Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - HEARTBREAK: BOY, 13, DEAD IN YARD AFTER "SEXTORTION" SCHEME

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Geoffrey Hauptman kisses his wife goodbye as he leaves for work. Moments later, he calls Betsy Hauptman telling her to lock the doors and check on the children because someone’s passed out in the front yard. As he calls 911, Betsy Hauptman goes from room to room, locating 5 of 6 children. Timothy is missing. Betsy Hauptman meets her husband at the front door, hysterically explaining she can’t find Timothy. With tears in his eyes, Geoffrey Hauptman shakes his head at his wife, and she screams. The body in the front yard is Timothy, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Security cameras show Timothy sitting in the family car in the driveway for two hours the night before, frantically scrolling on his cellphone. Sumter, South Carolina PD, collected Timothy’s phone and his school Chromebook. Just before his death, Timothy changed the passcode on his phone, so detectives focused on the task of unlocking it. Betsy Hauptman tells Detective Kelsey Wade that Timothy mainly communicated over Snapchat, and Wade issues a subpoena for the teen’s account. Eleven weeks go by with no answers, despite Hauptman calling twice a week. Wade finally informs Hauptman investigators that they are submitting a second Snapchat subpoena, along with a subpoena for Timothy’s Cash App activity. A month later, Sumter PD unearthed dozens of suicide notes addressed to family and friends. They also find an extensive call and text record with an unsaved phone number with a New York area code. The texts included links to a second Snapchat account Timothy used. Messages on that account reveal Timothy sent a stranger $35 a day to prevent them from posting an explicit photo of him online. One of Timothy’s last messages begged the stranger to stop, reading, “Please, I’m just a child.” Joining Nancy Grace Today:  Betsy Hauptman  - Timothy Barnett's Mother Joe Cunningham - Victim's Family Lawyer  Titania Jordan – BARK CMO Chief Marketing Officer/Chief Parenting Office Detective Rich Wistocki: Child Crime Expert, President of BeSure Consulting (30 years), 23-year SWAT team member; Formed the Will County Illinois States Attorney’s High Technology Crimes Unit that made over 90 sexual predator arrests in its first 3 ½ years.  Ashley Jones - Reporter and Anchor WIS News 10 in South Carolina See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Heartbreak. There's no other way to say it. Heartbreak. A beautiful little boy, just 13, commits suicide in the front yard, mommy and daddy inside, after a horrible online sextortion scheme. What is that? Now we all know what it is. Tonight, what happened?

Joining us, special guest, his mom. Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. A Sumter, South Carolina homeowner leaving for work thinks someone is sleeping or passed out in their yard. He tells his wife to lock the doors, check on the children as he looks into what's going on and calls 911. Officers discover the person in the yard is dead, killed by a gunshot to the head. Oh, gosh.

When I hear it stated like that, all I can think about are my own children. This boy. Oh, if I could just explain how he was just totally scrubbed in sunshine. So sweet. So smart. Good grades. Everything. The boy every parent would want to have.

How does this happen? I really want to thank you for being with us tonight because this whole sextortion scheme that is targeting our youth, our little children. It's vast. As a matter of fact, I understand a new lawsuit has been filed naming 600 other cases. Joining me, an all-star panel. What happened that morning inside the family home? Listen. Timothy Barnett loves helping out around the house and is taken to making his mom's cup of coffee every morning.

At 6.15, Betsy Hopman is surprised that Timothy isn't already in the kitchen and pours her own coffee, kissing her husband goodbye as he leaves for work. Moments later, Jeffrey Hopman calls his wife, telling her to lock the doors and check on the children because someone's passed out in their front yard. As he calls 911, Betsy Hopman goes from room to room, locating five of six children. Timothy is missing. With me right now, Timothy's mom, Betsy Hopman.

