Part 2 of a 3 part series.
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He used to be a hero, but now he exploits the abuse of children for views and money. In the 80s and 90s, he was a hard-hitting journalist, tackling some incredibly important stories that shed light on issues like slave labor, the crack cocaine epidemic, and child trafficking. In the early 2000s he was host of the insanely popular TV show, To Catch a Predator. For a while, Chris Hansen was a legitimate celebrity, probably the most famous of any reporter, and beloved by all as a literal hero doing a great public service. However, somewhere along the way he lost sight of the altruistic nature of what he was doing, and now he spends his days shamelessly exploiting underage abuse victims for YouTube views and a quick buck. In part 2 of Deep Cuts’ exploration of Hansen, we explore the rise and fall of To Catch a Predator, and the weird career path Hansen took afterwards.
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Transcript
(0s):
Some cars are comfy on the inside, but don’t have power on the outside. And some cars have the horsepower, but none of the comfort I used to think there weren’t any cars that were the total package, but that all changed. When I got my Honda SUV, it’s rugged and sophisticated. And right now Honda has deals on the entire Honda SUV lineup, CRV, HRV pilot passport, you name it. So if you’re looking for a car, that’s the total package. The only place you’ll find it is that your local Honda dealer hurry before they’re all gone. Some cars are comfy on the inside, but don’t have power on the outside. And some cars have the horsepower, but none of the comfort I used to think there weren’t any cars that were the total package, but that all changed.
(41s):
When I got my Honda SUV, it’s rugged and sophisticated. And right now Honda has deals on the entire Honda SUV lineup, CRV, HRV pilot passport, you name it. So if you’re looking for a car, that’s the total package. The only place you’ll find it is that your local Honda dealer hurry before they’re all gone. Welcome to true crime by Indy drop-in each week, we feature an episode from the best independent creators hit subscribe for more great, true crime content. If you would like to help indie drop-in support indie creators, you can buy us a coffee. Just go to buy me a coffee.com forward slash indie drop-in or click the link in the show notes below today’s episode is from deep cuts.
(1m 26s):
Don’t forget to check out the show notes for links to subscribe and follow on social media. Enjoy the show Listener warning. On this episode, we deal with subjects related to child abuse and trafficking, and we had to touch on these topics in a few places. Listener discretion is advised. I’m Dave baker And I’m Andrew Price. And I’m Chris Hansen. And welcome to deep cuts the podcast where we pick a topic and walk you through the ins outs in the nitty gritty. So then you could appear like an interesting and idiosyncratic person and your next forced social function. Today’s topic is Chris Hanson. Part two, who is Chris Hanson.
(2m 7s):
He’s an award winning journalist, but a storied career that dates back decades and involves many impressive feats of investigative reporting. Previously on deep cuts, he discussed the life and early career of Hanson from his boyhood days, watching the news coverage of Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance to getting a job as a reporter before even graduating college, to helping bust an underground child trafficking ring in Cambodia. We also delved into the dubious origins of the online predator watchdog group, perverted justice, and finally, when the two cross paths to great, the legendary mega popular Dateline NBC TV show to catch a predator. You know the show, you may love the show, but you may not know how it all ended in bloodshed.
(3m 15s):
It’s a Dateline hidden camera investigation. No parent will want her miss this man could be your name. So I’m going to tell you, I’m Chris Hanson with Dateline NBC doing A story. Now you’re free to walk out of this house right now, but if there’s anything else you want to say, not a good time to Speak also to the astonishment of the local district attorney, the Murphy police let people hired by Dateline actually set up and run the state, the police department, the professionals worn in control of the entire operation. They weren’t calling the shots somebody else was. I know you’re old.
(3m 56s):
When we walk up to me and get me my face and tell me I’m getting kidding, then we have a problem. So I’ll be right back. You spend my fast. It was a devastating tragedy, a shock to all of us. When the 56 year old, a man who has prostituted criminals for more than two decades shot himself three months. News eight has been reporting on questions about the TV show to catch a predator. And it staying in Murphy, Texas. Now NBC is being sued for 100, $5 million for its role in the show. The entertainment industry cannot act as police judge, jury executioner, and for a corporation like NBC ratings and money man alleges the network puts its profits ahead of trapping sexual predators that the show unethically obtained confidential data from local law enforcement officials, that it fabricates evidence and ultimately commits bribery.
