Julian Dorey Podcast - #397 - “Total SICKO!” - Catching Predators Legend on Epstein Files & Roblox COVERUP | Chris Hansen

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

SPONSORS: 1) AMENTARA: Go to https://www.amentara.com/go/JULIAN and use code JD22 for 22% off your first order. Big Shoutout & thank you to Shaun Attwood & his Producer Shane for making this one happen! (****TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Chris Hansen is an Emmy-Award winning journalist who has locked up p*dos on TV for over 2 decades. JOIN PATREON FOR EARLY UNCENSORED EPISODE RELEASES: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey CLIPPERS DISCORD: https://discord.gg/8QmWEKJ3BT CHRIS' LINKS: Roblox DOC: https://www.watchtrublu.com/dangerous-games-a-chris-hansen-investigation YT 1: https://www.youtube.com/@UCgKTJAN-IrVyX-jIJ5INEhA YT 2: https://www.youtube.com/@UC1EWFQy8iPvh9Cfdil0F1JA IG: https://www.instagram.com/officialchrishansen/ X: https://x.com/chrishansen FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY IG: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://x.com/juliandorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 - Chris Hansen gets “Hansen’d,” Adrenaline, “To Catch a Predator” backstory 10:03 - Timing of Visit, 2 Preds at same time, Predators w/ guns 21:10 - Sick Fantasies override common sense, 3 Categories of P*dos, Wiring Brains 31:40 - Julian’s perspective, 41 Predators 1 House 35:23 - Epstein Files, Chris tried to STING Epstein 41:20 - Chris hunch on Epstein, Royal Family, Why Epstein unique 51:47 - Epstein’s Arrogance, Epstein Stem Cell Harvesting? 56:06 - Epstein “Jerky” Emails, Zorro Ranch, Masters of the Universe Sickness 1:05:43 - Percentage of P*dos who get caught, P*dophilia incurable 1:15:56 - TruBlu, Chris growing up in Detroit, Silence of the Lambs 1:27:33 - Getting away with Crime, Tech to take down predators 1:31:38 - Roblox, Exploitation on Roblox, Discord Corruption, 764 Cult Group, Schlep 1:37:11 - Roblox Uncooperative, Law & Roblox, Roblox to IRL abuse 1:46:43 - Gro*ming on Roblox, Parents responsibility 1:55:57 - Bad Stuff Happens, AG’s on Roblox now, Drawing the line 2:03:51 - To Catch a Predator Doc, Josh Giddey, Gross cultural P*dophilia around world 2:12:00 - Sierra Leone Aftermath, Tribalism, Elite Conspiracies, Les Wexner Epstein Deposition 2:22:06 - Preying on deepest fears & dreams, NAMBLA was real, Internet Safety 2:29:30 - Cambodia Rescue Story, Oklahoma City Bombing 2:35:07 - 3 million miles flown, Being ahead of law enforcement, Chris on 9/11 2:42:58 - Roblox Documentary CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef - https://www.instagram.com/joeydeef/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 397 - Chris Hansen Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello? Have a seat, Chris. I'm looking for the Julian Dory Podcasts. Is that why you're here? That's what the transcript said. I think Thief's got some messages to say otherwise. Oh, really? Yeah.

Well, stop stealing my line. Chris Hansa, it's great to have here, man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. That's kind of cool to turn around on you for about three seconds right there. Yeah. You're a real trained pro with that, too. You have responses ready.

It's almost like you've seen it before. You know, you start doing something for 40, 45 years. You start to get good at it, you know? Yeah, I mean, do you have, like, obviously people see the videos, and it's real stuff, which is a scary part of it. But then the other part of it is afterwards, like, you're doing a great thing. You're catching someone and preventing them from hurting a child at that point, obviously, because the law enforcement takes care of it. But, you know, it's funny after the fact in that way when you deliver it how you do. But when you go in there, do you still have adrenaline?

like pumping every time. Especially at the beginning of each individual investigation. You know, a lot goes into it, as you can imagine. So the chatters with law enforcement, the decoys are working. They're talking to different men online. And not everybody shows up. Some people say, that's not right. I can't come meet a 14, 15 year old child for sex. And they do the right thing. Good. Others take longer, but they do eventually show up. But when that first one walks in, yeah, I still have that feeling, you know, of my heart being in the throat. That's how you stay sharp, I think you never, you can never take it for granted because you don't know, you think you know who this guy is. We have various means of checking their background if they're using a real phone number,

but sometimes you just don't know. And sometimes those are the guys who end up being a doctor or a law enforcement officer or somebody who, you know, it's just, it's real shocking that they would be involved in this sort of activity. I mean, I just don't know, like I had Tommy G in here who's a close buddy of mine. Tommy G. came along on one of our stings in Northern Michigan. And he was talking about it when we had him here for episode 306. He was like, you know, my heart was like palpitating when these guys were coming in. Obviously, he hasn't done it 100 million times like you.

But it's like you're doing a TV show, but it's real. And there's real life consequences to it. you're doing a great thing, but you're like, oh, my God, like, you're about to end someone's life, too. I think that that's what has made the show so enduring it is so captivating for people to watch it. I mean, it will be 22 years this March since we did the very first investigation in Bethpage Long Island. And you talk about your heart being in your throat. When we did that first investigation, we didn't have law enforcement involved. I mean, I had a security guy, Ron Knight, who was, you know, at NBC at the time, former NYPD lieutenant.

Was he loaded? Yeah, oh, yeah, he was carrying. He took all the knives out of the kitchen. But we didn't know what was going to happen. You know, in those days, in the very first investigations, we worked with perverted justice. And in all the investigations we did at NBC, online watchdog group. And they posed his kids online. And if somebody made a date with a child, they would post their identity on their website.

in the beginning of their existence. And if law enforcement could make a case, they would. We thought we'd partner with them. But, I mean, we're in this house. And, you know, we don't know who these guys are. And in that first investigation in two and a half days, we had 17 guys' service, including a New York City firefighter. And I thought, holy hell, you know, what have we found here?

It was mind-boggling. But, you know, the guys would leave. and with the exception of the firefighter, they were never prosecuted for their crimes that day. They took off. They were on TV, but they took off. They couldn't prosecute that? Well, you got to remember that this was very early on in the experience.

And so it was even early in the process in the whole movement for law enforcement to do this. I mean, their ICAC existed, internet crimes against children. Stings were happening, but not to the extent they are today. Hey guys, three quick things. Number one, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe to huge help. Number two, if you'd like to join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes,

you can join via the link of my description or in the pin comment below. And number three, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make content from the show and make money, you can join via the Discord link in my description below. And so the fact that we did this without law enforcement present, And we did it with an online watchdog group. And even though that online watchdog group did have some relationships with law enforcement, and look, I've been covering law enforcement for my entire career. So at that point, 24 years.

Now, in the second investigation, when we went to Virginia outside of Washington, D.C., these cases were referred, and a lot of them were prosecuted. But it became clear to me, you know, early on that in order to be socially responsible, but we had to collaborate with law enforcement. How did you pitch this at the beginning? It was such a, no one had ever done anything like this before. We learned about, I learned about perverted justice. And I put together a pitch for the story pack at Dateline.

And I said, look, these guys do this. I think if we can combine their talent as being decoys and our ability to wire a house with hidden cameras and microphones, and we've done that for different kinds of stories over the years, it could be very compelling. And it's a simple pitch pack. It's three paragraphs, Hansen. Two days later, yeah, we bought it, go do it.

I signed a producer, Lynn Keller. She reached out to Perverter Justice, she wanted to do this. Yeah, we'd be happy to do it. Okay, great. Found a house in Beth Page, as I mentioned, and it belonged to a retired NYPD cop as well, and we set it up and did it. and it was just, it was happening so fast and so furiously that I remember at one point early on,

I think it was about the third guy came in, and all the transcripts of the online chats were mixed up on the dining room table. We're trying to keep them straight. But I came out for the third guy with the wrong set of transcripts. And so I look at him. I said, well, it says here that you wanted to do blank, blank and blank with a 13-year girl named Susie. No, that's not me. I said, excuse me, go back, get a second set of transcripts. Read the name and the details.

No, that's not me. Finally, on the third set of transcripts that I grabbed, it was him. Yeah, that's me. Okay, good. And it was just stunning to me, wow, that it was happening so quickly that we couldn't even keep track of the transcripts. And we had people there. I mean, I had a producer, I had an associate producer, I had security, we had, we had two people from

perverted justice. We had the whole crew was there, the camera people, both the hidden camera people with the remote cameras and regular camera guys. One guy, Ronnie Knight, the security guy, had to shove in the basement and said, don't move, don't speak, don't do anything. While another guy came in, this guy who was from Eastern Europe thought he had just entered some sort of a tortured chamber snuff movie killing zone of some sort.

He thought he was cooked, you know, and he left there without being harmed or facing any criminal charges. So that part sucks. Those guys were rather fortunate. Yeah, it does. The firefighter was investigated by the FBI and he was prosecuted. Now, why did they just, out of the 17 guys that day, why did they just pick him? Because we knew we were able to identify him by name.

We are able to identify him in terms of where he worked, which firehouse in Brooklyn. We went out and confronted him after the. the fact and he admitted it on camera. And so the feds had a pretty easy case. And I believe if memory serves me correctly, I believe he took a plea bargain. And I think he had to leave the fire department. Well, good. Yeah. But this is back in 03, 04 when you were first doing it? This was in March of 04. Okay. So you mentioned it was like a two and a half day investigation before the first one. What did that look like? Because that's not that long a time to put this together and get 17 hits. Now, you know, perverted justice had been in the chat rooms and they had been working,

posing as children, and, you know, they would go in there and just hang out and if they were approached. And remember in those days, it was a little, I don't want to say easier, but it was a little more direct because most of this activity was taking place in chat rooms on AOL and Yahoo and that antiquated platform called MySpace. So it was all right there. So if you could go in there and pose as a child, they would have, let's have. lengthy conversation sometimes over weeks and guys would, you know, groom and they try to cajole these kids into sexual relationships and, you know, they thought they'd hit a home run. They thought they found the child of their dreams in this very perverted, you know, potentially damaging and

criminal way. So it was more targeted then. And so it wasn't unusual to have that many guys in such a short period of time. Well, you and I are talking at a time. right now where this really just completely fucked up underworld is, I don't know, maybe finally getting somewhat of the light. It should have shined on it by everyone else beside you for once because of the stories like the Epstein's, because of the stories like the Roblox, which you and I are going to talk about today with their new documentary, and because of a litany of different organizations of pedophiles that people are just uncovering. But, you know, before you went to this, you obviously knew it was a problem. You knew these people were out there. Did your perspective

get exponentially worse after the very first one shows 17 hits just in one area? Look, I didn't know if anybody was going to show up, right? When I was driving out to that Stinghouse during the first investigation, I was wondering if, you know, I'd just blown tens of thousands of dollars of the network's money. You know, what if nobody shows up? what if this was a great idea, but executing it was impossible. And we know that's a possibility with every story, but you don't want that to happen. And as I was on my way out there, the producer called me and said, hey, two guys are due here in 45 minutes. You've got to get here.

I said, all right, well, I'm on the throg's neck. The traffic is going to clear in a minute. I'll get there. Wait, two at the same time? We've had that happen on numerous occasions, literally, throughout the years. and you know we can control it a little bit and have the decoys hold the guy off or just wait a minute but we've had we've had and it happens in virtually every sting you know we're out to just keep the mic with you if you don't mind a few months ago and you know one guy had to I had to finish up quickly

because there's nothing I was on his way we've had guys sit next to each other we had a case in Flagler Beach, Florida, where two guys came in at the same time. And one guy knew what was going on and one didn't. And one guy looks to the other and goes, you know, when he's done with us, we are so screwed. It was tennis boy 213 and slaves to mistress. Those were their names. Those were the screen names. Not hiding much on the second one.

No. No. Tennis Boy 213, that was an odd one, but from what he was doing. How do you have a decoy? If two guys get there at the same time, I'm just trying to picture this. What do you mean a decoy is keeping them away outside the house? Well, they're chatting so they can say, hey, hold off for a minute, I'm getting in the shower. Hey, hold off for a minute.

You know, my mom popped back in for a second. So there's a million excuses that they could slow the guy down. And typically, we don't give out the address, you know, immediately. We wait until they're in orbit until we can control the situation a little bit. Jesus. I've been trying a psychoactive mushroom over the past year. it's not the one everyone's always talking about. The mushroom is called Amanita Muscaria, the red one with the white spots you've seen in art

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Use code JD22 at checkout for 22% off your first order. Yeah, it always every time like when I would see the ones where you'd have, obviously like you have the fake kid there when you're doing this. And that was where the show ended up. And it's like, first of all, amazing acting always on those decoys. But secondly, you're just like, oh my God. like, what if something happens real fast and they don't get in there soon enough? Did you ever have close calls with things like that?

We never had anything that turned out to be, you know, dangerous where somebody got hurt. But you do wonder, and people ask me all the time, do you ever feel sorry for these guys? You know, because sometimes a guy I walk in there, he's 19, 20, 21 years old. Is it the first mistake he's ever made? does he think that maybe it's okay because the decoys posing as a 14 or 15 year old. The age difference won't mean much if the relationship were to take root. But then I always look at the examples like in the episode that drops today as we record this episode on the 26th of February.

And in that case, down in Louisiana, Livingston Parish, Louisiana, a young guy came in and he swore up and down. He'd never done this before. He, you know, he wasn't going to really do anything. Now, I know in the chat, he has talked about making a porn video with this girl. I watched him come into the house and try to give a big hug to the sheriff's deputy decoy posing as to the child. You know, there are a lot of young deputies that get involved in these cases. We don't use civilians anymore, generally.

And so now I've got him on the hot seat, and he sticks to his story. And he admits it doesn't look good. and we go on and on and we go at it for about 25 minutes, 30 minutes, and they take him away. His backpack's there. And what do you suppose is at the bottom of that backpack? Condoms. Loaded 38 pistol. Full clip.

So what happens? Now, I doubt very much that he could have gotten in there, got the gun out, and got a shot off to the extent that he would hurt me or anybody else. I mean, a lot goes into this in terms of precautions. But what happens if we're not there and he's alone with a 14-year-old girl? And what happens if she doesn't want to cooperate in the making of this porn video? And what happens if it doesn't go his way? And he tries something aggressive. And now he thinks he's in trouble and that law enforcement is going to go after him for sexual assault.

What happens? Does he use that gun on the girl to threaten her to comply? Does he use it to kill her and hide the body? It raises all kinds of horrific questions. So we have that. So, yeah, look, there's an inherent level of danger involved in doing it, right? And I understand that that's part of the draw. That's part of the interest in allure to viewers.

And I'm comfortable that we have taken every precaution possible to create a safe environment when we do this. a lot goes into it, as I've said. And so we make it absolutely as safe as possible. Is it absolutely guaranteed? No, nothing's guaranteed. You know, nothing that adventurous or that enterprising has ever guaranteed. What is the legality in that situation? My first question is, did you find out if he legally owned the gun or illegally on the gun?