Miss Hopman, thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me, Nancy. Betsy, I almost didn't want to even play that sound because, you know, we have routines we go through every morning. My daughter gets up super early. I can hear her turning on the bathwater. My son sleeps late. I have to go wake him up every morning and he jumps up and gives me a big hug. And that is the normal routine.

I'm just thinking on what I just heard that every morning, is this true? Your boy would come and make you a cup of coffee? Most mornings. Yes, ma'am. Every morning, almost every morning he would get up. He'd be the first one up and I'd walk into the kitchen and he'd be having my tea kettle on for the French press. Ms. Hartman, before I go into the facts of this case, I've just got to tell you, we are so sorry about your loss, about losing your baby. I am so sorry. I appreciate that. Again, with me, an all-star panel. You know, a lot of people haven't even heard the word sextortion before. And joining me in a few moments is an expert in online safety, Tita Jordan from Bark. But Betsy, tell me what happened that morning.

Sure. It was a morning like every other morning. My husband and I got up with the alarm. He went about his day, walked out the front door. A few minutes later, I get a phone call saying, lock the doors and check on the kids. So I go about the kids' rooms, check on them. They're all there except for Timothy. And I was like, okay, well, that's not abnormal. So I checked the bathroom to see if he was in the bathroom. He wasn't. Checked the kitchen where, like I said, he normally got up and turned on the kettle for my french

press and he wasn't there so I walked out to the garage to see if he was at our drink fridge again he wasn't there and panic set in and I realized when my husband told me to lock the door something must have happened so I called my husband back and I said, what's going on? He's like, someone's sleeping in her front yard. And I said, I can't find Timothy. And he walked me through the house again. He's like, is he in the bathroom? Is he in the pantry? Is he in the kitchen? I was like, no. And at that point, I realized I woke up into every mother's nightmare. Ms. Hauptman, it's so hard to hear what you're saying. It's so hard to hear it, knowing what happened. I don't know how you have the strength to tell this story? How do you keep going? How do you have the strength to tell other parents about what happened tonight? The only reason I

can even have that is because God allows me to have a voice that allows education for other parents so that they're not sitting in my seat. You get a call, there's somebody in the front yard, lock the door. Go check on the children. You find everybody but Timmy. Then what do you do? Like I said, I walked through the house making sure that he wasn't in his normal spot in the morning because like I said, he normally woke up before everybody else. He wasn't. And at that point, I knew, but my husband told me not to come outside, that the cops were there. And a few minutes later, and it felt like eternity, my husband walked in the front door and he still hasn't told me to this day what happened

and who he found in the front yard. But as soon as I saw his face, um, you can hear me yell on our ring doorbell camera. Um, because at that point my heart broke. When did you learn your baby, your little boy, and I know you have, I think, three boys, but I refer to both of my twins, they're 16 now, as my babies. When did you learn your sweet Timothy? This tastes like dirt in my mouth, had committed suicide? About 6.30, 6.45 in the morning on April 6th of 2023. How did you process not just losing your

child, but learning your child committed suicide. I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. It didn't make sense to me because he was such a normal kid. He was the kid that was the life of the party and the one that always tried to make people happy. He's the one who would come in and cuddle and make sure that mom was okay.

And again, it just, it truly didn't make sense to me because we had plans. He had asked me to take him to Tennessee, to Gatlinburg, for his birthday. And I was like, yeah, we can plan a trip, you and me, because I like to make memories instead of do gifts. And I was like, yeah, we can most certainly do that. And we were planning it. So it didn't make sense at all until I found out what happened. Guys, what do we know did happen? Why is this beautiful boy, who I keep saying it over and over there were no prior mental instabilities

there were no depressions he had never ever threatened suicide ever never even intimated anything about harming himself or anybody else I'm telling you, this is the boy every parent wants to have. So why is this beautiful boy dead? What more do we know? Listen. Betsy Hauptman meets her husband at the front door, hysterically explaining she can't find Timothy. With tears in his eyes, Jeffrey Hauptman shakes his head at his wife and she screams. The body in the front yard is Timothy, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Security cameras show Timothy sitting in the family car in the driveway for two hours the night before, frantically scrolling on a cell phone. Sumter South Carolina PD collect Timothy's phone and his school Chromebook, bowing to find out what drove the teen to suicide. And again, isn't it true, Betsy, that Timothy, I have a nephew, Timothy,