(4m 53s):
I have no problem. And I’m sure the nation should have no problem with camera’s standing behind the police and law enforcement doing their job. Everyone should have a problem with the cameras in front of the police as was he, it was a made for TV sexting that split Murphy, Texas, and 2 24 men were arrested. But news eight is learned. None of them will be prosecuted. The way the cases were put together was in question, did they, they didn’t violate any laws. If they had gone to their home, it would have been a little different, but the fact that there was a constitutional right to expose these individuals, the fact that he was in fact, doing this online chatting, it’s not like he’s completely innocent. And he’s sort of like sitting in his room and he’s just surfing the net.
(5m 34s):
He was thinking that he was chatting with the third trip and he got caught because of the national Inquirer had a sting operation on him. So they had a hidden cameras following him around and they caught a footage of him going to her apartment. You know, a little frisky, frisky, a little dinner dinner, I’m Chris Hanson, and you are going to help me catch Predators again, go ahead, have a seat right over there. This will just take a few minutes. Does this guy Look familiar? Well, former host of the TV show to catch a predator. Chris Hanson was arrested Monday. One Of the streamers who I see a lot, and I get a lot of people saying not to look into them.
(6m 15s):
You ought to look into them and is this nice? There are multiple, multiple allegations, no criminal charges. We should be very clear that she and his partner and boom, the underage girls, I’m calling back and recording some people who showed up at my house trespassing and they’re online Act three, creating news and Dateline and perverted justice carried out the first sting operation that would constitute the very first episode of to catch a predator.
(6m 57s):
Hanson was terrified that nobody would show up to the house that he had put his entire career on the line using his personal credibility and reputation to convince NBC, to bankroll a kind of ethically ambiguous endeavor. And we’d wind up like his contemporary for all the Rivera. When he had opened Al Capone’s vault, empty handed, humiliated and discredited, they busted 18 predators. The format for it to catch a predator or tea cap was masterfully. Simple. Perverted justice would engage in decoy chats with as many online predators. They could find dozens of decoys from across the country were hooking predators and they all set up a meet time for the predator to meet up with what they thought were underage kids.
(7m 39s):
As young as 13 at the decoy house that had been rented by NBC. The predators were all slotted at different times of the day. They’d show up to hang out with a minor. A young looking actor would answer the door, invite them in, make small talk for a few minutes, everything would be caught on hidden cameras from several angles. Chris Hanson would appear from behind a curtain or doorway issue. His soon to be legendary catchphrase, have a seat right over there and proceed to have one of the most awkward and disgusting interviews in the history of the world. And it went perfectly. Hanson has said that he always suffered from something akin to stage fright and extreme anxiety in the moments leading up to his confrontation. But you can’t tell it all. When you see the commanding charismatic almost paternal force of energy storm into the room and take the predator to task.
(8m 22s):
The episode was a smash success. People across the country ate it like crack covered hotcakes. It was the perfect storm for prime time news television, after all, literally who doesn’t hate child predators. It’s like the platonic ideal of capturing all four quadrants of viewer demographics. As you watch, you’re shocked and disgusted by the things the predators are saying in the chat log filled with hatred at the mere sight of them as they approach the house and start flirting with what they think is a 14 year old girl. And all of your hatred and disgust is immediately gratified as you watch them being exposed to had a cherry on the way that the predators attempt to rationalize, explain away or deny the things they’ve been caught doing is usually always hilarious.
(9m 2s):
It’s literally the perfect content for a sensational age of news consumption, obsessed with salacious stories. That Pierce are very emotional core. And yeah, I can’t, I can’t really stress that enough. There are some major ethical questions about the, the mere enjoyment of the show by, you know, you know, a television audience, but all those things aside, which we will talk about, I literally don’t think that there is a better show to get ratings. It’s like it appeals to literally everybody, unless, except for people who just don’t want to watch this because it’s disgusting to them and they, they don’t find entertainment value from it because it’s just so gross, which is kind of how I feel it appeals to everybody, even though everybody in the world right now thinks that we are very divided on this.
(9m 52s):
We aren’t actually divided on this at all. Everybody hates the idea of child predators. It’s like the one thing that everybody can agree On. Literally the only thing left, yes, everyone can agree on The format of the show is so effortlessly perfect in just hooking you and keeping you hooked because the issue with, you know, something like the, you know, the, the Cambodia special is that it’s just, punishingly sad and disgusting. There’s a kind of a resolution at the end where they busted up, but you have to sit through this hour long. Abjectly sad documentary about this horrible thing happening in the world, but that’s kind of hard to watch. It’s hard. It’s hard to have the emotional endurance to sit there and see such terrible, disgusting, inhumane things happening in the world.