He had the gun legally. We learned after the fact. So is that illegal? Well, it's an interesting question because he can legally own the gun, I believe certain guns can be owned at 18 or 21 in the state of Louisiana where we were. You can carry that gun without a special pistol license. But if he's using the gun in the commission of a felony, it could be a crime. Right. Because you can possess a gun.

You can have it. And we see this in southern states where the carry laws are pretty liberal. But if you use that in the commission of a crime, then you could face another felony. Now, did he use it in the commission of this crime? Not yet. So as far as I know, he has not been charged with a gun crime in that case. Because that's what I was thinking. I'm like, if he owns it legally and it's at the bottom of his bag and he never took it out, you don't see him go for it ever on camera.

Technically, you can't charge. And he's not going to be charged with it. but what you're saying is perfectly valid. It's like, why did he have it there? Right. We had a situation in Alabama during his sting where I'm interviewing a guy. He's not being threatening at all, but, you know, we're going at it pretty hard. And the lieutenant sees on the monitor in the other room that he's got a big 45 hanging out of his pants.

And he comes out. Now, I didn't see it. Now, I look pretty carefully, right, at what's going on and what the bulges are and all that. And I always make him take them take. their hands out of their pockets. But the lieutenant came in and said, hey, put your hands up and he grabs the gun out. He said, do you have a gun? And the guy pulls it out of his pants and sets it on the kitchen counter, pointed at me. And everybody, you know, gets a little bit alarmed and they take the gun and off the go. But it's something we see, not in the majority of cases, certainly, but we see

it from time to time. Outside of coming in and being direct and obviously delivering your line perfectly every time. What are, what is, what are your first instincts when you walk in there? What outside of also looking for a gun, you already mentioned that, but like what kinds of things are you looking for? Are you just totally clear on like, let me just address this person and see if they understand why they're here? Well, I want to engage, right? So oftentimes it's not aggressive unless they're aggressive from the start. And I feel that I need to take control of the situation. So in some jurisdictions, law enforcement makes the first. contact, right? And so that makes it easier in some ways because it's already, the situation's

settled. The guy's got handcuffs on by the time I interview him. In a lot of the scenarios, I get the first crack at it. And that's when I have to control the environment. So if he starts ants and around or trying to go for the door, you know, we have code words between my crew and law enforcement. And when they hear, you don't want to do that, that's their cue to come in and take control of him. Now, in most incidents, I can become a little bit more aggressive and domineering and I can get him in the chair, in the seat, and then we can start it. And if they start, who are you? What do you think you're going to do? And sometimes they think they know exactly who I am. Yeah. I mean, many times in the chats now, we see, this sounds like a Chris Hanson thing,

or this sounds like a Sheriff Grady Judd thing or Sheriff Chris Swanson thing, you know, or We had one guy in our most recent investigation, Livingston Parish, Louisiana, who actually sent an article from the local paper about a previous sting I had done with the sheriff, Jason Hart. He said, you know, they worked together on some of these things and still came over and felt so comfortable that he got in the pool and the hot tub at the decoy house, at the Stinghouse. And then I confront him. He said, I knew it. What did you know? I said, I knew it could be you.

I said, then what are you doing here? and the drive to fulfill the fantasy of having sex with a child for some of these men is so strong, just like a heroin addiction where they know there's a 20% chance. Fentanyl could be in the heroin and could kill them. They know there's a 20% chance it's me or some other law enforcement agency looking for adults praying on children and they could get busted. And the need to fulfill this fantasy overrides common sense or any respect for the law. for a child.

Where does it come from? Where do you think it comes from? Isn't that what we'd all want to know? I wish I could tell you. I know it's not a one-size-fits-all diagnosis. I am not by any stretch of the imagination trained in psychiatry to be able to give you a clinical diagnosis on any of these guys. But having looked at hundreds of them in the eye across from a table,

just like we are speaking now, I can tell you that my theory is they break down into roughly three categories, right? There's the hardcore heavy hitter. He'll do this with or without the internet. He'd have been the guy at the mall, you know, the movie theater, the bad little league coach, whatever, wherever you can get access to kids. These guys have to be in prison for life. They're the young guys, the opportunists, 19, 20 years old, you know, if the girl's willing, they don't see it as a crime, even though I would argue there's no difference between a 19-year-old predator's danger and a 39-year-old's predator's danger. It's the same danger to a child.

And then there's this more complicated group in between, you know, the professional in his 30s, 40s, or 50s. And he's thought about this. He's thought about his urges for a boy or a girl. And normally they can keep that in check. They operate their regular lives. And then it gets to a point where they fantasize so frequently that the only thing that will fulfill the fantasy is a real-life encounter. And that's when we see them knock on the door of a Stinghouse. Yeah, the way I'm thinking about how you just put that really is also like what part of life someone's into.

The first category aside, the people is who you call the heavy age. guys, they've got to go away. These are the guys who, you know, could face castration in Louisiana. They could face the death penalty in other states. And maybe that's good. Maybe they should because that's the only thing that's going to stop them besides lifetime incarceration. Yeah. Yeah, you can't. It's the ultimate. It's like it's like being a vampire. Yeah. You know, you do that. You do that to a kid. There is something you are taking from them for the rest of their life that can never. be fixed. And what causes that? Is it a wiring of the brain? Is it a childhood experience? Is it the fact that they were victimized as a child? Is it any number of things? Yeah, I think, again, there's no one straight line diagnosis for this. And we want easy answers in society,

right, in American society. We want, this is a bad guy, lock him up forever. This is a bad guy, give him a shot that's going to keep him from offending. This is a bad guy who should go into treatment and you should come out of it better. It's not the same guy. And until we get our arms around that, you know, we're going to continue to deal with the same issues. But it's not going away. And the Internet has only gotten more ubiquitous in terms of the platforms available for adults to approach children. I mean, again, as I told you in the beginning,

It used to be three spots. Now I can't even keep track of them anymore. Right. And the online games and everything else we have going on, it creates a lot of opportunities. So not only would I argue that there is more of this activity than ever before, but it's also so much more diffuse that it's more difficult to investigate and catch the guys because there's a thousand places they could be. Yes.

And I can't be in all those places. The law enforcement across the country across the world can't be in all those. That's right. You know, we did a, my wife and I went to a fundraiser Saturday night, a couple days before this recording, down in Florida for the Child Rescue Coalition. And this organization uses technology that can track the trafficking of child and CSAM in real time. And they share this technology for free with law enforcement around the world. And they take a crack at it from that standpoint. And I think that's one of the most effective ways to go after these guys because if you cut off the source of child protection in CSAM, you eliminate a lot of children being abused in an effort to create this material.

But you also cut off what I think is the fuel in some cases that gets these guys so cranked up to commit these crimes. There is without exception when somebody gets caught offending a link to viewing. child porn, I believe. And a lot of people smarter than me who study this a lot deeper than I do agree that almost without exception, there's a link between viewing child porn and offending. And if you view it long enough, you will offend. And so that's why when people say to me, well, at least they're just looking at it, they're not, they're not, I said, no, no, no, first of all, a child had to be victimized to make it. Right. And I don't care. You can get into this argument about AI generated stuff or whatever. It's still.

child porn. And ultimately this predator is going to get to a point where it's not enough and he's going to try to find a real child. And that's just the way it is. Yep. And I do think there's something to, like we joke about it all the time like right. Not child porn, but regular porn and stuff. But I think there's even something to that too with some of these guys too with how ubiquitous porn is around them, period. And you can get it for free. When I was a young, If we wanted to look at what was considered to be porn in 1973 or 1974, we would have to, and it wasn't even really porn. It was a Playboy foldout, right?

I mean, it was not even nude, right? It was very straightforward. We would have to sneak into the garage of a buddy's dad, find the hidden box of previous editions of Playboy, somehow sneak those out of the garage without our mom seeing it, take it to the wood someplace to look at it, and then bury it for a future date

if somebody else wanted to look at it. That was how you looked at porn. Today, it's a few keystrokes, and you can see, you know, some of the most aggressive pornography ever made. Yeah. The world has changed. It wires people's brains.

It does wire people's brains. And the other thing that, you know, we talk about all the time and we figure out we, you know, need to do a documentary on is, you know, the large number of female teachers getting caught sexually involved with young male students. Right. You know, I think some of this stuff starts out on porn science is fantasy porn, and people get caught up in it.

Women, too. I could see that. And we don't find women in our stings. And the experts will tell us it's because women, predators, female predators, don't like the anonymity. involved in our stings where male predators get off on it. Female predators want to know their victim. They want to know who it is. It's a student.

It's little Billy so-and-so over there. Well, this is safe for me to go exploit him. But it causes the same kind of damage. In society, we look at it, maybe it's a little boy's fantasy, right? It'll be fine. But it does cause damage. And if you're the parent of that 13-year-old boy, you've got to put that genie back in the bottle

and get him back to an age-appropriate, of behavior and it's very difficult. And then what does he do because of that experience down the road? You know, what does that make him? Yeah, there is a bit of a, I guess like the lens we view it double standard. Absolutely, there is.

Yeah. And every time we do a story on it, we mention it, or I say something on social media about it. It's like, oh, well, you just got to live his dream come true. That's not how it works, you know? Yeah, yeah, you're right. Like it's funny, but like it's, it's not. I just sometimes you'll see it.

I think it gets a little strange when it's like a 16 or 17 year old boy. That's different because it's like 23. That's a young man. Yeah. And then you're like. Right. You know. But she's still a predator.

It's not ideal. And she's in a position of power authority. It'd just be like, you know, if you're 18 years old working at a company and the 22 year old, 23 year old supervisor. Right. She's got power over you. That's right. It'd be wrong if it was a guy. It's wrong if it's a girl.

I understand the double standard. And I understand the difference in psychology and the difference in, you know, men are supposed to be able to stick up for themselves. But, you know, it's still an issue. Yeah. And there's also, you know, you talk about those three categories of types. And you went in a different direction. I thought you were going to go with that.

And that's, you know, that's also from like the personal experience has seen it up close. But like even zooming out more. just my amateur way of looking at it was always like well you have one obvious crowd who was abused when they were a child and now they've become the abuser and I think that's legitimate I think we see that too and I kind of put that in that either the hardcore heavy hitter category or in the middle category the more mysterious one but it it's that's that's definitely in play there and it's it's a weird thing because I have zero empathy for them as an adult and I have zero empathy for the act or anything like that.

But I go back and I think about the kid who had that happen to them. And the kid version of them, I'm like, damn. Like, oof. I've had guys tell me that. We caught a guy in Marion County, Florida. We did a sting this past summer. 41 guys showed up in six days. 41, just in Marion County, Florida.

Now, some came from farther away. And I'm questioning the guy in the sheriff's department. and at some point he breaks down and says, can I tell you something? I said, yeah, absolutely. He said, well, I was, you know, abused by this older man and woman in my subdivision growing up. They had me cut the lawn and then they had me take my shirt off when I cut the lawn and then they had sex with me.

And, you know, maybe, I mean, it could be lying to me too. We weren't able to confirm all this. But, you know, maybe that had something to do with this guy in this case. He claimed it did. I don't accept that as an excuse because if you were abused as a kid, and this is oversimplifying it obviously, but I think you should know the damage that caused and you should take whatever steps you have to take to not damage another kid. I agree.

The other category, though, is the category of people who just became this or decided to become this. They weren't abused. And something happens. Now, you mentioned it could be from that. at some point taking the really dark rabbit hole down porn and that leading to the illegal dark web version of it it could be you know other things of a non-sexual nature that happen to them in their life that then they want to take power over other people because of it I could go

on and on and on and people way more qualified than me could but like I don't know I guess the fact I'm grateful for the fact that that can't process to me how you would get right it's good that we can't understand it, right? Yeah. Because if we could understand it, it'd be awfully scary to think that way. We need to understand it. And thankfully, there are people who do, you know, medical doctors, psychiatrists who go into prisons and interview these guys to get information.

But it's a dark area of medicine to be in. And I think that's one of the issues. I mean, if you go to medical school and you spend 10, 12 years, you know, specializing, Are you going to do plastic surgery on Park Avenue across the river here? Are you going to go into federal prisons and interview petos? Right. I mean, it's, it's, you have to have a special drive to do that. It's dark, man.

It's very dark. I mean, you know, I am thankful that I have never seen an image of CSAM and I never want to see it. But somebody's got to look at it. Somebody's got to prepare the prosecutor. Somebody's got to say, this is what it is, and file the charges. And those people, man, that's a dark job. And it takes a toll on them. I've seen it.

Even some of the redacted images that we're all forced to see when we open up Twitter now with these Epstein files. It's clear. Yeah. They're underage. It like sends, it puts the worst type of goosebumps on you because you're like, these are 50, 60, 7 year olds people. And they're all rich, by the way. That makes it like something about that. It makes it work.

Why do you have to pick on kids? You could have sex with virtually anybody you know, you wanted or a lot of different people. But picking on kids and living in this world where Epstein had so much power and influence, I mean, it's crazy, you know, what went on there and how he was able to manipulate people and money into, from a very young age. lie, cheat, and steal his way to being nearly a billionaire. I mean, the New York Times did an article several weeks ago, and they interviewed for the Sunday magazine, and they interviewed his boss at Bear Stearns, who said, I regret I didn't kill his career when I had the chance to because they found that he had lied on his resume.

And he was able to convince him that, hey, look, if I didn't lie, I mean, those are schools I couldn't get into. I learned on the streets. I have a hard-knox education, and I'm obviously performing. I apologize for lying on my resume, but let me go to work, and they let him. And he continued, and ultimately he got fired from there and ended up someplace else and manipulated, you know, Les Wexner into giving him control of a lot of money and a lot of other people, too. And even after he served time in the 2008 case, that sentence, which was

so crazy to me looking back that this was a case that could have gone federal, right, where he should have done serious prison in time, that they were able to have lawyers manipulate this and to talk the government into a deal where he did 12 or 13 months, basically living nights and weekends in a county jail, able to go to his office from 9 to 5 and do whatever he wanted. How about what he pled to, too? Right, to having an underage prostitute but not knowing it, essentially. Right. And it was 17 years and 10 months when there were 43 victims that were all 12, 13, and 14 years old.

And they were able to manipulate law enforcement in some ways public opinion into thinking that what he was doing was creepy and bad, but it was basically hiring, you know, poor girls from the other side. of the tracks to model bathing suits and give massages. And they were really of the age of consent when, in fact, it wasn't. It was a worldwide trafficking organization bringing girls in from Eastern Europe and Russia and Asia and all kinds of places. You know, and, you know, we started to look at this background 2015. And I had some investigators who I'd known for a long time, who had been in federal law

enforcement who were working with lawyers for the survivors. And, you know, I tried to get too fancy with it. I was trying to figure out how to do a sting. How do I sting him? You know, how do I do this in New York? And the levels of security were so, so strong that you couldn't infiltrate it, right? And so, you know, the truth is, I just got busy with other stories. I kind of set it aside. It was Julie K. Brown at the Miami Herald who kept chipping away and chipping away and got these survivors to speak publicly. And without that fine work at that newspaper by her, by by by Julie K. Brown and other reporters, that case in 2019 likely doesn't get prosecuted when it does. And the U.S. attorney at the time even said so in the news conference. He said he pointed to the fine work by the Miami Herald.