and I call him Timmy, even though he's grown now. So I've now started calling your son Timmy because I've read so much about him. Isn't it true that your son, Timothy, had never gone through bouts of depression, had never lost appetite, was never in prolonged periods of sadness, to your knowledge, wasn't bullied at school. None of the red flags we look for, no bedwetting, no self-mutilation, no slapping or bruising or pinching himself, nothing to make you think he would ever have committed suicide. There were no extreme signs. I mean, he was a 13-year-old boy, a 13-year-old boy that was going through puberty.

Would I classify him as a depressed child? Absolutely not. But what teenager doesn't have the normal, what's my place in life? The normal ups and downs of going through middle school, entering high school. He is just 13 years old. I understand that that night he was scrolling and I've seen my daughter and my son do this. They scroll and scroll and scroll on their phones. I'm like, what are you looking at? And they typically say TikTok. And I've snuck up on them so many times to see what it is. And

it's always with my son, some crazy prank. Some boys are, you know, trying to shoot a basketball from a car driving by or some crazy thing like that. My daughter's looking at fashion or skin care, but they look at it all the time. So Timothy was out in the car the night before just scrolling. Is that right um so the security cameras show him sneaking out his window um about i want to say 2 45 3 o'clock um and sitting in my car um and then you can see him on his phone just scrolling through it. And unfortunately, the cameras aren't the greatest to see. We weren't able to see what he was scrolling through or what he was doing on his phone,

but just that he was on his phone scrolling. And then at about five o'clock, 515, he goes off camera and he comes back for a short few minutes and then he goes back off for the final time. So you had no idea he was outside in the car scrolling. And you know, there's something very comforting about just sitting in the family car. I know when we would drive home from school, a lot of times in the afternoon, we would sit in the sitting in the family car. I know when we would drive home from school, a lot of times in the afternoon, we would sit in the car in the driveway and listen to music and talk. It's just something, you know, you're cocoon like in the car. And I'm imagining him sitting in the car where nobody can see what he's doing. He knows you're asleep inside and he's scrolling. Had he ever done

that before to your knowledge? He did it once before from my understanding, but that's not an abnormal thing because much like you, Nancy, when I go on a trip anywhere, even if it was to the grocery store or to go get gas, I sit in the car for a few minutes and collect my thoughts because it's that almost soundproof space where I can block everything and anybody out. And Tim was a lot like mom, where he needed that soundproof space to process his own thoughts. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Why is a 13-year-old little boy dead? Why did a 13-year-old who had never threatened suicide,

never had mental instability or problems, no prolonged depressions, nothing? Why did he commit suicide? And what was he scrolling ceaselessly the night before sitting in the family car? What was so secretive he did not want his parents to hear about? Joining me is a very special guest who I've got to say is one of the bravest ladies I know, speaking out so other parents can learn from Timothy's death. But right now I want to go to Tanya Jordan joining us, online safety expert, chief parent officer of Bark Technology.

It's an online safety company that helps keep children, kids, teens safe. And I've got to tell you, my children know, the whole family knows that I have Bark. Bark is kind of an online program you download on your phone and your children's phones and you sync them. And they're like a safety net that catches problems, curse words, bullying. I don't really know how they do it, but I will give you this brief anecdote. My son is the goalie. He's been a goalie forever in soccer. And when he was about in the seventh or eighth grade, he made this incredible save. And he was really horizontal.