(10m 40s):
The beauty of the format of, of T cap is you see a little bit of that. You, you see enough of it to get angry all the while, as they’re kind of teasing out these chat logs that the people are having with the decoys, they’re also showing you like the house being set up and everybody getting into place and Hanson kind of like teasing, what’s going to happen. And so it’s like teasing that out as well. It’s kind of staggering them, your anger and your disgust as being ratcheted up. But you’re also like it’s a building to something and it’s getting to something else and you’re like waiting for it. And then, you know, at the perfect moment, you’re disgusting. Your anger is immediately gratified because they get right to it. Once the guy gets to the house, they don’t spend a bunch of time having him talk to the actor.
(11m 26s):
And I think smartly, they don’t try to get a situation where they get him trying to actually do something physical on camera, which I think would probably number one, you know, that, that puts an actor in danger. And number two, I think that that would be too far for the audience. Number one, to be sitting there and sort of swarming under this really uncomfortable scene, you know, nobody wants to see an attempted sexual assault on camera. They don’t even bother with that. They just get right to it. The, the actor literally has like a minute of small talk with the, with the person when once the person comes inside. They’ll, they’re literally talk for like a minute before Chris Hanson comes out.
(12m 7s):
And it’s the perfect time because you’re, you’ve, you’ve gotten all this disgust and all this anger ratcheted up from the chat logs, just the mere fact that he’s there and just looking at him and how old he is and the, let them see a couple of weird creepy things. And then Hanson comes out and the tables are turned. And then it’s just like a nationally televised cathartic act of Shodan Freud, where you’re just watching this guy’s life being destroyed and watching him squirm and watching him realize his life is over, you know, right in front of your eyes, from an entertainment value, from a cynical entertainment value. It’s, it’s like the perfect show that has ever been conceived basically.
(12m 49s):
And also, you know, if you’re thinking about it in callous, almost like war games, terminology, it’s a no win scenario for the person who shows up. Like there’s no way to position it as anything other than exactly what it is. And we, the audience know that. And so anything that this person says any lie or attempted, you know, it’s a very black and white thing. And also they have records of everything. So it’s not a, it’s not any sort of conversation where you, the viewer are an impartial judge of is this person is guilty or not. Like the show itself is the judge, jury and executioner.
(13m 30s):
And now you’re almost, it’s almost like watching an execution in some ways. It’s like, it’s like a shooting fish in a barrel for the lack of a better term. It’s this, it’s this weird. Like we, as a culture are collectively emotionally stoning someone, which is really dumb. Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It’s what the Jerry album confrontation was except the missing component of that. Because, you know, he confronts him, you see the sort of life drain from his face. You see the realization that he’s been exposed for this thing, and that his life is over all, just play out in real time. And you see, and you see all these desperate excuses and just him, you know, improving through trying to rationalize and, and, and obvious skates.
(14m 18s):
I go There every night. I go there all the time. That does not mean that I frequent with the child prostitutes that are in that place. Even though I am saying that I go there every night. Yeah. And it’s a, it’s, it’s this, it’s this, it’s this dynamic where, you know, he knows that, you know, that what he’s saying is total bullshit. And, you know, the, he knows that, you know, that what he’s saying is told total bullshit. So it’s this combination of just the shame and embarrassment and knowledge that you’re fucked. But the missing component was that at the end of it, he walked, he walked into his building and never saw repercussions from it.
(14m 58s):
Whereas this, like you said, it’s shooting fish in a barrel. It’s the equivalent of walking. Somebody like walk into like a gas chamber and just go to their execution and getting to watch it in real time, which is, you know, something that happens, peop the families of victims who are murdered by somebody in, in certain states, whenever, you know, the death penalty is legal and they’re put to death, you can actually go and watch it happen. And you can sit in a room and see it happen through a window. Yeah. In some ways it’s kind of, if the ultimate us versus them test, cause you know, American American culture loves to paint other people as the villains. And it loves to divide people that, you know, we’re, we’re a very, we’re a very by we’re we’re, we’re, it’s, it’s our culture, culture, binary culture.