And so it shows me that some of these stories only come to light by focusing only on that one story and chipping away and chipping away and chipping away. It also shows me the importance of local news, which I don't think gets the funding that it deserves in some cases. I come from local news. You know, I started Lansing, Michigan, went to Tampa, Detroit, and then went to NBC and done everything since then that I've done. But it is important. And I think every reporter should, ideally, I mean, we're in a different world now because people can start off in different ways, but should be responsible to a local community. And they were at the Miami Herald. Yeah.

And it was incredibly brave what they pulled off. And they had private eyes. Bless you, they had private eyes tailing them. They played, these people played dirty. You know, Epstein played dirty. Oh, yeah. Did you know, were you aware of the case in 2008 when he got the deal? Or did you not become aware until 2015?

No, I didn't start paying attention to it until 15, 16. And what got you paying attention to it in the first place? I knew law enforcement agents who I'd worked with when I was in local news, who had moved around the country and we had stayed in touch, who were at that point in private investigations and had been retained by some of the lawyers representing the victims to find information. Okay, so it was literally- For the civil suits that ultimately were brought and settled.

Got it. I wasn't sure if you- So that was my end. So I had, you know, I had some documents from the Palm Beach estate. Not necessarily smoking gun stuff, but I had phone logs, for instance, and I spent a Saturday and Sunday just calling people up and down this list. And some were legitimate massage therapists. one was a victim. And I heard from her attorney like 10 minutes later saying, look, she's not ready to talk now. I still talk to the attorney.

She's not talked, but I'm going to hopefully talk to her one day on my podcast. So, you know, you chip away at this stuff, and you ultimately will find answers. I mean, I interviewed an author in the UK, Andrew Loney, for the latest episode of one of my podcasts, have a seat with Chris Hansen. And he had just come from lunch with a source on the case involving the former ambassador to the U.S. and former Prince Andrew.

In the three days between the time we recorded the interview and the time that it went up on have a seat with Chris Hansen, Andrew had been arrested. The former ambassador had been arrested. And everything else that he talked about is going to happen. I mean, this could be the down. fall of the British government in terms of the prime minister, because the prime minister spoke up on behalf of the ambassador who lied and said he had nothing to do with it. These people gave Epstein sensitive government information, and they were rewarded by having access to women, in some cases,

girls who were underage. This is, I mean, this is something that I have not seen in front of 45 years of being a journalist. And I wish I had been prescient enough in 2015, 2016, to see where this is going. You know, we keep up with it now. We're very aggressively reporting on it now. But it's, I don't think anybody besides Epstein knew how deep this went. Did you have, obviously you didn't know how deep it went in 2015. No one did.

But when you were, I don't know, spending that Saturday and Sunday going through the phone logs and finding people and then looking at at least the specs that these private detectives had given you, was there something in your gut at all that was like, ooh, this is different. This is another level. Yeah, I wish I had known more at that time because I could have really garnered resources to really focus more on it as opposed to. some other projects, good projects, important projects. But, you know, we were at that point getting ready to gear up the predator investigations again. So I was focused on that, the Hanson versus predators. I was starting Crime Watch Daily. I anchored that show for a couple years. And we're doing stuff on ID. This is before podcasts and my streaming network and all that. So, you know, I wasn't in a position to say, okay, I'm only going to do this. You know, I've always

as a part of my job or jobs had to do a lot of different things at the same time. And that's cool. That's what I do. But, you know, yes, is there a part of me that wishes I could have focused on just that? Yeah. But I didn't realize at the time how big this was. Yeah. I remember I'd been saying this.

I remember I saw an article. I believe it was in 2017. It could have been 2015, but I think it was like 2017. might have been in Politico or something like that that was outlining a little bit about this. I remember looking at that and just kind of saying, wow, what a sick, rich guy. Yeah.

And then kind of went on with things. Because they tried to shape this. His lawyers, his PR people tried to shape this as creepy. And yeah, he had youngish girls coming in and giving massages. Yeah, it became sexual. but they're all of age, they all consented, and they tried to make it look like, okay, he was just taking advantage of poor girls

on the other side of the tracks. But that's just a tiny piece of this. I mean, Galane Maxwell was going to universities and recruiting women. They had trips to Eastern Europe to identify models and telling them that they could be Victoria's Secret models because of the Les Wexner connection.

and you know along the way I'm sure they're picking up whomever they could possibly pick up to be a part of this and to bring them to the island to bring them to the mansion to bring them to the palmita state um you know it was we were talking about hundreds of not thousands of women of girls here children yeah and and with the latest drop of Epstein files like i've looked at this case religiously since 2019. It's because it just, it's, it's actually even way more than just the underage sex trafficking. There's a million things going on with it. That's just the worst part of it or what we, what I should say, we thought was the worst part of it. And now when you read these emails, there are all kinds of things on the table that I can't confirm yet or anything, but the fact

that they're even on the table is a possibility. Oh, I agree. I see them too. I mean, I've got multiple sources feeding me information. You know, like you, you know, you have people who are online sleuths who have ways of tapping into different things that I don't have necessarily the knowledge to do. And these things come my way and I evaluate them and first of all try to see if it's true or not. It doesn't make sense. And then what do I do with it? You know, I've never held anything back ever for anyone and never will.

So, but you also have to view this in a way that this is a unique situation, right? If I had my druthers as a reporter, I would want the criminal files on every high-profile criminal case from Guthrie going back my entire career. But the reason those files typically aren't released is because they contain unverified information. And they contain information where they're willing. wasn't enough probable cause to get a warrant and to start a criminal prosecution. Yes.

So in our society, we have said that if that doesn't exist, then those files, that information, that investigative material should not be released to the public because you can damage somebody's reputation whose activities did not rise to the threshold of criminal prosecution. So this is unique. Yes. We usually don't get stuff like this. unverified raw information. And so that adds, look, I'm not standing up for anybody in the Epstein files, but it does add a layer of

responsibility for guys like you, guys like me, and across the board to make sure we're not accusing something that we can't back up. Because it would not surprise me that Epstein falsified some of this stuff, made things look worse than they were to establish some blackmail plot. And I'm sure he squeezed a lot of people for money and other things because he had something or could threaten something, true or not. Look, there's a lot of bad behavior, right? There's a lot of horrible things.

Look at all the people who have stepped down from prominent positions. Larry Summers. It's something. You know? Yeah, we were going to, D. If we had a list of that, right, the latest people, Tom Pritzker, stepped down from his board position. And what are these guys thinking? I mean, on one level, you could sort of understand, okay, if the guy hadn't faced any criminal charges and he was just a playboy millionaire who had a private jet and an island, you could see his attraction. You could see why other single guys who were playboys who like attractive women,

would hang out with him, right? You can understand that. But once he's charged as a predator, I mean, this guy should have been persona non grata for everybody, for Bill Gates, for the Clintons, for everybody. You can't do business or you shouldn't be doing business with a registered sex offender. And you have a responsibility to do your due diligence if you're a former president, if you're a government official. to make sure the people you're dealing with are on the up and up. I mean, look at Prince Andrew. I mean, this thing is just, and for him to have allegedly said to the arresting officers,

oh, I'm the queen's son, you can't do this to me. Oh, he said that? That's the report. Uh-huh. You get your ass in the car, fat boy. You ain't a prince no more. Oh, my God, I didn't hear that. And you have to know that, you know, Charles is just glad to get

this problem out of there. There's been no indication that he's been involved. I mean, obviously, you know, they're issues. What did you know and when did you know it? Should you have cut ties with him earlier? But, you know, he's in trouble on this thing. I mean, you know, selling, using your position to get trade information and then giving it to Epstein in return for sexual favors. I mean, that's, that's treasonous. It is. And you talk about, though, these people, who were really close to him. The ones we know were really close to him, who stayed associated with him

where we know full well that they knew what he had been accused of and continued the behavior. This wasn't a guy who said, hey, I made a mistake. I let somebody into the circle who was too young. She gave me a massage.

There was a sexual act. I'm going to go out of my way to start foundations and to do right and to lead by example, he went right back to it. That's right. And arguably, worse activity than ever before.

And that's what I'm saying, because he was from an environment where he could, and it's not just the wealth he had. It's the status in society and this... It's a sense of impunity. Yes. It's the same sense of impunity that former Prince Andrew has, that his former wife has, that Epstein and his buddies had.

They just didn't think it was... It applied. to them, you know. I interviewed Julia Bryant, who was an Epstein survivor, who was in South Africa, attractive young woman of legal age, but was coerged into coming back to the ranch,

woke up in a surgical suite, and still doesn't know exactly what happened. In a surgical suite? Yeah, at the New Mexico ranch that he had. All kinds of stuff that was allegedly going on there. Oh, yeah. But she met Epstein when he was with,

Clinton and other dignitaries. In 2002? No, after O2. Again. When they were in South Africa. Again, they did that again. Well, whatever the date was at that South African trip, whether it was O2 or right around in that area,

I guess it would be before 08 in the charges. But I mean, here's a woman who was eager to get into modeling, met somebody who was with the president, the former president of the United States. I mean, how much more safe can you get? Secret service agents there at dinner. Kevin Spacey's there, a Hollywood movie star. You know, of course she thinks that it's going to be okay.

She certainly didn't bargain for what happened to her in New Mexico. And she doesn't have any recollection. She has theories. I mean, we did this interview for Have a Seat. with Chris Hansen. And it's, you know, and I knew her story. I had been prepped for the interview, but, you know, things kept coming out of it where I was learning things on the fly from her. I mean, it was, it's, it's amazing. And this guy was, you know, not prosecuted or investigated by local authorities there. I mean, he, he threw money around like it was

nobody's business. It's also so strange, Chris, that to this, like, they're only, now apparent, and it's very hazy what's going on. They're only now apparently going to look at exhuming some of the ground around Zorro Ranch are actually going in there. It's a whole weird. That's where this took place. So what else is going on there? You know, we did a big investigation for Discovery Plus on Peter Nygaard, you know, and he was a billionaire freakazoid. Yes. And part of his deal, he's in prison up in jail up in Canada, waiting, you know, charges all over the, all over the globe. but his deal was that he would allegedly impregnate young women in the Bahamas where he had a huge home and then have them get abortions and harvest their stem cells of the fetuses to inject in himself as the founder of youth

and this we get into this in that documentary and I mean was Epstein involved in that sort of activity I don't know that's where again, we just have to look at what we have and know what we don't yet. Yeah. But it's a question. Yeah. And you look at the context of the jerky stuff. Yeah.

And when you look at what other billionaire guys have done, you know, were they in contact somehow? I mean, obviously, you know, there are some people who are in the concentric circles of associates. You know, billionaire sex predators. I mean, similar acts. Right. You have to ask those questions. Defe, can we pull up some of those emails where they use the code word jerky? Because Joe and I have looked through this a bunch. I'm going to hit the men's room.

Hold that thought. Okay. We'll be right back. I'm going to get... All right. We're back. So we have some of these emails up right here. And again, like you have to think of these things, as you put it, Chris, as if you're in like a court of law and what you can prove and what you can't. Right. And right now, if you just looked at the...

these alone. They don't definitively prove anything. But can we pull up that email you had up, Thief? The one that had, you had the perfect one up about the recipe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, go to the top one right there. So this one is called jerky recipe in the subject. It's from December 21st, 2012. It says, hi Steve Hansen, no relation. On Jeffrey's Island is requesting the latest beef jerky recipe as Jayhee has asked her to try and make some. He says the last batch that you made tasted different and I think he I think he likes it as he would like to attempt it would it be possible to forward us the recipe thank you steve this is the response but I've now been told it is the old way Francis was doing it he likes best and not the latest batch so on

LSJ is go on little St. James is going to try and do it that way I am in Europe but with him on the island if you need to call it a liaison about getting anything down so obviously the number one point They're not talking about real jerky here. We know that. It's code for something. Right. And when you go through some of the other emails that talk about how to refrigerate it, you know, where to store it, how many pounds it is and things like that,

your brain goes to some of that Peter Nygaard-type world type things. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, I've seen these, and I have access to the index emails as well. And I try to go through them when time allows. But, yeah, I would guess if I are a betting man that they're not talking about actual beef jerky. not known to be an island treat. I mean, people eat a lot of fish down on the islands, and I'm sure other stuff, too.

But, I mean, to me, this is code for something more nefarious. Now, the survivor you spoke to, what was your name again? Juliet Bryant. Julia Bryant. When she woke up on the medical table at Zorro Ranch, which is straight out of a horror movie, you said that she doesn't know what happened,

but she has some theories about what could have? What does she think? She doesn't know. I mean, she doesn't have scars. She doesn't have injuries that I'm aware of. But it was just so startling to her to wake up in what appeared to be a surgical suite of some sort with people in scrubs. And, you know, this freaked her out. I don't think she's completely processed this, except that she has the memory of this happening.

And finally at some point got out of the whole deal and, you know, was talking. talking about this and not getting a lot of reception from officials and, you know, got a hold of a lawyer and got involved in the civil suit against Epstein and was able to, like so many other survivors, get a settlement justly that has helped her in her life. But she's still, she's still very much impacted by this. All these girls, I mean, imagine having to come to grips of this. First of all, you try it, in some of these cases, they try to bury it, try to just deal with it. And then they decide, no, this is wrong. And I'm not alone. And they gather together and some very dedicated lawyers got involved here to go after this case. And, you know, thankfully,

they did get settlements. But that doesn't make you all better. That doesn't make you whole. You know, to be treated like some sort of chattel, you know, I mean, some, some, you know, a quantity of, you know, of, you know, just a product. that's i i don't even think he viewed them like that i think it was even lower than that i think this is a level depravity that i have no concept of normal people luckily don't have any concept of but i i too did just speak with a survivor recently and that podcast has been coming out soon there's a couple of them as we were here for a while but you had mentioned it maybe 10 minutes ago talking about some of the tactics he would use and and the thing that's the thing that's that blew me away when I was speaking to this Epstein survivor about his manipulation was how

diabolical he wasn't studying it. So when he would he would traffic this woman who was barely a woman, she was 20, 21, to other men in Hollywood or other places, mobily, meaning he wouldn't be going with her or anything like that. Right. He would just traffic her to them with the idea you know she was going to get raped and so she said that every time that she went and did one of these things he would call her afterwards and he would say like so did she hug up with him which you know means rape by the way obviously yeah and you know most of the time the answer was no and regardless of whether the answer was no or yes he would want to know the details to a t every time it was like in a it's like a serial killer yes you know it sounds the lamb stuff yes it was and and

and in a sick parallel to the real world, I was like, oh, my God, this is like when Bill Belichick and Tom Brady watched tape of defenses. Yeah. But he's watching. And he wants to know for his own, you know, purient interest. You know, he gets off on this, obviously. But also to realize what kind of power, what kind of manipulation does he now possess over a wealthy, powerful guy that he can use to his advantage?