He went horizontal to stop the goal. And he made this incredible save and he was really horizontal. He went horizontal to stop the goal and he did stop it, but his arm went through the net and he had a big bruise from the net and he took a picture of it and he sent it to some of his friends and went, look what I got saving a goal. He was proud of the bruise. Well, Bark caught the bruise and alerted me about self-harm. That's how sensitive it is. So that's what Bark is. To Tanya, Snapchat. A lot of parents think if you go on to your child's scrolling history, their Internet use, then you know what they've been doing.

That is not true. All of this happened on Snapchat. Just very briefly, explain what is Snapchat? What's a Snap? Snapchat is an app that was launched to send disappearing photos. And children do not need the ability to send disappearing photos. It is now expanded to offer location sharing, which is problematic. It's become rife with drug dealers and now sextortion scams. Guys, very often I'll be sitting with the twins and one of them will start laughing. I'm like, what?

What is it? And they go, it's a funny snap from so-and-so. I'm like, let me see it. And they go, it's already disappeared, mom. I can't show it to you. To Betsy Hauptman, this is Timothy's mom. Betsy, when did you find out about this horrible sextortion scheme against Timothy on Snapchat. So I found out Timothy passed away on April 6th and I found out from the captain of investigations here in Sumter on October 4th. Joining me now is Ashley Jones, investigative reporter and anchor, WIS News, South Carolina. Ashley, thank you for being with us. I want to go back to the day that Timothy was killed. Tell me what you know.

So what from what I know, as far as what Sumter PD said in an incident report on the morning of April 6th, Timothy's father found his body laying outside in the front yard. And from there, they called the Sumter Police Department who came out and began an investigation however there was some I believe discrepancies as far as Sumter Police Department actually doing the investigation there was something about they couldn't get into Timothy's phone to figure out what may have happened. There was a lot of back and forth. Oh, Ashley, you know, it's amazing that you said that because you guys have already lived through this in South Carolina with the Alex Murdoch trial.

Remember what all we had to bring in the Secret Service to unlock a phone in order to place Alex Murdoch at the dog kennels where his wife and son were murdered at the time of the murder. Remember that? I sat through that Secret Service guy testimony and it was very, very intricate about unlocking the phone. Okay, so what is Timothy looking at for two hours and then commit suicide in the front yard? Listen. Timothy mainly communicated over Snapchat, and Wade issues a subpoena for the teen's account. Eleven weeks go by with no answers, despite Hauptman calling twice a week. Wade finally informs Hauptman investigators are submitting a second Snapchat subpoena, along with a subpoena for Timothy's cash app activity. Joining me, in addition to Timothy's mom, Betsy, is the family lawyer, Joe Cunningham, high profile lawyer in that jurisdiction.

Joe, thank you for being with us. They have to send a second subpoena to Snapchat. Why? Well, Nancy, what we know is that the first subpoena that was sent to Snap, apparently from Snap's response response was not comprehensive enough or detailed enough to provide a response. So they required them to send a second one. And since then, this investigation has been handed over to the federal agencies, the U.S. Attorney's Office, who is now handling this. So it's amazing to me that in light of Timothy's death, you have to basically threaten Snapchat in order to get responses. And you've got the mom, Betsy Hartman, basically begging to get answers. What was my son looking at? Betsy, what was going through your mind when you're having to call twice a week to get answers and still not getting answers?

What were they doing to find out why my son killed himself? And unfortunately, I was told it wasn't Sumter Police Department's job to find out why he did it, just that he did it. You know, that is amazing to me. And I'm going to circle back in a moment, Betsy, about when you took the phone away from him for a period of months. But right now I want to focus on why the local police department told you to just figure it out yourself. Imagine you being in Betsy's position. You're trying and trying to find out the cause. Your boy committed suicide and he believed the answer is on his phone. I want you to listen to this.

