he probably deserves it. I don't know if I'd take his case if I was. The question for defense is, is he the one who did it? Not, is what he did okay? Is there a defense to it? There's not a lot of defenses deserves it. I don't know if I'd take his case if I was. The question for defense is, is he the one who did it? Not, is what he did okay? Is there a defense to it? There's not a lot of defenses to it. The only defense is, you better line it up.

You better be absolutely sure you got the right guy. Because if it's not the right guy, then it's a tragedy. Well, I guess you could attack it forensically, Randy Kessler. But then they've got the IP address. And there's so many thousands of communications. I mean, he says he's with law enforcement. They can track it to his home computer and IP address. He sends photos of himself and his genitalia.

I mean, you know, they can track that. They can see his face. They can see his body and identify that that is him. So you can't get out of it that way. Right, and he's been doing it so long, he probably got very comfortable, very secure, and very lazy and didn't go to an Internet shop or a Wi-Fi shop. He probably did everything from his house thinking, I've never been caught yet.

He probably didn't even realize how wrong it was after he's done it for so long. It's just these people that have – it's got to be a mental disorder, right? Oh, don't start with mental disorder, please. I was just waiting for you to go there, Randy Kessler. Do you have no shame at all? Just answer that. That's a yes, no, do you have no shame? I have no shame in saying that this guy's got mental problems.

Okay, all right, okay. You know, here's another thing. Dave Mack, correct me if I'm wrong with me, Dave Mack, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. She tried to end contact with this deputy sheriff and told him her parents, quote, knew everything. And I'm learning this from the affidavit, okay? She blocked his cell phone. She blocked him from all of her social contacts. Then he started to text her from a phone with an unrecognizable number. He also introduced her to two other men online, identifying themselves as Johnny and Levi, according to her affidavit. Forced her to send photos to Levi, but no one else has been charged with the crimes.

Do you think Johnny and Levi are real, or were the photos going to him under a different name? You know, Nancy, it's a great question because this guy was conniving. I actually think he forwarded some out. I was looking through that paperwork just for that reason. But I do think that he actually shared some of the photos and videos with some of his so-called friends. One other point to make, too, is you talked about the pictures and whether he could claim it wasn't him. Well, it's going to be really tough for him to claim that the picture of him in uniform in his squad car, a video on patrol that he sent to her. It's going to be tough to prove that's not him. Was it? Well, wait, wait. Did he have on all his clothes? Yes, he it wasn't. It was not. Well,

I'm going to assume that I'm going to take that back. I don't know. He was in his uniform, in his shirt. I mean, he sends all these sex videos and pictures. Why send one with your clothes on? Yeah, because he was on patrol and trying to prove that he was, I figured it was part of the control. He's saying, see, I'm on patrol. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. We also know that he bought her gifts, including jewelry, edible arrangements. Okay, so that's like when they send you like

pineapple and strawberries on sticks like they're flowers. iTunes gift cards gave her access to his Amazon Prime account. So all of that can be traced back to him. John Cardillo got a question. She blocked him on social media. So let's just say you've got a Twitter account and you block somebody. Do they know immediately they've been blocked? How does that work? No, they'll have to go to the account, try to find you and realize they can no longer see you on Facebook or Twitter. But then all they really need to do is they need to just set up a new account, right? Under a different name. And if you don't go into, say, Twitter or Facebook and also disable the ability for a person you're not friends with or that you don't follow or follows you to

send you private messages, they can then contact you again very, very easily. So if you block me, Nancy, and I want to get in touch with you, I just create a new account. And if you don't disable private messages, I say, hey, Nancy, it's Cardillo. Ha, ha, ha, you thought you blocked me. You didn't. I'm still able to contact you, which they did. But wouldn't you have to be very tech savvy to know all that? I mean, would a regular person know all that? I mean, when you block somebody, do they know that they've been blocked? No, only if they proactively tell them or they proactively go to contact you and search for your profile. But to answer your question, a sheriff's deputy would know that.

A sheriff's deputy would certainly know that because they would use that, even though he was a road patrol deputy. In these smaller agencies, and I was at the NYPD, we've got 40,000 cops, right? We've got detective bureaus, detective squads. But in these smaller agencies, oftentimes the road patrol deputies will do investigations. I was shocked to find out that New Hampshire state troopers act as prosecutors in misdemeanor cases. They actually go, because the state is so small and understaffed, there's no prosecutor in the room for certain misdemeanor cases. So it's not uncommon for uniformed law enforcement officers to conduct investigations as well.