What's the blackmail? Yes. I hadn't even thought of that. He's keeping notes. Yeah. He wants to be able to say, well, you know, how was your night with whatever the code name is? And he's got the response. And these guys were talking about this in the emails.

Yeah. I mean, up until 17, 18, right up until 19 when he got popped. You know, the Peter Adia, the doctor. Peter Atia, yeah. Yeah. Atia. you know, did he take part in it? No, apparently not, but he was talking about it.

And he was chummy. Chummy with a guy who is running one of the biggest human trafficking operations in the history of the world. It's a while. Yeah, because again, you got to go double check everything on like justice.gov when you see it on the internet because people are just floating around anything. Oh, no. There's all kinds of stuff flying out. I was certain when I saw those screenshots the first time I got, well, those must be fake ones. I go and look, I'm like, wow, he really said this shit.

Yeah. To this guy. And, and, and, and, and, you know, I'm not defending him, but I mean, obviously, I would like to think that he didn't know the extent of the best that he just thought he was talking to a rich guy who was, you know, somebody he thought was kind of funny and interesting. And maybe he, you know, as a medical guy and an influencer, maybe, you know, he was targeted by Epstein too. Now, you know, as you said, sometimes on your stings, you do run into doctors and lawyers and I say that because these are people of means, if you will.

A lot of times you don't. A lot of times it's someone who's not of means. They're all pedophiles. It's the same shit. But there is a different scope. It's the same thing, but there's a different scope through which to look at it to me when you're talking about people who are literal masters of the universe and billionaires and heads of state or heads of bureaucracy or heads of academia. or industry, whatever it may be, you know, do you have a ton of experience ever looking at things like that or is that even kind of new to you?

Well, I think it's new to me in terms of the scope of the wealth and power involved in the Epstein case. I mean, as I mentioned, we did a big investigation on Peter Nygaard. There's a lot of money involved there, a lot of corruption, a lot of, you know, delivering cash and a frozen fish to a government official. I mean, you know, a lot of people look in the other way. But in terms of the predator investigations that we do, the take down investigations on True Blue, you know, to me, it's interesting when it's somebody of wealth or power or character or influence. Because you would think that that person should know better.

It's no more of a crime than when a alignment for the power company does it. all you're staying up in a hotel in rural Louisiana. I mean, it's the same damage caused to a child. So I try to approach each of them the same way. I mean, obviously, you know, you've got a doctor who walks in after seeing 18 patients. And while he was seeing 18 patients took time to be texting somebody who was a 15-year-old girl, posing as a 15-year-old girl,

and send a picture of his penis and then stop in his range rover to buy Oreos and red wine because the girl had braces and he had a fantasy about the Oreos being in the braces. I mean, obviously that adds layers of context to the story. And it's a doctor who's taken the Hippocratic Oath to cause no harm. And he's there to sexually abuse a 15-year-old girl. And, you know, yeah, I think that makes for a more interesting story. Is it any more dangerous than the linemen?

No, same danger. And they both make the movie. Nobody gets out of this. I don't, you know, prioritize any of these cases because of what they do for living. You know, my producer and my executive producer sit down and we, you know, they, we put these, we edit them and put them out as they come. Now, we may change around for whatever production or programming reason, but everybody makes the movie. Yeah, and I think on that level, you're right.

I mean, everybody makes the movie. Nobody gets out. Right. Now, we may have guys who don't talk and we may group them together. you know, three in an episode because the interviews are shorter for whatever reason, but nobody, you know, nobody gets out of this who gets caught. Right. And again, like you're talking about that range and people from way different backgrounds or means and things like that, and I agree.

There's a level, though, that you don't get a chance to get to. It makes headlines when it's a doctor. I mean, look at the New York Post today, the day that we record this. And there are two or three stories about prominent men getting caught. getting child porn, CSAM. One is a doctor in Michigan, another is a physician someplace else, but all prominent people who are shockingly engaging in the purchase and trafficking of child porn in one day. In one day.

What percentage do you think actually get caught? That's an excellent question. And there's a theory that some of these guys want to. get caught. And I've heard that in interviews over the years. You know, I'm relieved. Now I can get help. Now I can stop. In terms of percentage, it'd be a wild guess, but based upon the activity on the internet, I'd say maybe 20, 30 percent. That's actually higher than I thought you were going to say. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm just giving you an educated guess. I mean, maybe that's overly optimistic because I want to think that we catch more than we do. But in terms of guys seeking

children for sex and actually, you know, doing something to physically do that, maybe 20, 30 percent. But again, it's a guess at best. Do you think it for, certainly not for everyone, but do you think for some people this is something that's curable or do you view it as incurable across the board. They have this feeling. That's what it is. I think the vast majority of cases are incurable, but I have seen, and we talk about this on the predators I've caught podcast, guys who, especially the younger guys, who, you know, did their punishment, whether it's a, you know, a month in the county jail or whatever it was. They registered as a sex offender. They went to their treatment and all they're productive members of society. It happens. How do we know that?

We know that because they're closely monitored. We know that because they have to report to a probation officer. We know that because they're registered. We know that because we keep track of their activities. So is it 100%? No, absolutely not. But these guys are going to work every day. They're doing a job. They're not offending.

They've gone to therapy. They're young enough where they can rewire their brains a little bit. And people would argue with me that none of these guys can be fair. fixed. But I think some of these guys act on impulses that, you know, with some work and therapy and some monitoring, they can decide they're not going to do it again. And discipline. And discipline. If they have it. See, that would, that's an interesting word to use there. Because if you say discipline, the way, maybe I'm taking it to literally, but that would mean that they have all those urges, but they're discipline to just not act on or something, which means...

And that's exactly what I'm getting at it. And I get email. We have an email associated with the podcast, Chris at Predatorpodcast.com. And I have gotten at least a dozen over the five years we've done that podcast. Emails from men who say, look, I don't want to use my name or I don't want to be identified, but I am telling you that I've had these urges for as long as I can remember. I go to therapy. I'm in a normal adult relationship, and I don't offend. And I understand I have these urges, and I can't tell you exactly why, but I do.

I'm attracted to younger girls. And I don't offend. And you need to know that there are people out there who are like me. Now, have I verified everything in that email as being true? No. But it rings true to me that there are people. people out there who are that way. Maybe there's some of those people who are telling the truth.

Maybe some of the other people fall in the category if they want to get caught. And that's how they think they can do it to get their attention by emailing Chris Hanson. Yeah, or they're jerking me around. Which is not out of the possibility either. You don't know. But it's interesting that somebody would take the time to give me details about their life. If I wanted to find them, I could find them. Yeah.

You know, and if I thought they were a danger to society, I would turn it over to law enforcement. I would do everything I could to prevent them from harming a child. I don't care. Yeah. You know, but if it's somebody being honest who at least there's no information that he's harmed a child, you know, I'd like to hear about it. Do you ask them about ever, converse with them about where these urges come from? I have not.

And I should. Yeah, I would. I mean, I'm working on an episode that involves this. But as you can imagine, you know, it takes a bit of a leap of faith on my part to say, okay, is this guy jerked me around? Right. How am I sure he's not offended? They need to take a leap of faith and say, right, I'm going to go identify myself.

Because I'm not going to take just a fake name. I need to know. I need to run a background check on these guys. Yeah. You know, and so it kind of gets stalled out in that mediation part. of it. And then as you're working on that, suddenly there's five other interviews you have to do. So it's important. I should do it and I will. Does it feel like sometimes with all of the awareness we have on just how widespread a problem

like this is, does it feel like you're swimming against the current? Like it just gets worse, despite all the great work you've clearly done to help? Yeah, I try not to get overwhelmed by it. You know, I've at a stage in life where I've been doing this long enough, you know, that I know a couple things to be true. One, you just got to do your best every day. Two, I believe in the work. It's important. I wanted to be a television journalist virtually every day since the age of 15. And I pursued it. And I believe it's important. And, you know, obviously at some point in life, you start to get addicted yourself to, you know, your ego gets addicted to the attention and being relevant in a space.

And I've been very fortunate to remain relevant for a very long time across three generations of viewers, followers, whatever you want to call people. And to figure out a way to do stories in a manner that is captivating to people. Right. And so you take the predator stories and you have that currency or that value to your viewers, your people, and you try to translate that into other topics as well. But I'm blessed to have been in the game so long and see no end to it. I'm not just catching predators, but all kinds of other stories and other material and other

things that I do. But it's a unique thing because I have this discussion with my sons who are in the business, one behind the camera, one in front of the camera. And behind the camera does some work with. me, but also does, you know, commercials for Microsoft and Pfizer and, you know, movies and, you know, there's got a lot of different things going on. The son who's in front of the camera is in more of a traditional route, which is what I was in, right? When I went to NBC, I didn't go there to do predator investigations. We did stories for news magazines. And it could be the Oklahoma

City bombing. It could be 9-11. It could be a lot of breaking news. or, you know, political news or the impeachment of Bill Clinton, all that stuff. You did that for a lot of years. For a lot of years. Yeah. And then, you know, pitched to the Predator Series. And I think at that point, you either do it once and keep going, or you pursue that sort of reporting. And obviously, I took a different road.

That road doesn't land you at 60 minutes as a correspondent, right? It lands you in your own world, your own network. And I'm comfortable with that. I mean, I don't know of a better set of circumstances that I could have than the one I currently possess. I mean, who at 66 years old has their own streaming network, which produces takedown that comes out every single Thursday, two podcasts with unique content every single Monday and Wednesday, and then documentaries. Right. Roblox documentary that is out now.

Well, you're also like a one-of-one brand. Like, when people think about this kind of thing and, like, catching predators, it's like the next search on Google is Chris Hanson. Right, but I don't get to do a cooking show in Italy. But I know that going into it. I think you're doing more important work. I agree. I agree.

But you also, you know, there's a party who, as you go through the business, where you think, well, I'll do a lot of different things. And we did for many years at Dateline, do a lot of things. That show has morphed into a murder mystery procedural. Nothing wrong with it. Great show does very well. My friends still work at that show doing those murder mysteries. Is that what I personally want to do?

No. I found a niche and a purpose that is tailor-made for me. And I'm very comfortable doing it the way I do it. Those guys may not be comfortable doing it. I mean, there's no jealousy or animosity, or I'm better than you, or you're better than me, I wish you would do. It's just the way it happened. We're all very good friends.

We talk all the time. I see him at crime con. Right. You know? I think I'll actually disagree with you on one thing, though. Obviously, like, you're perfectly comfortable right where you are and doing your thing. But I do think if you woke up tomorrow, I wouldn't want to see you do a cooking show personally. But like, you know, if you woke up tomorrow and said, I think I'm going to, I think not to

anyone would want to do this these days, but I think I'm going to go cover the politics in D.C. People would be like, yo, Chris Hanson's covering what's going on in D.C. I think you're right. I mean, it's refreshing to hear, you know. I got a lot of people who depend on me to do the kind of work I do. Right. And so that plays into it as well. Yes. But I think as this evolves, for instance, as as true blue, our streaming network grows, I think we're going to have, you know, the ability to do a lot of different things. as we become bigger, I mean, we have documentaries and projects in the works on different topics. And I think there's going to be the ability to get involved in a lot of things. Look, I'm at a great stage in life. My kids are grown, right? My wife is very supportive of

this work. You're 66, too. Sixty-six years old. Doing well. I think so. I'm hanging there for a fellow of a certain age, but you know, you adapt as you go along to preserve yourself, too. Yeah. You know. Now, you said you wanted to do wanted to do this since you were 15. Yes. I mean, look, you got the look, you got the voice. You always had that, but like, what was it? What was the push? I grew up about a mile away from where Jimmy Hoffa was kidnapped in suburban Detroit. And when it happened, the local police in Bloomfield Township and the FBI and national correspondents and local reporters. And Detroit, I, you know, was a very sophisticated media market.

It has been for many years. But when I was there, and I worked in Detroit for 10 years, I mean, that the anchorman were larger than live. The reporters were, you know, local celebrities and very good journalists. And they understood television. And Detroit at one time was the seventh largest market of the nation. You know, it was, you know, New York, L.A., Chicago, Boston, Philly, and then Detroit, you know. in the city of lost population.

So it's changed now. It's in the top 20s still, I believe. But, you know, I became fascinated with the story. I'm obsessed with it. I used to ride my bike up there. And, you know, the crime scene was all happening. And so I was bit by the bug then. And, you know, after that, the Oakland County child killing case,

which was a huge case when I was in high school. The Oakland County Child Killer. Four children disappeared in the span of like 18 months, found dead. They were all really. related to one or two potential killers. I'd done stories on it when I was in Detroit. Keep track of it now. It was just on a radio show a few weeks ago talking about it in Detroit.

It's the 50th year anniversary. Knew the family of one of the kids who was taken. Yeah, there are. Timmy King. And some theories. I mean, I chased around as a local reporter in Detroit. We went to Wyoming to chase a lead. We went, you know, we did a lot of different things on this story.

And technically, I mean, there are people who think they know who did it. both of whom are dead. Oh, they never got caught, though. No. It's been one of those enduring mysteries. Now, people have their theories. So, you know, with all that, having gone on, as I was starting to watch local news a lot

and read all the newspapers and the main anchorman at the ABC station, Bill Bonds, who was a great character, great journalist, was best friends with my best friend's father. And so I was around him. a lot and you know off to college and signed up for their radio station doing news and I was a reporter. You know, you mentioned it earlier though, talking about this with serial killers. You drew the parallel in some of the mentality between them and the predators that you deal

with. But I think sometimes we forget about how the whole serial killer phenomenon rose up, you know, in the 60s, 70s and 80s and still unfortunately continues today. but like when you look at the guys like the BTKs or this guy we never caught the Oakland County child killer a similar question when I asked you about child predators earlier like what what bears someone to put that in their soul and become that thing you know silence of the lambs I mean who you know how do you start in this John Wayne gasey you know the the notorious uh smiley face killer, you know, in Oregon.

I interviewed him face to face. This is a big dude, too. We did a piece for Dateline years ago. And, you know, you're sitting as close as you and I are sitting with this guy with leg irons and handcuffs on. And his daughter did a documentary recently. But what drives him? A combination of psychiatric reasons.

And, you know, they'll tell you a lot of different stories. My mom hated me. My mom is a prostitute. You know, sometimes these guys start as peeping times and become rapists and then they want to kill. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I don't necessarily think there's a single point failure in any of this stuff. Right. It's a combination of things. And like, I mean, there are people far more expert than I when it comes to child killers and serial killers, of course.