(15m 46s):
Our culture is very binary. You know, we have cats, we have cat people and dog people. We have Republicans and Democrats, we have, you know, all of these made up things. Yeah. Bacon And legs. We have, we have, we have Colombians and fucking Norbit. Yeah, exactly. The Colombians versus the morbidity ones, which we all, we all know who what’s the correct one there, but you know what I’m saying? Like there, we don’t, we don’t have any gray area here. We love to say we have the moral high ground. Those people are awful regardless of the actual intricacies or nuances because life isn’t black and white life is always gray. I mean, it sucks. I want life to be black and white and make everything a lot easier, but it’s not. And this is the combination of the fact that child abuse is like the only thing that everyone can agree on.
(16m 34s):
And the specific way that it is framed, we, the audience are the us, this individual is them. And we are all going to get off on, watching them get fucked. And every everybody’s done something wrong. Everybody’s broken the law in some way. Everybody’s made a transgression that they wish they hadn’t done or said something stupid. But when it’s ratcheted up to this level, any sort of human empathy just goes out the door. I’m not saying it’s a good or bad thing. That’s just, I mean, I think it is a bad thing. I mean, everyone should have human empathy regardless of the crimes at hand, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I think that because there are people committing genocide and fucking female circumcision and all these awful, just morally repugnant things that I just don’t know.
(17m 22s):
If you commit those acts, you deserve empathy. I don’t, I don’t believe in the death penalty. Let’s just put it that way. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but this show distills that argument down to just a one and a zero. And it is, there is no gray area. And that, that is the brilliance. The, like you said, the cynical brilliance of to catch a predator is that it allows for no room for nuance at all, which isn’t life. If life is in life is nuanced and complex and gray and shitty and fucked up and sloppy. But that’s why this show succeeded is because it removed that the reality and presented the artifice of look at this gleaming cube of fuck this guy.
(18m 5s):
Yeah. And as it’s going to sort of play out over, you know, the next several years in the next, you know, chunk of this episode that gave it this amazing moral high ground, where even as those complexities and those nuances were attempting to be discussed at a national level, those nuances really never had room to exist or be considered or sort of taken seriously because any discussion about any nuance put you in a position of arguing that it was not objectively good to lore these child online predators to be caught and arrested. And it’s, it’s hard to argue against that as I’ll kind of reiterate several times in different ways to sort of hammer that point home, it creates this confliction inside of yourself where you want to address the complications and the nuance of it.
(18m 60s):
But you also kind of keep turning over in your mind over and over again of like, yeah, but then there’s this, but no, but they’re they’re pedophiles, but I guess there’s this, but no they’re pedophiles. Fuck that. They’re they’re terrible. But also, maybe this is kind of weird, but no they’re fucking pedophiles. Like it just, even within your own mind, you can’t reconcile it, let alone, can you convince somebody who is so adamantly diametrically opposed to you on this? Like th th there are people who there is no room for nuance at all. If you are a pedophile, you should be murdered. And if the government isn’t going to do it, then we should do it. We, you know, you, you see people talking about all the time, how they would want to be vigilantes going around, finding people on sex, offender, registries, and murdering them in their homes.
(19m 49s):
And you have people that actually have done that. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, I do not support visual any justice, but I, I can’t really firmly get behind saying that that’s wrong because of the target of it. But also I can say that because I F I really don’t believe in vigilante justice. So you, you just keep turning over and over your mind, it’s a paradox that you can’t reconcile. Well, especially With when it’s, you know, a piece of entertainment, that’s televised, it brings up all these ethical questions like due process and the right to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure and the right to be presumed innocent until you’re proven guilty.
(20m 30s):
Where when, when people’s crimes are turned into entertainment, and you’re getting this really gray area where it’s like, we all saw the process that ABC NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox news, whoever the, whatever the big company is, we all saw the process that they showed us. That doesn’t mean that we actually saw what happened as someone who’s worked on multiple TV shows. Editing is a hell of a thing, especially now that deep fakes exist and all of these weird ways of compositing footage and George Lucas fucking digitally soldering two takes together today.
(21m 13s):
Right now, you and I have access to the technology where we could 100% frame someone for being a pedophile right now, with technology that we have in our homes, we could deep, fake someone’s face onto an actor. We could show them going into a house. We could present a very compelling case that they were a pedophile. And then what does that mean? It goes viral on the internet. And now these, this motherfucker is getting like killed in the street by a roving gangs, a vigilante parents who were like, not my kid. And I understand the root emotion of that. I’m just saying I’m not even advocating for not watching to catch a predator.