Five months after Timothy's death, Betsy Hopman gets a notification on Life 360 that Timothy completed a drive. Hopeful that detectives cracked his passcode, Hopman calls Detective Wade with no response. Hopman drives down to the police station, refusing to leave until she speaks with Wade. Hours later, two unfamiliar detectives inform her that Timothy's phone is equivalent to a paperweight. They are closing the investigation, and it isn't their job to figure out why her son killed himself. A month later, Betsy Hopman discovers Sumter PD unearthed dozens of suicide notes addressed to family and friends. They also found an extensive call and text record with an unsaved phone number with a New York area code.

The text includes links to a second Snapchat account Timothy used. Messages on that account revealed Timothy sent a stranger $35 a day to prevent them from posting an explicit photo of him online. One of Timothy's last messages begged the stranger to stop, reading, quote, Please, I'm just a child. Sextortion. That's what's happening. That is why this little boy felt there was no way out and killed himself. Sextortion. Titania Jordan, bark child safety expert. What is sextortion? Sextortion is a combination of the words sex and extortion. And extortion is using threats or force to coerce someone into doing something. And so in the case of sextortion,

a child, a person is threatened that their nude photos or videos will be released unless they provide valuables, money, or release more sexual photos or videos. To Ashley Jones joining us, WIS News 10 South Carolina. Ashley, what was the threat on Timothy? What was this extortion? Well, so from what we know is that this person, whomever it was, was basically telling Timothy unless he sent them $35 a day via cash app, then they would post this nude photo of him online. Oh, my stars to thank. This boy is gone because some evil person is extorting a little child. To Joe Cunningham, the family lawyer, what more do we know about the plot? Who was behind it? Well, this is still under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Nancy. Unfortunately, what we know is this is not an isolated instance. A lot of these originated from the Ivory Coast of Africa, where people pose as young teenage girls and befriend teenage boys and engage in flirtatious manners, soliciting nude pictures, only to later on come back, screenshot the list of their friends and family members and extort them for money. Otherwise they'll release these particular pictures.

This has become very common. I want to thank you for shining a light onto this because here's a statistic that your viewers need to know. Snapchat did a survey a while back and said that two-thirds of Gen Z teens or young adults, either themselves or people they knew, had been victims of sex extortion. Two-thirds. So this is, unfortunately, it's a non-isolated incident. This is the worst case scenario, though, for any family to have to go through. Guys, it is by far not the first time a teen boy or girl has been targeted in sextortion. For instance, in a case I recently investigated, I mean, a superstar kid, much like Timothy, is online chatting with a beautiful girl his age. And the girl gets the boy to send a nude photo.

Well, it turns out the girl is not a young girl his age at all. Over the course of a short conversation, Samuel Ogashi, pretending to be this young woman, persuaded Jordan to send a sexually explicit image of himself. Once Samuel Ogashi had that sexually explicit image in his hand, he then turned to extort Jordan DeMay for money, threatening to reveal the image to Jordan's family and friends if he did not comply. This kid, Jordan DeMay, a high school superstar. And you are hearing the U.S. attorney Mark Totten speaking. Listen.

Jordan DeMay paid what he had, which was $300. But Samuel Ogashi continued his threats, demanding more from Jordan. A few hours later, Jordan told Samuel Ogashi that he was now taking his life. And Samuel Ogashi, responding through the Instagram persona of Danny Roberts, told him, do that fast or I'll make you do it. Jordan DeMay, who committed suicide after sextortion, his father spoke to me in depth. Listen. If things happen, you know, it's not the end of the world either. You know, Jordan, Jordan's story is so tragic. And this is something that probably would have been laughing about in 10 or 15 years after he's graduated college and gotten married and had kids and bought his first home and, you know, got a career job and

did all the things you'd look back and kind of like, that was stupid, right? But in that moment, you can't. They're not old enough to understand. They're not developed enough to understand. Betsy Hotman takes Sumpter PD's findings to the FBI and Homeland Security. A federal investigation is immediately opened, and detectives find that the Cash App account Timothy sent money to belongs to a woman in Los Angeles County.