But, you know, what motivates them to do this? Have they killing themselves when they were at a young age when something happened? to prevent the horrible things that happened to them later in life. I don't know. There's a lot of ways to look at it. Smarter guys than me study it. But it's shocking to me. And today, you don't see as many serial killers today

because they don't get away with it for as long as they did that. The advancements in DNA and surveillance. Yeah, surveillance. I mean, you know, coming over here from Midtown Manhattan today, I was probably captured on video a dozen times, not more. You know, you can't get, it's hard to get away with the crime. And that's why the Nancy Guthrie case, I think, is so, what is going on there? Mistifying. I don't know. My heart just breaks for that family. I mean, I think of my mom in that situation, you know, an 84-year-old woman.

And, you know, so overwhelmed and mystified. Why is somebody doing this to me? And, you know, to me, it doesn't seem like a robbery gone bad, because why would you take a woman with you? with you. Right. And if, if God forbid, you know, she died during the course of a robbery, why take, why create a bigger criminal problem for you? If it's a kidnapping, why hasn't there been more of an effort to get money from it? You know, I don't think whoever pulled it off was very bright or wasn't an astute criminal. Who wears the gun in front of them like the way he was wearing it? The problem is dumb criminals can be, dangerous and deadly. Criminal's or criminals. So was it a kidnapping where unfortunately something

happened to Nancy Guthrie and they no longer have evidence proof of life? Maybe. I don't know the answer to it. I don't have a strong gut feeling in this case like I do in so many others. Was she targeted because of what her daughter did for a living? I don't think she was in a position where she created a lot of anger towards her, but maybe there was some thought that she had money and they could, it was an easy mark. But you think of this poor woman, lived in the house for 50 years, widowed early, took in, you know, had her mother living with her, her, her brother who, you know, had some challenges and they had a happy life. And she went to work every day, you know, raised kids, one of whom became, you know, Savannah Guthrie, who I knew at NBC. But I don't think

anybody targeted her because anything her daughter did. I mean, if somebody comes after me, I understand why, right? I've messed with a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. But I'm not taunting anybody to do that. I don't need that to happen. But, you know, I just, I think it's going to be a confluence of dunces that did something horrible. And it led to something very bad happening to an 84-year-old woman.

And look, I talk to law enforcement about it every day. I'm not out there covering it. But, you know, I've had incidents where I've had to deal with Walmart security in the past. and they are very good at what they do. They're very committed. And I can tell you that they're working around the clock, running all kinds of AI programs to figure out, you know, where could the backpack have been bought when.

Did anybody buy a backpack and a face mask and a jacket at the same time? Did, you know, they're clicking away at this stuff nonstop. And every time something like this happens, they enhance their algorithm to be able to say, okay, we're looking for somebody who is between five, nine, and 511 who might have been at this store, you know, but there are, you know, tons of Walmart stores. Imagine the footprint of Walmart and Sam's Club.

It's good and bad. The search field is enormous, but so is the data field. Right. So I have a feeling that they're going to figure this out. And the other thing is, you know, the reality is not all sheriff's departments are created equal. And I'm not casting any shade on the sheriff's office down there. But to me, and again, this is just.

me, if I'm running a media for a law enforcement agency, I'm not going to be doing this scanner shot interview here and there. I mean, every day or every other day, there should be a briefing, right? Sometimes the sheriff should be there and sometimes it should be the press person. And they read off a list of what's the latest. Done. But it just, it comes off so herky, jerky. And again, you know, I haven't solved the case, so why should I be, you know, critical of the guys who are trying to solve it? I know they're working hard on it. But I don't, I think they'll solve it. Sadly, it's gotten into a long haul.

But just whenever you think that, I mean, remember that, you know, those four kids who were killed, the college kids killed in Idaho. Yes. You know, everybody was starting to, these cops don't know what they're doing, a small town, campus cop, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it turns out all along, they are on the hunt. And they got this guy, Cole Burger. So hopefully there's stuff going on that we don't know about.

hopefully it comes to fruition and whoever did this will get caught. And as Savannah Guthrie has said in her videos, you just have to believe. There's nothing bad that happens by not believing in the most optimistic outcome. But with each passing day, it becomes more challenging, obviously, to be optimistic. Yeah, I can't imagine. I hope they, whoever did it, I hope they find them and they're rotten hell. but it just, none of it makes a lot of sense to me. I can't figure out if it's just bizarre because the crime's bizarre

and, you know, they caught themselves one foot ahead of law enforcement at the beginning or because it's going to be some fluke. It's going to be some fluke that, you know, led them to commit this crime. And it's been a fluke that they've been able to get away with it. Right. A camera missed him. A camera was out. I mean, look at the fact that they were able to reconstruct that video is nothing short of amazing.

I can't remember. It's the camera at the door that he tried to cover up and then took. And they were able to go back and work with Microsoft to get that video reconstructed, the video of him at the front door. That wasn't an awe-man grab. They had to work. The FBI had to go to Microsoft and get that to reconstitute what was in the, you know, what was in the, in the cloud and lead it back to that particular camera that they don't have. So they didn't find the camera, as my understanding.

They were able to find information that was in the cloud from that camera because she hadn't subscribed to the service that would save it. So, I mean, just that. And then you've got to hope that, like in so many cases, somebody sees some tick or some characteristic of the guy on the video that they say, oh, that's Frankie, you know, that's, I know exactly who that is. That's what solves these cases. Yeah.

Somebody's got to drop a dime. Now, you were saying it's amazing the tools that they have now to be able to solve funds. It's hard to get away with the crime. Yeah. It's hard to get away with the crime anymore. I mean, people try it. But, and it happens. But, you know, somebody's going to know about it.

It's just whether or not does that person come forward or do they find that evidence. What about for what you do, though? Because like this started off, like you said, in the beginning, it was three different types of chat rooms and whatever back then. Right. now there's a million places to do it. Where have you seen things, whether it be AI or other types of technology, assist law enforcement or even with you when you're working with law enforcement on these types of cases? Well, you know, we can track phone numbers, right?

Not every number can be tracked. There are ways to get, you know, fake numbers or, you know, VoIP numbers. But when we have a real number, they can run it through a database. And we know what car is arriving. We know who it is, where they get a criminal history. where they got a concealed weapons permit, that's 50% of the time. We know who's coming. Now, can they figure out a way around that?

Yeah. And then it's a bit of a mystery. Then I've got my hands full because I've got to figure it out while I'm sitting across from or standing across from. But, you know, we always do. By the end of the story, we know exactly who this person is. Challenging mostly because there are so many platforms upon which adults can approach children. You know, it's, it's, you can't be in every one of these things. You know, there's dating

sites. There's, you know, some of these crimes are happening on generally accessible social media platforms like, you know, Facebook and, you know, Instagram, you know, the meta. I mean, we've had horrible cases where they're just, guys cruise along, finding girls to chat with and whoever hits back. You know, they look for profiles. where the child is potentially vulnerable. And they pray on that. And in the case of Roblox... I was just going to ask.

Yeah. You know, we've been investigating predators, exploiting kids on Roblox for the last seven months or so. For people out there who don't understand Roblox or what it is, would you mind just explaining it? Roblox is a multi-tiered gaming platform. So there are games on Roblox already that Roblox has designed that they offer.

and creators can make games and put them out in Roblox. And as a user, you can also create a game and get permission and put it up there too. So it's a video game within a video game, right? And so there are all these different games that kids can play, and it looks pretty innocent. Some of these characters look like Lego characters from a Lego movie. It is marketed towards kids as young as five. And if played properly with adult supervision, it creates amazing communities with very healthy experiences and allows people to express their creativity. Wildly successful, multi-billion dollar publicly traded company in San Mateo, California, led by the co-creators of it.

But we have come across cases dating back. 15 years where children were approached by adults and groomed and preyed upon. How did how does that happen? It happens in a couple different ways. Now I need to say at the onset that recently Roblox has enacted some safety features including facial recognition and age verification that should prevent some of this from happening. But as you know, children can find workarounds. Adults can find workarounds. And there are a lot of games that are kind of shady on there.

And then there's the connection between Roblox and Discord. Roblox and Discord. Roblox is a server on Discord. A lot of players go back and forth. There are Roblox communities on Discord. So there's this relationship there. And we started getting a lot of reports about adults post as children on Roblox, adults inducing children to create child porn to abuse others.

There's the 764 element of it where 764, the nihilistic group you're familiar with, goes on Roblox to create relationships and to abuse their kids. They are everywhere. Oh, my, yeah, but that group, holy shit. And I don't know, I know people say, I say, what drives them? Well, they're nihilists. You know, they're just out to create chaos. harm people. Well, what do they get from that? Well, they get to harm people. But what does it do for

them to harm people? They're just that way. I mean, I interviewed a dad for a recent episode of have a seat with Chris Hansen, and he was so powerful. And his daughter was on roll blocks and was co-opted by some of these seven, six, four guys. And ultimately, she committed suicide and, you know, the grief and the guilt and the reconstruction of it. But not only did they, cause her to commit suicide, they convinced her to live stream suicide attempts. He finds this out later. Then they start picking on him, the dad, and harassing him just for the sake of doing it after she died before and after.

This is an ongoing thing. So we divert from Roblox itself. So kids were getting abused by predators and robox. blocks. We start digging into it. I find a detective in Marion County, Florida, Henrik Osted, who is one of the national experts on this. And in one short period of time, just in Marion County, Florida, they arrested a young man who had abused on Roblox at least a dozen kids and probably more. Then we find the victim, a 10-year-old girl, of a Roblox predator who was in the UK. So if this is going on in Marion County, Florida, what's going on in the rest of the world?

And then we learn about a young man named Schlep, who I'm sure you're familiar with. He was a, yeah, YouTuber. He was a Roblox prodigy at 10, 11 years old. He was then abused by somebody on Roblox, and he was suicidal, ended up in the hospital, came back, and has made it his mission to expose predators on Roblox. Just for, and, you know, I'm, I'm, not saying like going to graphic details and stuff like that. But when you say someone like Schlep got abused on Roblox, what are you referring to? I'm referring to somebody who was a well-known

creator who decided to abuse their power dynamic and try to convince Schlep to do certain things that he apparently did not do. But when he wouldn't do things. And when I talk about things in general on Roblox. There are predators who try to get children to take pictures of themselves or do things for their gratification, right? So, and this is a common theme. So Schlep, as a young man, young boy, becomes suicidal. It goes to the hospital, great parents,

to get him through it, and he decides he's going to, you know, expose some of these people on Roblox. You'd think that Roblox would embrace that. And they've been back and forth on having, him a part of their team and not having him a part of the team right now. They don't want him a part of the team. And they claim that he's going after people more associated with Discord than Roblox. Schlep would argue that, look, it matters not. The people on Discord have a presence on Roblox, and it's often one and the same, right? If they've got a server over there, people are recruiting people over there. It's the same thing. And then we find out that Schlepp is represented by a law firm who at the beginning of our investigation this summer had 500 cases of people exploring potential legal action against Roblox because of being preyed upon.

Since that time, they now have 3,000 cases. And then we start to find out that attorneys general across the country are investigating and swinging Roblox as well. So you've got the Attorney General of Louisiana, who we interviewed. You got the Attorney General of the state of Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas. You know, all these attorneys general are going after Roblox for not keeping children safe on their platform. Now, Roblox held two or three different background briefings with me for the story, including one with their chief security officer, Matt Kaufman. Gave me a lot of information, very useful. we use it in the story, but they have thus far declined

and do an on-camera interview. And I push pretty hard because I know that it's more fair to Roblox if there's a face attached to this, right? You're not just putting up a statement on a graphic on a screen. You can talk to somebody. You can have a conversation with somebody just like I did for background.

But they've refused. And so now the first episode, the first hour of our documentary is out on True Blue, and people can see it and make up their minds for themselves. Do you think they refuse because they're afraid of the Hansen? They feel like you're going to get them dead the rights, or because they're just being too corporatey and going behind the shield? They're afraid.

I don't know whether they're afraid because I know more than other journalists know who ask them questions. They tend to like interviews in comfortable tech settings. where they can talk about new games and growth of engagement. Then in more mainstream journalism, they like to go on shows where the interviews are two to three minutes. So there's not a lot of background checks. They don't want me to ask them why. For instance, they won't allow law enforcement to conduct investigations on their platform.

Yeah, why do you think they're not letting them do that? Well, because I'm sure there are privacy concerns. They don't want to get the image that, you know, am I talking to another player? am I talking to a cop? And to me, if you want to send a message to predators on your platform, you let law enforcement in on it and you shake them up a little bit. I mean, there are people on Roblox who are mad at me, mad at Schlep, for even looking into this.

They think it's a parental responsibility. And we should be able to do whatever we want, play whatever game we want on Roblox. If a kid gets in trouble, their parents should have been keeping a closer eye on them. That's one of the, it's a minority, but there are people who I see the snitty little comments. And actually, I don't pay much attention to them. But, you know, they'll say something about Schlapp or those same. I mean, look, it's very easy. Make it as safe as you can.

And in terms of doing an interview, why would you not sit down and say, look, Chris, here's what we've done. Boeing did it when we investigated crashes of the 737. When did you do that investigation? Back in the late 90s for Dateline. So they let you in. They took me to the factory. Showed me how they make the plane. Show me the tail.

Show me the thing they were doing to make it safer. Is this like after TWA and all that? No, that was a different plane. This was a crash that occurred in Pittsburgh. Okay. And there were other incidents involving the 737. And so we did an investigation. Boeing, to its credit, had us come in, shot the plane being built, did all this stuff, and then sat down with an interview.

And said, look, this is what we're doing. We're not convinced that this actually caused the fatal crash, but we're going to make sure this is the safest airplane in the air. because it is the warhorse of the American fleet. And then people can make up their own mind. If I are roll blocks, I would lay out all the safety measures and answer the questions, the critical ones, truthfully, and then look at me and say, and Chris, remember this, we're not committing these crimes, predators are.

Right. And a story. So I'm trying to draw some parallels in my head. It's a similar type of situation to like, Facebook letting police in to take a look at crimes that happen on their platform because bad actors come on and use an open... Well, here's just to be clear. Now, the folks at Roblox, like in all these other social media platforms, are mandated by Congress to voluntarily report inappropriate contact between children and adults, sexually charged content, C-SAM, all that. they're supposed to report incidents of this that they find to the national center of missing

exploited children. Nick Mc then farms these referrals out to law enforcement. Who does? The National Center for Missing Exploited Children. Okay. So they get a tip on children being exploited, and that goes from Facebook, whatever, to, or in this case, Roblox, to Nick Mc to law enforcement. And they do that.

And there are cases that have been made because Roblox reported this as they're supposed to. But why not let law enforcement go on and conduct their own investigations? Why not create a chilling environment for predators? So there's another parallel I'm thinking of in my head about this. And it's not a perfect one. But you remember the whole San Bernardino shooter iPhone thing where Tim Cook was like, shit, I really want to unlock that iPhone for you. But that sets a precedent about.

privacy laws in the future for people who might be innocent and things like that, which really diff, you're stuck between. No, I understand it. But if I'm Tim Cook, I'm going to say, this is a mass shooting and we have to catch the guy. Right. And so we're going to make a corporate decision, and I'm going to be a good corporate citizen and help law enforcement. And I'm going to do this. Right. So here. He's the CEO. He can do it. He can. Here, I understood where he was coming from on setting precedent, though. That said, this isn't my wheelhouse to know what the rights and laws are here, but is there a way that Roblox could allow law enforcement to monitor the app and any time they come across something that therefore is not actually something illegal or it's perfectly fine,

the data from anything they collected on those people is required to be deleted, and not held, meaning privacy is protected? I don't even think it needs to go that far. I think if they're allowed to go do a sting here or there or do an occasional investigation, it sends a message, just like our predator investigation sent to the community, that we're going to be proactive. We're not going to wait until there's a victim.