(21m 54s):
I’m, I’m just saying that it brings up hypothetical, moral quandaries that people like to be, like you said, if they’re pre they’re pedophiles, who gives a shit. Yeah. But come on, man. Haven’t you ever seen any of these shows like about deconstructing, how people get at yo re framed on death row and like horrible, horrible corrupt institutions. For some reason, there’s one person who has a little bit of power in one of these institutions. And all of a sudden this person’s on death row for something they didn’t commit like that could so easily happen in a system like a media company where there’s less checks and balances than there are in the already crazy corrupt police systems.
(22m 37s):
And that, and that is happening already. This is a tiny shred of a glimpse of, you know, an episode that is going to be done, definitely going to be done. It’s going to happen. It’s going to be fucking insane, but that, that is happening and doing, you know, the deep fake thing is terrifyingly in my mind and inevitable next step of this, but it’s already, essentially happening right now. People are creating memes. And when I say meme, I just mean a, an image that is being shared on the internet that, you know, deliver some kind of information, whether it’s a joke or a sort of emotional statement or literal information, and people are just sharing memes that just say, oh, Tom Hanks and Jim Carey and James Gunn and Barack Obama and Ben Affleck, and all of these other politicians and celebrities who coincidentally have all had outspoken, liberal beliefs and have served as the sort of mouthpieces for liberal politics on social media.
(23m 52s):
Look at this. They were all on the Epstein flight logs. They’ve all, they’ve their names are all on the, on the, on the leaked flight manifest of all of the passengers who have flown on Epstein’s private jets since 1992. And on the strength of these, these memes, there are millions of people, literally millions. It’s not a couple of people. There are millions of people who a hundred percent think that Tom Hanks is a pedophile that think that Jim carries a pedophile that think that these people, and it’s just a hundred percent not true. A hundred percent. We have the Epstein flight manifest it’s available.
(24m 34s):
It was leaked to the public. The reason why we know about it, the reason why we have it, the reason why anybody has seen it is because it was, it was obtained and leaked to the public by Gawker. And you can read that document. It’s 200 pages long. I have read it, Tom Hanks. His name is not on it. Jim Carrie’s name is not on it. If you’ve seen a meme purporting that Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey and Barack Obama and all these other names were found on the Epstein flight manifests, it’s fake, but people 150000000% believe that it’s true because they saw a meme because human beings, as we talked about on the George Zimmerman episode, they just are not equipped to be discerning like that.
(25m 19s):
Whenever they’re being barraged with information 24 hours a day, your, your, your, your brain in an act of self protection of being overwhelmed with more information than it can consume favors anything that confirms your narrow bias perspective of things. It’s like, oh, that thing is something I already kind of think, oh yeah, that looks good. I don’t know what the fuck that is. So get that out of here. I don’t know what that is. I don’t want to read that. I don’t know what that means. I don’t want to, I’m not even going to go down that rabbit hole that though I already kind of thought that, so yeah, that put that in here, fit that into here that get it out of here. Don’t want it, give me the gift receipt, get it out of here.
(25m 59s):
And that’s what everybody’s doing on a daily basis. That’s the worst case scenario of this conversation we’re having, which is kind of already happening right now. It goes back into what I was talking about in the very beginning of episode one, the, the intro talking about altruism and the media’s involvement with social justice and things like that is with that in mind, with that knowledge, that number one human beings can be so easily manipulated. Number two, that the media or people utilizing media can so easily falsify things and so easily manipulate. How can you trust these things as arbiters of justice? The show was immediately greenlit for a second episode based on massively successful ratings, but wasn’t without criticism.
(26m 45s):
The primary two being what was being done was legal entrapment and not ultimately going to be admissible in a court of law to actually prosecute anybody. And that there was no law enforcement involved actually arrest the predators. Yes. In the first two episodes of T capital cops were not involved much like the old days of the perverted justice humor site predators were exposed, grilled, humiliated, and then free to leave back to their lives without repercussions. All for entertainment. Funnier was accustomed to this kind of criticism at a smaller scale though. So he was immediately prepared to respond. Well, I, I strongly disagree with it. It leans more towards perverted than it does justice. They’re not cooperating with police at all. And you know, to me, that kind of gives us a sense of entertainment.