A suspect has yet to be identified, but Timothy's family is encouraged by how seriously the feds are taking their son's case. Both Betsy Hotman and Jamie Barnett have criticized Sumter PD for closing their investigation, but the parents' focus lies on finding justice for Timothy. Joining me is Timothy's mom, Betsy Hauptman. So getting fed up with no answers from the local PD, you take your case to the FBI and they take it on. Is that correct? Yes, ma'am.

I called the national hotline for missing and exploited children myself after I found out from Captain Lloyd that Timothy was extorted because it took them so long to even do anything. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Joining me right now is special guest, former detective, cyber crimes detective, child crime expert and president of Be Sure Cyber Training. You can find me at BeSureConsulting.com. Rich Wistocki. Rich, thank you so much for being

with us. Explain to me what you should do to protect your child and how we can crack this case and determine who sextorted Timothy. Nancy, it's unbelievable everything that I'm hearing today because you know why? It's typical. Every week I get calls from parents and law enforcement all over the country. I teach about 300,000 children. I teach about 4,000 cops and police departments are 10 years behind cyber crime investigations. So what happens is when I go talk to kids in schools, I tell them when no one is allowed to make you feel bad about yourself online, no one is allowed to make you do something you know you shouldn't be doing. If you're sitting here watching me and suffering in silence because this is happening to you, I can make your pain stop. Because when it comes to social networking and gaming online, Nancy, no one online is anonymous.

No one. Now these Yahoo boys who are out doing this, we can track them, but they have no fear because they know U.S. law enforcement, local law enforcement, doesn't have the training to take to track this stuff. And I will tell you, over the 300,000 students that I have worked with across the country, this year alone, Nancy, I had 35 students come to me after the presentation telling me this is happening to me. I had to start 28 criminal investigations through the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force across the country. Rich, I'm trying to think of ways to help parents. And Betsy is speaking out today. If you had to give parents one piece of advice to protect their children from extortion schemes like this one, what would you tell them? There are actually three things,

Nancy. The first one is you need to be monitoring your kids' devices. If we're talking about Snapchat, which is what Betsy Hoffman is telling us about today, those images disappear immediately. They don't actually. Snapchat has them for 30 days. But how is a parent supposed to know that? You say parent, you look at the phone, but on the phone, it disappears. No parent knows to call Snapchat and says, hey, what has my son been looking at in the last two days? That's not going to happen. Give me something I can hold on to. Parents need to keep their children's phones out of their devices, out of their rooms at night. That's number one. And then what happens, parents don't know about Snapchat and they need to be

checking their MyEyesOnly in Snapchat. This is a private cloud-based service that snapchat has called my eyes only and most of our children are hiding their most horrible pictures of themselves and others in it now number one nancy number one is that parents need to have the access code to their kids device and spot check that that's something you can hold on to and if at any time a child changes their device because they're hiding something you know something wrong so imagine in this case if the parent knew the access code to the phone we could have unlocked that phone and traced that within hours of where it came from and that's what I trained my law enforcement officers to do well here's the thing though Betsy you knew the code

and you had actually found long before a naked photo of a woman and you're like uh-uh no we're not having this and you talked to him you reprimrimanded him, you counseled him about it. You took the phone away for a period of months and you gave it back. You knew his code. You didn't know you changed his code. That would be like 24 seven monitoring on your child to find out if they sneak off to the closet and in three minutes change their code to their phone. Exactly. I mean, I got on Snapchat myself because my 14-year-old niece at that point was like, Auntie, get on Snapchat. It's got a lot of filters and we can snap back and forth and whatnot. imagined sending anything because as an adult i knew when you send a stuff on the internet it never quote unquote truly goes away um so timothy was on snapchat uh because that's

what kids these days do that's what what they all do, Betsy. All of the preteens and teens and a lot of adults are on Snapchat. Nobody is on Facebook at that age. And many, many other platforms. They don't even text me. Yes, exactly. And joining me, I don't want to forget about this. Joe Cunningham is with us. and that is Betsy's family lawyer.