We're going to find these guys before there's a victim. We're going to use decoys, and we're going to send a missile out there. And the missile is going to hopefully be a deterrence to predatory activity. It's that simple. I mean, that's why they do this. these stings. That's why we do these things. Yeah. How much of the Roblox, like you were citing the

7-6-4 examples and getting kids to send awful material and stuff like that or do awful acts, how much of Roblox then translates also to being groomed for meetups in the real world? Like, how big of a problem is that? There was a case just in the last couple of weeks. I interviewed the sheriff of Martin County, Florida. Two girls, sisters, teenagers were in contact with a year old man from the Midwest, Idaho, I believe, and he convinced them that he could provide a better life than what they were having at home. And there was some challenge in the household, but nothing horrible. They were being beaten or abused. And so they, he groomed them, drove all the way down, met them at a convenience store, and was going to take them back and live together with him

back in his home. And the, you know, the word. got out, the parents were apoplectic that these girls were missing, called the sheriff's office. The sheriff says, what, what electronic product were they using? Well, we told him to stay off of Roblox because, you know, we thought they were up to no good. Well, let me see the tablet. They re-download Roblox, and they're able to, and Snapchat, and actually it went from Roblox to Snapchat. So I think they downloaded Snapchat again, and the conversations were there. So they're able to identify him, and they were able to track him to a convenience store where his photo was taken, video-wise, and there was a picture of his plate. So they were able to report

that, figuring that he was headed back to his home. They put out an APB, and the Georgia Highway Patrol picked him up, and the girls were uninjured, thankfully. But this happens with some frequency. And the initial conversation starts on roadblocks, because because that's where kids are. And again, parents can shut down this chat feature. And you're not supposed to be able to chat if your age is too far apart. But kids figure that out.

Yes. And this has been going on for 15 years now. We interview a man who's now 30, children of his own, military guy, guy can deadlift 716 pounds. Woody. And he was abused 15 years ago. He was a boy on Roblox.

And was brought to tears this tough guy was telling the story about, you know, being groomed by this predator, meeting him. Turns out he was an older guy. And he tried to sexually assault him. And now he's, you know, got legal action against Roblox. How did, we always use this term, righteously so. when we're describing how these predators went over the trust of their victims and it's called grooming. But there's all different ways that it occurs on Roblox where you're dealing with something on the internet,

which is also like what you've dealt with. Yeah, it's the same grooming. I mean, it follows a template. It's either an older guy pretending to be somebody who's younger or it's an older guy who's going to co-opt and convince this child that he can provide something that the child needs or wants. And little by little breaks down the traditional barriers that exist between adults and children in our society and convinces them to do something they shouldn't do. Is there a common kind of thing or like key that gets unlocked?

That's a bad way to put it, where the Rubicon every time it's the moment it gets crossed? Or does it really, really vary? I think there are similarities. But each case is different. each child is vulnerable in their own way. Are they from a broken home? Are they currently having disagreements with their parents or their hormones raging?

Do they want to be viewed as somebody older? Do they want freedom? Do they want money? Do they want jewelry? I mean, these guys know how to push the buttons. And the problem is that this child may be in just a momentary location of vulnerability. But if the predator hits them at the exact right moment,

it's a disaster. That's right. Right? Two days other way, they're over it. You know, it's like extortion. You know, the next documentary we have at True Blue is extortion. And we examine all these cases where young men or boys are online and they think they're talking to an attractive young woman.

They trade naughty of photos. And it turns out it's not a young woman. It's an extortionist in Nigeria. And now the guy wants money. And the kids got $500 in gift cards and gives all that away. and then there's no more. And he says, well, you know, F you, kill yourself. And these kids are so caught up in the moment.

They think this guy is going to, you know, publish the naughty photos. And they can't get it out of their mind that this is a momentary thing. In two weeks, you know, grandma's not going to see it. In two weeks, nobody's going to care. But in the moment, the social media footprint, their presence, their identity is so intertwined with their ego that they don't see it. and 15, 16-year-old boys are killing themselves. I've sat with four sets of parents. There's a state legislature in South Carolina.

Brandon Guffy, son killed himself. Same thing. And he goes and talks to people all the time about this. And he tells kids, he goes, look, first of all, your junk's probably out there already if you're, you know, so don't even think about that being a problem because nobody cares. And you can go to Nick Meg, National Center for Missing Exploited Children, and they'll help you scrub the internet of anything you may have sent inadvertently

or anything you were tricked into sending. They can do that? They can do that. But the point of it is these kids who kill themselves because of a momentary sense of shame, if they wrote it out for another week, they're applying to colleges. They're back with their girlfriend. Oh, that's stupid. And so to me, a lot of this comes back to parents.

And parents have to say, I'm not blaming parents, but parents have to create an environment where if their child gets lured into something, they feel comfortable enough to say, look, I effed up, I need your help to get out of this.

And the parents are not going to yell at them. They can call them stupid after the fact or tease them about it or whatever. It becomes a joke at some point. What's not a joke is when the kid shoots himself in the head. Yeah. It's not a joke when the kid hangs himself in the closet.

And, man, I tell you, having kids of my own, you know, being out of the danger zone, nothing would ruin me, would destroy me like the death of a child. I have a tough guy. I could deal with a whole lot of stuff. But losing a child at 15, 16 years old, anytime, you know, a child's death proceeds yours, it is life-altering. And the fact that they even get through this and can be advocates for other kids and other parents is nothing short of amazing to me. And I have nothing but enormous respect for all those parents who deal with this. And for those who sat for the documentary, which is, like I said, coming out after Roblox.

Yeah, we'll have that link down below, by the way. But, yeah, I can't, I don't have kids my own yet. I really look forward to having them. And you can't know what that's like until it happens to you. No, until you do it. And I hope I never know what it's like. And I hope no other parent has to ever go through it again. but it's it's absolutely the most painful thing I can imagine.

What about when you are, of course, you feel awful for every parent you sit with and they're devastated. And that's a given. But how difficult is it when you're sitting with these parents who are devastated after the fact and it's one where you're hearing the story and you're seeing all the places where like they should have had more guardrails on there, or they should have known, or they should have monitored this, this, or that more? Well, you ask the question in a very sensitive way

because it elicit a response that will help another parent from know how to not go through it. But, you know, I don't go out to blame any parents. And, you know, I don't know what my kids did 24-7. I'm sure they had close calls. I had close calls that my parents ever found out about. I mean, yeah. Inches from death.

I grew up in an era where, you know, you walked out and with a BB gun or bow and arrow and went to go play around in the woods for six hours when you're 10 years old. I mean, you know, we weren't very tightly regulated, you know, and as the oldest of three and the only boy, you know, there are elements of your life where you were sort of raised by wolves. You know, you had your buddies and your pals. It was, you know, Lord of the Flies. We had a ball.

Nobody ever got seriously hurt. Did we come close? Did you almost lose an eye? Did you almost crash a minibike? Yeah, all that stuff. But for the grace of God, you know, and you've got to count on that. You need a little luck raising a kid. But sometimes you don't have that lucky stroke.

And sometimes the kid makes a bad decision. And sometimes you're not there to catch it. And so all you can do is try to create an environment where the kid feels open enough where he can say, hey, you know, I got a prom here. You need to get those fixed up. And then that's the best advice I can give. And even that's not foolproof. But that's why I harp on all these safety issues.

issues on Roblox and Rolex is going to be all mad and, you know, we do more than any other platform. And fine, great, good on you. But let's, let's tighten this up. And by the way, let's talk about it. Let's hear from these victims. Let's hear from the lawyers trying to hold the company accountable because that discussion creates awareness and a dialogue that needs to take place, just like the predator investigations, the takedown investigations we do. All of this stuff, it's about. It's about awareness and dialogue. And if I can light a fire under people and get them to talk about it with their kids, that I've won. Well, it's also, you make a great point that the company should want to sit down with you and should want to be transparent to fix the problem. And that's a mistake on their part.

And they do sit down with other people. But again, it tends to be, you know, with people in the tech world. It's friendly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't count. I'm saying like with someone like you who's really trying to solve this problem. If I could see outside of you, if I could see from their perspective with some of these class action lawsuits and stuff like that with lawyers, you know, those lawyers are doing their job and they're representing usually families whose kids were victims. Right. Who suffered in one way or another. Exactly. So I'm not blaming the lawyers or anything like that, but I could see from the company's perspective how it might get like scary to even address it. You know what I mean? You also see a pattern of

behavior in the part of rule blocks where they, you know, they're trying to hire the spokesman for the, you know, Republican Attorneys General Association. You know, they try to get people in law enforcement to be on their team. They donate money to the Alliance of Attorneys General, you know, they want to be able to say, we're the solution here. You know, they're throwing a lot of money around, you know, when they should maybe be throwing a little more awareness around, I think. Yeah. Now what, I mean, you talked about it a little bit ago that there's tools, kids are, they're smart with tech, they can just get around it and stuff. But, you know, that's, that's one of the scariest things about becoming a parent for me is like, it just gets

worse every year, all the different resources and tools and places someone can get hurt. And you do, like you said, you got to have some luck as a parent too. You can't put a helmet on your kid and have them go through life that way or be a helicopter. They have to be able to fend for themselves on certain ways. And they need to learn those skills. I mean, you know, I always look at it this way. You know, cavemen babies survived and saber-toothed tigers roam the earth. You know, civilization was initiated to continue. And, you know, there's a god and most days things go well. But, you know, bad stuff can happen.

Kids can get preyed upon on games like Roblox. 84-year-old women can disappear, you know, for no fault of their own. I mean, bad stuff happens out there. And the more we talk about it but don't live, you know, behind lock gates all the time, you have to go live your life. But you have to be aware of these potential things. And you're right. It gets more challenging every year.

I mean, we had, my oldest son was, who's 34 now, you know, when he was in high school, there's a world of warcraft. And you had to be on a computer to do it. Phones weren't that sophisticated and tablets weren't really around then. So you had to sit on the computer and do it in a common area of the house. And it was bedtime, it was bedtime. Well, I can. I'm letting the fellows down.

Well, who are the fellows? Well, there, my guys, get to bed. and the story. Right. Play another day. Yeah, it'll be more fellows to play with it. But, you know, now, God, it's just overwhelming. And I think it's important for parents not to try, not to be overwhelmed by the technology.

You limit your children's exposure. You limit the methods that can be used for adults to approach your child. Turn off the chat function. Look over their shoulder. understand the games. You know, if it's a bathroom game, kids are not playing it. If the game, you know,

there are games like that that have been on Roblox historically, the bathroom game. The bathroom game. You walk, your character walks into a bathroom and sees different things and you go to different levels. And it's sexually aggressive.

And it's not appropriate for kids, but there was a point where kids had access to that. Now, Roblox is indicated that's tried to shut that down. But, you know, in a platform like that, or in Discord or in a lot of different places. You know, there are dark corners

of those platforms where kids can get into trouble. Well, that's the thing, and that's what's really disappointing that's coming through and what you're saying, and it's not just the transparency, or the lack of transparency access, but, or a point that you made, it's like, you know,

even when I tried to play devil's advocate two minutes ago, you can cite the sources of the shit they do. It sounds like they don't really, to solve the problem. I don't think robots wants predators harming children on their platform. I don't think so. I mean, these people have kids too, right? But how much do they want to stop it? But I think in general, you know, anything that limits engagement is bad for business. And so I don't believe they've found the right balance. Now, again, these things that they have done have been helpful. And I'm sure they prevented some engagement between adults and children. But, you know, I mean, maybe I'm asking too much

at the company, I don't think I am. And this has been going on for 15 years. And the other question is, had we not been barking about this for the last six, eight months, had these lawsuits not been filed, had these attorneys general not gotten involved, would this have happened? I mean, would they have made the advancements in security that they have made? I would argue no. And again, you're letting a company legislate its own safety.

Yeah. This is also a place where like my brain now, I want to look at everything. How do you think I feel up to my eyeballs? I can only imagine. For seven, eight months now. I can only imagine, but like. I mean, just to try to understand it, you know, and to, you know, thankfully, you know, we've got people who dig into this, who make it their business to be, you know, on the inside of it. And, you know, both in law enforcement and, and in lawmaking. And but, you know, there's, I had a conversation with the Florida Attorney General. Sharp guy. Who's that? And it's James Uthmire. Okay.

And he's not in the first episode, but he'll be in the second episode. And I did a podcast episode with him, too. People can check it out. Yeah, let's make sure we have a see with Chris's podcast down below. Let's have a see with Chris Hansen and Predators I've caught. And we have video versions on the Have a See with Chris Hansen YouTube channel. but he was very careful in the course of my interview, but indicated that there may be some information that was requested via criminal subpoena,

right? You subpoenaed these things in criminal cases that may have not been properly turned over. Now, he was very careful, so I don't want to overstep into there, but it sounded to me as somebody who's covered these cases for a very long time that there could potentially be liability there based upon the Florida Attorney General's investigation. So we'll see how that plays out. That's something to think about, huh? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm glad there's some out there who are really trying to do something

about it. And it's not just, it's Florida, it's Louisiana. It's Kentucky, Tennessee. I believe South Carolina. I think it's up to about eight different states now. It does concern me, though. Like I even remember three years ago, Sean Ryan when he was on my show in episode 148,

he was talking all about this and it's like you can't even believe this is real. But you have legislators in some other states who are trying to argue to use like terminology, like maps, like minor attractive person. Yeah, that's just, that shouldn't even be in the, in the sphere of a discussion.

There's no legitimacy to predators, pedophiles, criminals being classified as somebody who's got, you know, some sort of legitimate attraction to a minor. We create laws to protect minors from being sexually exploited. And some of the ages may seem arbitrary to predators. But the reality is we have to draw a line. And society does the best it can to protect children from being tricked into situations where they're sexually exploited. And that's why we have an age of consent. And if a child is below that age of consent, even if they say yes, they can't give permission to be sexually exploited.