(27m 27s):
Anybody that finds entertainment value in exploiting children, I have a problem with it, Xavier. How do you respond? Julie Posey seems to be the only person on the planet. Who’s finding entertainment value from our website. We have assisted in 25 arrests, six convictions. In fact, in the last five weeks, we’ve had 11 arrests, indictments or convictions. If you go by the full year with that ratio, we will have more arrests, indictments and convictions than Julie Posey did in seven years. Why? Because we have told the public, we’ve told you the viewing audience that you have a role.
(28m 9s):
We’re not like Julie Posey who tries to be the cyber crime fighter, doing it all herself. We say to you, the public, you can help and you can help fight this epidemic, man. And that is, That is so Orwellian. That is so like you, the public can stand up and do something. You, my brother is collectively can save the children by shaming, everyone and spying on everyone. Yeah. Would you like to know more? Yeah. And it’s also that narrative is you can see that in that narrative that has been codified because we’re gonna talk about this later on. Cause it’s gonna, it’s gonna come into play with Chris Hanson and some of the stuff that he does, but right now we’ll kind of apply to this.
(28m 51s):
And we’ll say that what he’s doing here is he is utilizing a psychological tactic, which is called amplifying and deflecting, which is when you choose the most extreme over the top version of an argument and you, you amplify that. So you have all these criticisms coming at you, you hand pick the most absurd of them and you amplify it. And then you deconstruct that to deflect criticism, basically by omission of anything other than what you’ve crafted to be the focus, what he’s doing here. You know, he, he responds to this criticism by basically being like, well, we’re doing this and we’re doing this, but if those audience members, and if that television audience that was watching this interview or this, this show, if they were given insight into any of the information that we covered on the last episode about perverted justice, in any of the backstory behind them, it’s inarguable that they were a humor website that was doing it for entertainment value.
(29m 49s):
It’s just in arguable. They a hundred percent were. But at the same time, he sort of used that as kind of a trap because this other person, she basically says that she says like, you know, I have a problem with this because they’re pretty much doing this for as some kind of weird sick entertainment. They’re not, it’s not really about stopping child predators or, or helping children. They just think it’s funny. And they, and their, their audience gets off on this weird, like group cathartic hatred of something that they can all collectively agree that they’re superior to. And she says this, but then he can very easily turn that around on her by being like, huh, that’s weird that you think it’s fun, entertaining, strange.
(30m 31s):
I think she’s the only one who finds this entertaining. It’s like, she he’s turned this around on her. She she’s fallen into this trap that he set where he can play plausible deniability and then kind of make it seem like she is she’s projecting something onto the situation when she’s definitely right. Like they were doing it for entertainment. But you know, because of that, it’s, it’s so easy to turn that around on her. And then, you know, of course that whole, that whole fucking audience was eating up. Every word that he says, you’ve got a 30 minute TV show. You’ve given them a small snippet of information. There’s no way that that audience is going to be on the side of somebody criticizing somebody taking down pedophiles.
(31m 12s):
It’s just not going to happen. They don’t have enough information to come to a more objective conclusion on that. It wasn’t that Von Erik was necessarily a master debater or particularly commanding, but there’s just simply not a lot of work you have to do to get people on your side. When your side is exposing pedophiles, it’s a loaded argument where anybody criticizing you is starting from a position of defending a child predator. Anybody who went up against them was easily crushed under the moral superiority that T cap and perverted justice hat. All I have to say is that Xavier Von Eric May not be a master debater. Some cars are comfy on the inside, but don’t have power on the outside. And some cars have the horsepower, but none of the comfort I used to think there weren’t any cars that were the total package, but that all changed.
(31m 55s):
When I got my Honda SUV, it’s rugged and sophisticated. And right now Honda has deals on the entire Honda SUV lineup, CRV, HRV pilot passport, you name it. So if you’re looking for a car, that’s the total package, the only place you’ll find it is that your local Honda dealer hurry before they’re all gone. Find a moment of calm@classicalwetaninetypointninefmavailabletostreamnowatclassicalweth.org or on the classical w E T a App. But he definitely looks like a masterpiece. Yup. A hundred percent.
(32m 35s):
However, one thing they could not get around was the lack of law enforcement involvement or prosecution of these criminals for the first two episodes of T cap. Basically none of the men who were exposed during the stings were actually prosecuted. The official reason that police departments in the area gave is that there were jurisdictional issues created by the fact that the chat decoys that perverted justice employed were located all over the country in order to be able to prosecute the men they learned and trapped, they’d have to communicate and cooperate with law enforcement agencies from all of those areas. But in reality, it was more likely that the police departments just didn’t like a TV news reporter and a bunch of internet people trying to do their job for them. The biggest criticism was saved for Hanson himself though.