I've got in my hands a big fat lawsuit. What is it, Joe? We filed a lawsuit against Snap for wrongful death for the damages that Betsy's family has gone through and suffering this unimaginable loss. And the basis of that lawsuit is negligence. It's negligence per se, but it also centers around Snap putting out a defective product. They've put out a product, as you mentioned, that has the images disappear. Now, anyone can imagine what the anticipated use of a product like that actually will be. And it's welcomed predators onto their platform and without the proper guardrails in place to monitor, to make sure that people are of age or getting on,

but also to prevent predators from accessing the website and communicating with children. The day after a winning football game, Braden Marcus, 15, spends the day inside playing video games with his friends. Just after 11 a.m., a pretty girl messages Braden on Instagram, and the two exchange flirtatious messages for about five minutes. The girl requests they move the chat to Google Hangouts and sends Braden lewd photos asking for photos of him in return. Braden is hesitant, but caves and sends several explicit photos. The girl then reveals herself as a scammer and threatens to release the photos unless Brayden sends them $1,800. By 1128 a.m., Brayden took his own life. This boy, just 15, commits suicide after a sextortion plot. Guys, I've got so many files here on my desk of children committing suicide after sextortion.

To Betsy Hauptman joining us, this is Timothy's mom. Did you have any idea how widespread sextortion on even preteens? I know you heard me talking about Amanda Todd, who was just 12. Sextortion plots on our preteens and teens. Did you have any idea how rampant it is? No, ma'am. I definitely didn't. One of the only reasons I ever heard of sextortion was Hurt of sex torsion was a few short months after Timothy passed when South Carolina instated Gavin's law, where our representative Guffey, his son, back in, I believe, August of 2022, took his life because of it, too. Um, and South Carolina now it's an aggravated felony.

If in fact a minor hurts themselves or commits suicide because of sexortion. Well, you're absolutely right. Take a listen to South Carolina rep, Brandon Guffey. Gavin was being blackmailed. That was all the information that I knew was that he was being blackmailed. But what happened was Gavin was, uh, he got caught up in sextortion. And this is a major crime. They took, looks like, Hunter Biden headlines and put pictures of Gavin

and put my name and his name on the headlines and were threatening to release it. And it was pictures to this girl that he was talking to online. That boy is dead because of sextortion. Betsy, I've got to ask you something. Do you feel Timothy's presence with you? Always. When he first got no allowance, Nancy, he bought me a heart, like a stuffy, a stuffed heart from the Dollar Tree. And now I'll find leaves that are shaped in hearts at my doorstep or when I'm cleaning the pool, one will drop in front of me. I'll find hearts randomly on sidewalks. I know that my son's with us. Betsy, what is your message?

Your message to other parents out there today? Have those tough conversations. Be open to those tough conversations. And just remember that the Internet isn't something that we had back then. And unfortunately, I was naive enough to not think that predators, well, I knew that there were predators out there. I didn't think that there were predators so bold that would want to hurt a 13-year-old. And there are.

Betsy, somehow, someway, we're going to find who did this to Timothy. Somehow, someway, they're going to be brought to justice. And I want to thank you for speaking out tonight. I know I am speaking to my twins tonight about this. I've done it before. I'm doing it again. And I beg all the parents to spread Betsy's message. If we can just save one child from sextortion, it's all worth it. Betsy, thank you.

Godspeed, friend. We remember police officer, American hero, Jamal Mitchell, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 36. He was trying to assist what he thought was a wounded victim when he was shot multiple times. Officer Mitchell survived by fiancee Tori, their children Cohen, Jalen, Caden, and Mason. American hero, police officer Jamal Mitchell. Thank you to our guests for being with us. Thank you for joining us tonight and every night, but especially thank you to Betsy sharing her son Timothy's story. You know how hard that was for her to talk in her effort to help just one child. Nancy Grace signing off.

Good night, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.