All right. And that's why we have these laws. So here's a weird one that I think about a lot now because it's actually extremely realistic. So in a lot of marriages in America, there's a common age difference of two or three years. Yeah. Like there's a very common trend of, not always, but, you know, it's like common that the husband will be, you know, 35 and the wife will be 33 or 32. Now imagine they're high school sweethearts, right? the husband meets the wife when he's a junior and she's a freshman and they begin dating and they're

teenagers and they're interacting as teenagers do then one day he's a senior and he turns 18 and she's 16 what what's the well typically there's a sunset clause in these so in other words you know the age of consent is 16 if you're talking about somebody who's within two years of that if you're talking about somebody who's five years older, then it's a different set of circumstances. So that, the laws try to address that situation. You know, you bring up an interesting point. You know, there was a documentary done recently on the, looking at the whole to catch a predator take down experience. And, you know, it's one director's point of view, right? And there's some good things, some productive things out of it. And I cooperated with it. There's some things that were

left out that I thought were important. But, One of the critical aspects, the aspects that were critical of my investigations, was that in one case, there was an 18-year-old who was caught trying to hook up with a 15-year-old. And he was criminally prosecuted, but the case was sent to diversion. And the question, they interviewed the kid's mother who got busted. And she was critical of us and our investigation and claimed that he couldn't go to his high school graduation because of the embarrassment. getting caught. Well, there's a big age difference between 18 and 15, right? 18 and 15, first of all, is not 30 and 33. That's right. Right? When you were 18, did you date any 15-year-olds? No. Of course not. That wouldn't be right. You know, and it was illegal. It was against the law.

So do I feel sorry that this 18-year-old couldn't go to his graduation? I feel sorry. for a 13, 14, or 15-year-old kid who could have been sexually exploited by the 18-year-old, who then wasn't in mentally healthy shape to go to their high school graduation. So I don't have a lot of sympathy in these cases. I mean, to me, it's pretty common sense. Yes. Right. Now, what about this other one?

This is another one I think about a lot. Are you familiar with the Josh Giddy situation? Yes. That's different. Right. And here's why it's different. Here's a young man was 21. He was 19.

He was 19. Okay. So he's 19. And he's in a club, right? And he's approached by a girl. In the club. In the club. Who, if I have the story street, says that she's the same age?

I think she said she was 21. 21. Yeah. I think so. Check me on that in the comments. But yes. So what is his due diligence to suggest that a woman who has had to show a woman who has had to show ID to get into the club

was lying to him. Intent you're talking about? Yeah. I don't think he was setting out to be a predator. Agreed. I think he was a 19-year-old guy who met a very attractive young woman and just

assumed that she was of the appropriate age. Yeah. And of where this happened. Now... And she looked it too, Chris. Like... I saw the pictures. I saw the pictures. Now, I I'm not one to defend predatory activity, but I don't think in this case. And you look at the totality of the case. Young guy playing in the NBA, you shouldn't get a break for that because he's an athlete celebrity. Right. But he should also have some consideration for being targeted because of that.

And this wasn't a situation where he was, and again, my understanding is that it wasn't a situation where he was plowing somebody with drinks to take advantage of them. if anybody was taking advantage, you could argue. Yeah, there was a different power dynamic. To me, it's about the power dynamic. Who had power in that situation? Yes. And I think it was equal in that situation. And so I think he got a stern talking to,

and there were a number of conversations, and I think he'll be checking ID going forward. I think so as well. But that was like, point being, that was the rare one where I agree with you. I think so. And trust me, you're not going to get any sim. to the out of me.

Yeah. Right. That's why I asked you. So I have to, you know, you, but you bear these things in mind and you have to put yourself in that situation as a young fellow and, you know, you put your, is the father of, you know, two boys?

You put yourself in that situation and you preach to them growing up that, you know, no means no and you show respect for women. And, you know, if it's a gray area, you know, it was meant to be, it'll be a different day. But don't ever. you know, assume things. And it's important to tell young men that and boys that. But to me, that situation, again, without having a report on

or talked to anybody intimately involved in, it was exactly that. Yeah. There are one thing I've learned, though, in the studio, unfortunately, is that there are, you know, we obviously have our own problems here in America to be very clear. But, you know, there's, there are cultures around the world that openly normalized us. So not, and I'll explain, let me give an exact example. I'm sure you're familiar with it, but I have had Navy SEALs sitting in that chair, Army Rangers sitting in that chair, Delta Force guys sitting in that chair, all who served years in Afghanistan.

And they all tell the same stories. Oh, yeah. And you'll hear the same stories from people at Quantico where they host Afghans to study military techniques. these are people who are supposed to be fighting on our team, but there's a different culture in some respects. And, you know, it's, I mean, watch the movie Kite Runner. What do you do about that? I mean, it's not acceptable.

You certainly can't condone it. Of course. Do you go to war over it to try to change another culture? I don't know that that's the answer. I think you don't condone it. You don't look the other way. but you don't, you know, again, you hope that their society changes. I guess you use diplomacy and carrot and stick.

And, you know, if it's something that outrageous, you say, look, you're only getting American money if you change the policy. Right. Or you encourage people to change their behavior. And, you know, economic inducements work. And so you try to work that way. But it's, you know, we have to worry about our world first and then change culture. overseas or you change the culture overseas that affects our world. And I think these are, you know, you do these in terms of what's most critical, what's most pressing and what's most dangerous to us

at this moment. Yeah. Now, there's moments, I say this all the time, but there's moments in here in different podcasts that just stick with you, right? Where you're talking to someone and some point comes up and the way they say something to me and the gravity of the point is just like, whoa. And that's wired. into me and i had one of those with uh andy bustamante last year who used to be in cia definitely still is but i was asking him about some of the worst shit he ever saw out in the field and he talked about you know meeting with some fucking general or something in the middle of africa who had all these eight-year-old nine-year-old ten-year-old child soldiers around him who they were plying up on drugs who they were sexually abusing, all these awful things.

And then the soldiers who were watching over them had been the same child soldiers that had that happen to them. And it was just this giant cycle. And I said to him, I said, Andy, how do you fix something like that? And there was a long pause. And he sat back and he was just like, this is going to sound so bad. And I'm like, go ahead.

He goes, you just got to kill him all. You just got to get a reset. Sadly, he's probably right. It's so ingrained into the civilization that that's the way it works. That's the way it worked for them. It's the way it worked for their brothers and their parents. And, you know, I've been to Sierra Leone and I've been to that part of the world. And, you know, we didn't see, you know, wars or battles or what Andy described,

but we saw the remnants of it. We did a story on Al-Qaeda using blood diamonds to fund terrorism. And we talked to the guys who were doing the individuals. investigation and we went back to the places where it all happened and and you know you got a realistic dose of it but what he described was exactly you know you can see some of this in the movie blood diamond yeah it's very realistic and that's the the clash of of a culture that we have and it's very tribal there and in other parts of the world Afghanistan is the same way I mean It's warring tribes and factions.

And this goes back generations before America was America. So how do you change that? And it's very difficult to change. And there's a certain truth to what he says. We don't do that because we are a civilized society. We try to handle it the way we should handle it. But, you know, it's ingrained. There's no question.

Now that we see, though, that the problem, that like normal folk out here, we're seeing that the problem is wider than wherever even imagine though here at home. We're talking about other places, but here at home, we got problems like this. It's like... But at least we're arresting people. At least we're being proactive in doing these kinds of investigations. At least we're creating content like this podcast where we're discussing it.

And we're, you know, we're not just treating it as a, you know, dirty little secret. Right. You know, we're exposing it. We're discussing it. And again, my mantra, we're creating awareness in a discussion that perhaps didn't exist before. So, you know, if somebody listens to this or watches the Dangerous Games documentary on Roblox or watches them, they take down investigations, you know, they get something out of it. Yeah, I get, look, these predator investigations, it's a collision.

It's a collision where somebody gets caught committing a felony in real time. They get interrogated by me and or law enforcement. They get cuffed, arrested, sometimes tased or maced. and off they go. And there are darkly humorous elements of it that I lean into because I've learned over 20-some years that it gets people's attention. And again, if it gets people's attention, then we're learning something for us. Right.

Now, I agree with you. There's work that gets done like what you do, like what law enforcement does where justice is served. And I don't want to understate that because it does happen and we see people, whether it be the doctors or the lawyers or the truckers or whoever it is doing these things face justice and we should continue to see that but you strike me as as an optimist as well on you have to be you can you can you can do this kind of reporting and not be an optimist you couldn't do this kind of reporting without being able to escape it and ski down a mountain or to

cook a meal and forget about it for a minute or watch something silly on television or you know hang out with your kids or your wife or your you know your family and and you have to have that skill. You must have it because you know, you can't spend your life even as a young fellow in the studio. You've got to go and do something. That's right. You've got to cleanse your mind and you've got to refresh yourself and develop a recharge of energy to go out and do it a different day. I mean, we travel a lot to go do these stories. I have for many years. I've got four million miles on American Airlines and two million on Delta. I mean, I've seen the road. I've been around the world. Nice numbers.

It can wear you down if you're not fit, both mentally and physically. But you've got to be up to the challenge. Some of this stuff, people say, how do you travel and do that stuff? Getting airplanes like shaving to me. It's just something you do before you go to work. And that's it. And you can't get bogged down. And, you know, again, there were way worse places to be stranded than, you know,

Delray Beach, Florida. But we were there for that charity, Child Rescue Coalition. And, you know, it was down there a couple days. Now, there was stuff I needed to be doing back here, and I had to cram a lot of stuff, including this fine podcast with you, into fewer days than I had to do a lot of stuff. But you can't, you gotta get over it.

You can't get so bogged down in the process as you don't see the bigger picture and the importance of what it is that you do. And also, you got to realize that sometimes you have to change the way you do it, just because we did it this way for years and years, That doesn't mean we're going to do it this way forever. We have to adapt.

Look at what, you know, from the first investigation, Bethpage Long Island, we do our predator investigations a whole different way. Yes. But guess what? Everybody's getting prosecuted. 99% successfully prosecuted. Now, sometimes that may result in a plea agreement and probation. And sometimes it may mean going to prison for life, depending on the factors involved.

But it's happening. But we've had to adapt to the changing technology platforms, to the changes in the law, to our ability to set up cameras in different places. I mean, all kinds of factors involved. But you can't just say, okay, we've already, we've done it this way since 2004. This is the way we're all going to do it. That's not how life works. You've adapted, medium, styles, things you're going after.

It's great. All kinds of things. And you're right. I too, I'm an optimist, and I'm glad you are. I suspected that, and I think you make an amazing point, and that's important. The reason I'm bringing it up at this moment, though, is because I understand people out there listening right now who are feeling really cynical and let down, not because Chris Hansen has failed. Chris Hansen has done his job, but like we see powerful people. You talk about people going to jail. None of those people are going to jail. Well, you wonder why people believe in all these elitist. conspiracy theory. It's because look at what has come out in the Epstein files. That's right. Look at this. You know, and still, Les Wechner claims that didn't know that Epstein was doing anything wrong, didn't become aware of any crimes until he decided to cut him loose. You know, is that possible? You are not, as you said, you're not technically like a trained

psychiatrist and you're not a trained body language expert, but I would argue there's probably not a lot of people in the world from a body language and psychiatry expert of like predators like you who has the experience on the ground. You can see it. I can read their faces when I see him. Right. I know exactly what they're going to say. Right.

So when you see Les Wexner's five-hour deposition and you're watching him huddle in, move his arm, blink rate at fucking five thousand. What about what his attorney says? Yeah. I'm going to have him kill you? Yeah. What are your thoughts? Well, I mean, I don't have any smoking gun.

but why does a man, a billionaire, a titan of industry, sign over a power of attorney to Jeffrey Epstein? Now, that was his M.O. If I'm going to handle your finances, I need power of attorney, I need to be able to rent quickly to markets, I need to move money around, I need to do this stuff. He would say that to other clients. But, I mean, if you believe the accounts,

and I have no reason to disbelieve this particular one, I mean, Wexner essentially signed over that Upper East Side New York home. That's right. The biggest single residential piece of property on the island of Manhattan. That's right. $10. Why do you do that?

Why? Well, because the guy's got something over your head or you want him quiet or happy. Or he's making you so much money you don't care. Let's take the least objectionable reason. He's making you so much money you don't care. He's giving you tax advice. He's got shelters. All right.

You know, what happens when he's a convicted sex offender in 2008? Is that when he cut off contact or did it happen after that? That's what he alleges he cut off. That's what he alleges. But even 20-some years before that, like you said, power attorney, handing over the biggest townhouse in New York City. And what you don't know, that he's got girls and he's abusing his relationship with you to run around with these models and recruit people.

And there's a lot of suicides involved here. Yes. That French modeling agent, he was into this up to his eyeballs. Epstein? Unalived themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I believe that.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I tend to be a little less conspiratorial. I mean, I understand why people are asking questions. And I did see some documents today, you know, where prosecutors referred to it as the Epstein murder, not the Epstein. So it was at a Freudian slip, or is it more? But, you know, when you drip, drip, drip these, you know, revelations and documents, since every day there's going to be something different.

Yeah. And it also, like, I would imagine, I think you were even citing some examples, correct, me from mom, but, like, you've seen the things that happen, like, in the modeling industry and particularly, and how these young women and actually girls, like 15, 16, quite literally get traffic to men through the people that run these places, which is not to say automatically, therefore, Les Wexner is guilty because he has Victoria's Secret, but it's certainly quite a coincidence now? Yeah, but I mean, if you're going to be a guy who goes after to try to exploit those people, where are you going to go? You're going to go where there's a healthy

supply of them. Yeah. And starry-eyed girls who want to be the next Victoria's Secret supermodel and have a career after that are very vulnerable. Absolutely. It's like when you pray, that's, that's some of the lowest stuff. When you pray on someone's ultimate fears or dreams, which are the opposites technically of each other, you are, and that's what all these guys do, regardless of who they are or like when they're grooming them, that's exactly what they do to these kids. It's like, God, I was still totally stupid when I was 25.

And I just imagine like, what if I was in the wrong place, wrong time when I was like 14, you know? Well, everybody's got close calls. I mean, you know, I grew up pretty fast. I was on television at 20 years old. So, you know, I was a reporter. And we saw a lot of fun. I mean, you run around and, you know, do what young men do. But, you know, I had a pretty solid sense of responsibility pretty early on.

But you're right. I mean, 13, 14 years old, you think you're a grown man. but you're not and you're vulnerable. And I think, you know, a woman from Eastern Europe who's very attractive and has a shot is told by a French modeling agent that you're the next big thing, but this is kind of how it works

and you need to meet my friend Jeffrey. I mean, these guys are doing this all day long. It's crazy. Do things like, remember South Park made the episode in Ambla? Yeah. North American man boy love association. or something like that. Things like that really exist. Oh, Namla?

Absolutely, it exists. Absolutely. It has been around a long time. And the FBI had pretty much extinguished Namla. Big investigations until the advent of the internet. And suddenly they could communicate without being detected. But oh, that's a real thing. That's not conspiracy pizza stuff. Wow. That's what, and that's, again, this is where, I try to stay an optimist on society, but it's hard. I mean, they used to have cruises, you know. Cruises. They get a yacht and they'd have this stuff.