He probably would have gotten basic training in the fundamentals of how internet investigations work. He would have known this. But let me add something that's being missed in this story. The other crime here, Nancy, every bad guy he's arrested, murderers, rapists, domestic violence abusers, serial drunk drivers, robbers, ext extortionists they now all have good grounds for appeal randy will tell you that i mean i the first thing a defense lawyer is going to now do is say well how do we know what he said on the stand was truthful he lied to the department about his proclivities he passed the psychological which means that the department's psychological

evaluations are flawed so there might be a lot of other bad guys who are going to do heinous things to people, walking free very soon because of this guy. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The feds say the two met online when the girl was only 12, and prosecutors say this sheriff deputy would manipulate and threaten her all the way from Texas. A Texas sheriff deputy accused of cyber-stalking a Worcester County teenager through the popular video game Minecraft. According to the 13-page indictment unsealed Wednesday, the 25-year-old deputy would refer to himself as Gino and Daddy and the minor as Baby Girl.

Prosecutors say the two met online back in 2014 when the victim was 12. Over the years, authorities say the girl sent him hundreds of explicit photos of herself. She's now 17 and reported to police this past spring she believed the Texas deputy was tracking her movements via social media and he was allegedly threatening to publish her explicit photos or rape her sister if she didn't continue to send him nude pictures. That's our friend at Action News 7 WHDH Eric Kane reporting an indictment goes down on a deputy sheriff arrested for cyberstalking. We keep saying a teen, but she was only 12 years old, innocently playing Minecraft at home with her family when the whole thing started. With me, John Cardillo, former NYPD,

Randy Kessler, renowned defense attorney, and Dave Mack, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter. John Cardillo, you were saying that because of what he's done, he has jeopardized hundreds, if not thousands, of cases because he now could have been cross-examined on the stand every time he testified. To Randy Kessler, how does that work? You know, credibility is always an issue. When he's the prosecuting witness and he's the one I robbed and I saw the defendant doing X, Y, and Z, you know, all of a sudden you've got to say,

and you would tell the truth always, right? There's nothing you've ever lied about. And you go right into what he's lied about here, what he's covered up, and then you get into it. You don't ever want to put him on the stand as a prosecutor. You can't. He's done. Well, I remember very well. I don't know if you remember

this, Randy Kessler, because we were in the same jurisdiction at the time, me prosecuting, you defending. But I had worked many, many cases with three vice detectives, and we had just been working on a child prostitution ring. I had been out on the street with these three specifically, either all three, one or two of them in various combinations every day trying to crack this ring. We finally did it. We took it to trial. I had a star 13-year-old witness. Long story short, I got a mistrial in my opening statement because I called the defendant a pimp. Well, retried it, got a conviction. About, let's just say six months later, I happened to look up at the TV,

and I see what looked to be these three guys in orange jumpsuits in federal court. I couldn't really tell if it was them because, you know, in federal court there are not cameras. So all I had were those horrible sketch artists, you know, likenesses. And I'm like, dang, that looks like them. Well, lo and behold, it was them. They had been ripping off dopers, dope lords, of their plasma TV screens, their gold chains, all their money, whatever they had laying around. And they had been doing it for so long, the dopers, the dopers actually went to the cops. And the cops set up, the feds, of course, set up cameras and stung the three vice cops. And I thought, first of all, I couldn't believe it because I thought that I knew them so well. Then I immediately thought, oh, my stars. All the cases they have ever testified in are now going to be reversed.

That's a sobering thought, Randy Kessler. I'm sure you were just throwing up in your mouth when you saw that on TV and thinking all those successful prosecutions you had as a prosecutor right out the window. And there's nothing worse for a prosecutor that's done such a good job like you to see, I'm sure. Oh, my star. So what you're saying, John Cardillo, is absolutely correct. Yeah, I mean, I've seen it happen, sadly, right? So you go back to the worst of the worst, this guy's arrested. Now, the fortunate part of this here is he was only a deputy for a few years. So hopefully, in that time, he only had dozens,

maybe under 100 of these serious arrests, hopefully far less. You know what I still don't get, Cardello? I've asked you, this is now my third try. It's what I would always do in court. If I couldn't get the answer I wanted or understood, I'd just keep trying it a different way. I still don't understand how you go from playing Minecraft to suddenly being in a chat room. How do you get into a chat room? I mean, physically, how do you go from the game online into a chat room?