FBI did stings on this stuff, you know, before everything went digital. And they'd put out pamphlets and, you know, backpage ads on newspapers. And they'd put these things together and they'd sting these guys. But they'd put them out of business. almost and then suddenly they're back at it with the internet. What are the most important things? Like we were talking about the Roblox example, which is online, but if you had one, two, or three,

just main pieces of advice for parents to be on the lookout for their kid's safety when it comes to predators, what would those be? I would say that you need to be aware of what they're doing online. You need to look over their shoulder. they should not have a device in their bedroom at night, and you have to start at the very moment they have access to the Internet, whatever age that is,

by telling them there are grownups on the Internet who like to trick kids. Kids do not like to be tricked, and that'll get their attention. And then you have to ratchet this up incrementally as they get older and more curious. and they want to show their independence. And you got to say, look, you know, I heard this today, I heard that today. I remember very early on in the predator investigations, we had a dozen middle schoolers on risers. And I said, show up hands.

How many of you been approached by an adult and made you feel uncomfortable? Nine out of 12. How many of you told your kids, two? They're little down. Yeah, their parents. And I said, why? Well, we were afraid they're going to take the computer away, the internet away. And that was the most telling thing I've ever heard.

I try to be careful. I always say this, but a common phrase people will throw around is, if I were blank, then I would blank about something very serious. And I don't know that you fully know that about most things until you actually experience those things. But one thing I think about being a future parent that I feel very strongly about is something you kind of cited earlier, which is a more in an even more stereotypical example, which is like if my kid were at a party when they're 16 or 17, they were a little drunk

and something was wrong. I'll come get you. And I'm not going to, you're not punished. Right. And there's that trust there. I've had that speech when my kids were in that age group. Right. I think you make an amazing point that there needs to be parents should feel comfortable without,

you know, pushing that boundary too far. if you know what I mean, like having repeat offenses and shit like that. But I think parents should be comfortable to be able to have that conversation about online stuff too. Without the kid. Look, stuff's going to happen. Yeah. Right. This is the nature of the internet. Stuff will, if you're on the internet long enough, something will happen. That's right. But the reason I'm going to allow you to stay on the internet is that if something does happen, you come to me and tell me about it. I'm not going to beat you up. We'll get a solution together.

You know, I took my dad's advice many years ago. You know, your job is not to be your kid's friend. It's to be their father. And so you're going to make decisions that are unpopular. They're going to stomp off to their room. They're going to call you names. They're going to be an argument. Bad language is going to be used.

But you've got to stay calm. The trick to being a parent is to get your kids to do what you know is right for them, what you want them to do and make them think it's their idea. That's the, that's the deal. That's all it is. Yeah. That's all it is. And if you can do that, you win.

Good advice. Yeah. What were your favorite stories you worked on before you became Chris Hansen to catch a predator? You know, there's so many, and back in those days, we were allowed to travel internationally and do things, but probably the most impactful. story, I think, was when we teamed with an NGO and went to Cambodia with the International Justice Mission, IJM. And they were investigating Americans going over to Cambodia and other places to commit sex tourism with underage kids. And we infiltrated a brothel in SveiPoc, about 11

kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. And our producer and our hidden camera guys posed as sex tourists. We went in there and set up a party and we had local authorities as part of it and we put this together and we rescued about 37 girls. Whoa. And in the course of the investigation, we caught an American doctor over there who I later confronted in Guam in a parking structure where he was in, he would travel as an anesthesiologist, right? So, you know, we pick him off and we caught him like we had him on camera talking about. He thought he was on a tourism show, and he was talking about how much he likes him over there.

Then we had him on hidden camera talking about the young girls. And then I lowered the boom on him in a parking garage in Guam and just tore him from year to year. Did he get prosecuted? He did not, shockingly. But in that story, two important things happened. A lot of important things happened. But two detectives in Vancouver, Canada,

were watching the story when it aired. first time on Dateline. And they recognized the background in the brothel. And they said, you know what? And they call each other, watching it separately. They said, this looks like the background on the videotape we took from the guy we arrested for beating up a sex worker. Follow this now. They look at it. They go over to that brothel. They match it. And it turns out the guy they arrested in Vancouver, British Columbia for beating up a sex worker had also been to that same brothel in Svapak. And they arrested him and he took a seven-year plea for sex tourism. And then we went back four years later to check on the girls who were rescued.

And eight or ten of them were in a bridge school. And I mean, they looked like a million bucks. They've been in the school addresses, they go to school every day. And I'm sure there was long-term dance. and I, you know, interviewed them. And, of course, there was a translator involved. My commier is not, you know, fluent. And so we finished up the interview and they said, well, when you're leaving,

going back to America, I said, well, tomorrow or day after tomorrow. And they said, can we go to the airport with you to say goodbye? I said, absolutely. It's fine with the people here at the British school. It's fine by me. So now they, you know, do their minds really understand who I am or what I did or all they know is there in a better place and I had this tall America? had something to do with it, right?

I'm not looking to take credit for it, but if, you know, they want to go to the airport, if the school folks say it's okay, it's okay with me. And the guy pulls me aside, he said, well, it has more to do with the fact that the only dairy queen in the entire country of Cambodia is at the airport. I said, no ego problems there. Sent them, NBC can pay for, you know, eight banana splits. So we go to, and we're filming this, right? Because it's part of the deal.

We've gone back and how are these girls? And we're eating the banana splits and we're communicating as best as we can and because time to say goodbye. And we're doing the whole, you know, Asian goodbye thing and honoring each other. And that the Panopan Airport has a two-story glass wall when you go into check in and then go through security. And so they follow me. And they've got their hand.

I say goodbye, goodbye. It said goodbye a hundred times, right? So now they've got their hands against the glass, you know, weeping. And I go back and put my hands against the glass. Now I'm weeping. The cameraman who's been with me in the most horrible places in the world is weeping. The producer's weeping and everybody's weeping and we leave. And we filmed about that and we put it in the story.

It was quite powerful. But, you know, those are things, things like that, you know. And there's some fun stories along the way too. I mean, there's some crazy things that happen. I mean, after the Oklahoma City bombing, we were on the trail of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols and Jondo number two. We thought that was a thing. And there was a mysterious.

figure named Andreas Strasmeier, who was associated with all these people. And he was on the gun show circuit. And he had gone back to Berlin. And everybody wanted to find this guy. And I got a tip. And I went in to talk to our executive producer at the time. And I said, look, I can't be certain, but I think I know where this guy is. He said, well, what are the odds?

I said, I think it's 60% we find him. He goes, you got four days. So a producer and I get on a plane, we fly to Berlin. Now we got four days in Germany to find this guy. On day one, we find him at 9.15 in the morning. It gives us a 30-minute interview. We get video of them on the subway in Berlin, and we're done. So now we've got three days to go scorer on and carry out and drink beer in Berlin.

And we had a ball. But, you know, it's an amazing, it's an amazing business to be in. And it's been an amazing time to experience. experience it at all. You know, I've gotten to go to places I never dreamed of going and exposed things I never knew existed and to, you know, tell that story and to work with amazing people at NBC and in between and now, you know, and to have, you know, a situation where we have true glue where we own the content, we own the distribution of the content. We have a, you know, a bit of a relationship with Fox News and the podcast are on the Fox platform. And so it's life is great. You know, we've got it's, it's very busy. but it's very fulfilling and you know I derive a great deal of satisfaction and to have some control over the editorial part

of it too and in the business part of it you know and I'm not you know I'm not the CFO I'm not the CEO I'm partner part owner I'm the brand I'm the brand but that's my job

I don't need to do the rest of the stuff I've got people who do that for me and so I get to be the brand and go out and do the stuff so it's good it's very fulfilling. When you were doing cases like that, though, where you're tracking like ongoing investigations into crime, which obviously you still do today, but I'm saying, you know, now you work directly with law enforcement when you do this stuff. But back then, how did you handle a situation where you as a journalist were actually getting somewhere in the investigation and getting to like a key

component of it and then having to make the choice as to whether or not to loop in law enforcement on it or have you go hit it first? Well, I think you make those decisions on a case-by-case basis. But you have to put justice and a criminal prosecution ahead of, you know, there are ways to do it simultaneously. I mean, there's always a way to figure it out so that you get what you need and law enforcement gets what it needs. I've never been in a situation where I couldn't figure it out.

Now, I've been in a situation where unknowingly I've been ahead of law enforcement. What was that? It's happened many times, but you either slow down and let them catch up or you help them with what you found. You know, so a bad guy goes to jail. But, you know, this is the stuff they don't teach in journalism school. This is the stuff you have to figure out, you know, in the process of it. You know, I remember being a reporter in Detroit and the police chief was on trial for

corruption. And I remember an investigator telling me that somebody had come over to do some work on his kitchen and a tinfoil brick tinfoil cover. brick of money fell out of the ceiling. And she said, oh, he found my poker money. Well, there's money that was stolen from the department. And so I'm in the elevator with the assistant U.S. attorney who's prosecuting the case before the trial and I tell the story.

And he kind of looks weird. And just kind of shows off after the trial. They convict him. And he said, I got to tell you something. He goes, I did not know about that story until you told me in the elevator. I said, you're fucking kidding me. He says, well, no, we figured it out. I would have found out.

But so here I am as a reporter. knowing about the cash of cash in the kitchen of the former police chief of the city of Detroit. And the guy who's prosecuting the case wasn't aware of it. So, you know, you figure stuff out along the way. Some poor desk jockey got chewed the fuck out right after that for sure. Were you with NBC working out of New York when 9-11 happened? Yes, I was with NBC. I left Detroit to go to NBC in 1993.

three. So, but you were here in New York? Well, I wasn't in New York. I was actually in Toronto on an unrelated story. And I was watching it was actually, it was a story on a plane that made a dead stick landing on the island of Terser.

This A320 or A321 Airbus was flying from Toronto to Portugal, to Lisbon, and there was a mechanical issue and it was bleeding fuel and the pilots didn't figure it out and they just thought they had any balance. So they opened the valve to put fuel in the other tank and it all let out. And they ran out of fuel at 30,000

feet. And so this pilot was able to circle the plane and they have a device that pops out that generates power. He's able to circle the plane and navigate. And without power for 30 minutes, make a dead stick landing at an Air Force base, a joint use air force base on the island of Tresera, which is in the Azores. So we're in the middle of doing that story, which is the kind of story we do occasionally for a dateline. And we'd done the interviews and some of the guys went out for a few pops at night and I stayed in for whatever reason and was up early, went for a run and all dressed up and ready to go. And I'm watching the television monitor in the hotel room and there's smoke coming out of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. I call the office. I said, Dave,

what's going on? We think a pilot hit a heart attack and crashed into the building and standby. But we think you're just going to go on to Colorado to work on the next story. I said, all right, well, let me know. Second tower gets hit. And I call back and said, I'm on my way. So I roused everybody up. We get to the airport and they're canceling flights. I said, just get a rental car to the producer.

Just go get a Hertz car. And we're in Toronto. So I said, fine. I said, we're headed south. Let me know what's going on. So we're monitoring this the whole way. I'm calling sources and you try to get information. And we get to the bridge to go into Buffalo.

And I said, look, we can either go to Boston or we can go to New York. He said, we got a ton of people in New York. Boston's where two of the planes came from. You know, we need information from there. So go there. So we went there because that's where Mohammed Atta and his crew got on the plane from Portland, Maine. They changed planes to Boston. And Boston at the time had a notoriously shoddy security setup.

And they exploited it in every possible way. So we reported from Boston for two days and jumped on a train, reported from New York and Washington for the rest of it. But we're very involved in it. I mean, it was. Go to ground zero at the time? I had, I did not at the time because it was, you know, there were people down there and they didn't need any more people down there. I mean, we were doing stories on the big picture stuff. There's no reason for me to be there. We had, you know, other reporters were there day to day. You know, you could go up to the roof at 30 Rock and do your standup and see it right in the background still smoking. And, but we would, you know, do, you know, the money trail and how all this other stuff worked and, you know, backgrounds and all the hijackers and how they solved the case. You know, we're doing long, you know, we're doing long. form versions for Dateline, for the network, really, because it was in situations like that, you know, Dateline served as the long-form producers in the stories. It's amazing that all these years later, with something that we all watch happen live as well.

Yeah. It was this unforgettable. I was a very little kid, but I remember it vividly. It's this unforgettable image. Well, my kids were living in Connecticut at the time, and my kids could go down to the end of the point and look, 38 miles across and see the smoke come up. And everybody knew somebody who was killed. That's right. But it's amazing that all these years later,

we still don't have so many answers about it. And most importantly, like the families who lost people, still even through court, haven't been able to get answers to things. Well, I think, you know, we did a lot of reporting on that. You know, what did the CIA know, what was shared with the FBI? Why didn't we know that these guys met in Kuala Lumpur?

And then similar guys showed up in meetings in San Diego taking flight lessons and who was the 20th hijacker. And, you know, those are all the stories we did in the aftermath of it. And we did some very good reporting there. But, you know, it's a different world now. We have different cooperation, different level of intelligence. And I hope we don't backslide into where we were. Right. Now you got this two-part documentary coming out on Roblox. Yes. So it's coming out bi-weekly. Is that right? It's so, yes, so the first episode, which is an hour and a very compelling hour, if I do say so myself, the editors did a phenomenal job on it. I can't take credit for that, but I did all the interviews.

That is out now on TrueBlue. Watch TrueBlue.com for details. That's my streaming crime network. And then in two weeks time, the second part of right when this is coming out. So probably right about the time this air is. Part two will be out. and that's another hour. And then my prediction is that so much will come out of both of them

that that'll probably generate a third hour. Great. Okay, because that was going to be my next question. I would imagine this is an investigation you're going to continue. Yeah, we're staying on it. I mean, look, this is how I feel about this investigation. This Roblox story is like to catch a predator, 2006. Same DNA, different battlefield.

That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Would you be open to it, let's say these two come out and obviously it's like, well, Chris Hansen really went in on Roblox and there's righteous public anger from it. Would you be open to now if Roblox reapproats to- Absolutely. I told them in the email, it was back and forth. I said, you know, they clearly thought that this was going to be an unfair project for them because of who we interviewed. They don't like Schlep. They don't like the Attorney General in Louisiana.

And I said, well, the best way to deal with that is to come on and talk. They said, no, we're not going to do that. So I said, if you change your mind, I will accommodate. If they call me tomorrow and said, we want to be interviewed. I'll be on a plane to Sam at town. All right, good. Give them a call. Yeah.

They know that. Well, now they definitely know. We got her on the record. But this has been awesome, man. Thank you so much for fitting me in. It was fantastic. and great experience, and I appreciate the long-form conversation, and appreciate everything you do. Well, I'd love to do it again at some point. Yeah, absolutely. I'm in work. All right. Thanks so much.

Everybody else, make sure you go check out Chris's documentary on Roblox. That's going to be linked down below. We'll also link your podcast and everything as well. Make sure we have everything in there. But that said, give us talk, get back to me. Peace. What's up, guys? Thanks so much for watching the video. If you have not subscribed, please hit that subscribe button before you leave, as well as leaving the like on the video. It's a huge huge help. You can join my Patreon via the link in the description, and you can also join my clipping community via the Discord link down below. See you for the next episode.