I don't understand that. Right. And let me give you a specific answer on that. It's not a chat room like we're thinking of back in the 90s when AOL had chat rooms. In these games, there's typically just a chat bar on the side and players are given the option of moving that chat to a private chat. So it's really just, there would be like a scrolling screen on the side of the monitor with people making various comments on the game, commenting on the players, on the characters, and they do have the option, players do have the option to move into a private chat area or make their chat private. So that typically it's innocuous and

innocent, right? It's just a group of people who play the game and they don't want all that chatter bogging down their conversation because there might be six or seven other people in the public chat populating the chat browser in between them replying to one another. But it's then certainly an effective tool for bad guys to groom children. Hey, ABC 123 child, do you want to move this chat? Private, yes, they move it private, and then they're in a chat room, but don't think of it in the context of chat rooms like we saw in the early days of the internet. It's simply the scrolling public chat. Okay, let me understand something else, and this is to you, Dave Mack with me, crimeonline.com, investigative reporter, where you can find this and all other breaking crime and justice news that crime online. Dave Mack, it seems to me

that every time he shared a sexually explicit photo of this 12-year-old little girl, that that in itself would be another count for which he should be charged. They're not even close to finished with the charging stuff yet, Nancy. What we got was the 13-page indictment, and we've got all of that information that we've been sharing. But yeah, he's still facing the cyber-stalking charges in Massachusetts. What we're dealing with is just in Texas right now. Once he gets to Massachusetts, where the victim lives, this takes on a whole new ballgame with a whole new set of charges where each one of those photos where this girl was underage, sexually explicit videos, disgusting explicit chats that he had with that girl. And

remember, she was 12 when this started. He was grooming her to the point where she wanted to get away before she was even 14. So you've got a girl under the age of 14 that was sending pictures and things like that that he was using to threaten her with. So there's got a girl under the age of 14 that was sending pictures and things like that, that he was using to threaten her with. So there's going to be charges for each one of those videos, each one of those pictures. What do we know about him as a person? What do we know about his life, Dave? We found out that he has only been a sheriff's deputy for a couple of years. As Cardello mentioned, though, this is a guy with a squeaky clean image. Nobody there had any clue. He was only, what, 20 years old, a first-year sheriff's deputy, when he started this.

So he's actually been involved in luring this girl since his first days as a sheriff's deputy. And nobody knew it. They didn't know until the FBI said, hey, we're arresting this guy. Now, they fired him right away. Obviously, that's why they say he's a former deputy. He was a deputy up until a month ago. You know what? I've also noticed that he has an AKA. People refer to him as Gino. That's just not a screen name that he was using. That's one of his AKAs. What does that mean to you, Kessler? It means he's very comfortable. He's not, you know, again, it goes to his mental,

you're not going to like this. It goes to his mental status. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong. He was bold. And that's who I am. He used his real name with her. Why would he do that? Unless he was thought he was impugned or he was law enforcement. They'll never catch me. I'm above the law. It just goes to his mentality. He just did not think he was ever going to get caught or that it was even that bad. Yeah, you're right. You're right. He was pretty arrogant. To John Cardillo from NYPD, we also know that he used Skype and Snapchat, and I've learned that from court documents. What, if anything, does that mean to you as to how they're going to prove this case? Well, I mean, he's left an incredibly robust digital trail, so they're going to make

this case. The important thing is now that the FBI is involved, the Bureau's involved, these images typically, I think federally, right, carry sentences of up to 30 years, depending on how implicit they are, explicit they are each. So that's number one. He's in a lot of trouble. Number two, the Bureau is probably going to go back to his high school because as Randy noted and Dave noted, this guy was doing this while he was a probationary deputy, meaning he was doing it while he was in the academy, meaning he was doing it before that. So they're probably going to now go back to high school and start talking to people that knew him, classmates.

They're going to, I believe they'll uncover a Pandora's box here, but with Skype and Snapchat and all these other, right now you can bet your bottom dollar, subpoenas have been issued to all of them for his entire history. And there's a treasure trove of digital intelligence. So this investigation is really, as they've noted, in its early, early stages. By the time this is done, this guy's probably facing multiple life terms. We know the U.S. Attorney's Office has announced a new charge carrying a mandatory 15-year prison sentence of sex exploitation of a minor. We'll see where it goes.

I think the investigation goes on. But for all of you parents listening, this all started on Minecraft and then moved into a private chat room. We wait as justice unfolds. Tip line 617-748-3224. Repeat 617-748-3224. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend.

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