(33m 15s):
And criticism came largely from his peers from day one of T cap airing on TV, journalists and news organizations from all over the country were incredibly dubious about the ethical sanctity of what T cap was doing. And it wasn’t even about the alleged legal entrapment Hanson had crossed a thick, bold line in the sand with T caps, patented brand of setting up traps and confronting criminals. He was creating news in the world of journalistic ethics. It is agreed upon by most that a journalist should report on the news, not create it. That means a distinct separation between the press observing, investigating, and reporting on crimes and law enforcement catching and prosecuting the criminals. Think about those early days, enhancement childhood, the restaurant where Jimmy Hoffa was disappeared.
(33m 58s):
Swarming with cops, searching for clues and interviewing witnesses, surrounded by a perimeter of police tape restricting anybody outside of the police from entering the crime scene. And then the press congregating outside of that perimeter craning their necks to get a glimpse of anything remotely interesting for their story. This was the law of the land criminals create news journalists report on it. And law enforcement handles the rest Hanson had waltz right through that police tape and parked right smack dab in the middle of the action. He was doing all three. And not only that, but viewers loved him for it. His peers were not happy about this, but our boy Chrissy hand-in-hand didn’t give up. Do you think he gave up about what a bunch of stuffy, jealous and territorial old world weathermen thought about his adherence to journalistic code of ethics.
(34m 46s):
He was doing exactly what he craved from his boyhood days, riding his bike around the suburbs of Detroit. He was as close as he could possibly be to the story, breaking salacious and shocking news. He was looked at as a hero by viewers across the country. And you know what? The viewers were on his side. It’s hard to care about ethics when real pedophiles are being caught. Teacups caps critics did not stand a chance. Imagine even trying to take this stance in today’s current Q Anon climate, you’d have a dude with a submachine gun standing in your office, screaming at you to tell him where the kidnapped children are by nightfall. The issue with getting law enforcement involved in the first two episodes was not actually by choice. Perverted justice had long ago, started making efforts to do this. The actual issue is that no law enforcement wanted to touch it.
(35m 28s):
If other journalists and news organizations were jealous of T cap success and ratings, police were deeply resentful of the public perception that somebody was finally doing something about this. They saw it as a direct insult to their efforts, but regardless of your thoughts on what T cap was doing, the cops were wrong. The broader acceptance of the internet and social media was still in its infancy. And most of the established infrastructure of law enforcement and prosecution just didn’t understand it, or have the first clue about how to approach cracking down on it. The police were not equipped to do what perverted justice was doing. And even if what they were doing was ethically gray, they created a national conversation around how to combat online criminals that pushed education and preparedness around the topic forward years.
(36m 8s):
Your Hansen’s rather elegant thoughts on navigating the ethical grays of doing the show and working with police that really do a good job of emotionally selling the righteous good of It. And two things came to mind. One, it was socially irresponsible to let these guys just go because it was harder for the police to build a case in two, it was unfulfilling for the viewer to see these guys walk away in the wind, just from a practical television production standpoint. So it was right about them that we were contacted by Riverside county Sheriff’s department and said, do you want to do this? And so we fashioned away, you know, we took a lot of criticism from, you know, Scarlet, J journalists, you’re working too close to the police. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.
(36m 48s):
Well, you know what? Sometimes you have to change the rules. You have to, you have to expand your horizons. You have to do what’s right for society, for the story. And you don’t for public safety. And, you know, I’ll take that criticism. Anyway, As I was reading the articles, I saw some of that criticism and I didn’t get it. I mean, you were here the first one. I mean, some people thought that you were, you know, in trapping these people. I don’t see that at all. First of all, you have to be law enforcement to, to, to commit and drown it. It’s not a civilian civil and fragile as you know. Yeah. So that’s number one. Number two, we have a very strict protocol. And even the last one that we did the most recent one in Connecticut, you know, the guys have to raise the specter of Sachs.
(37m 33s):
First. They have to make the solicitation. They have to make the first approach. There are a number of protocols in place that are consistent with those of law enforcement and a fair and honest prosecution. So it’s, it’s really the solicitation online that makes the case, right? That breaks law, that him showing up is the TB Enter the Riverside California Sheriff’s department. We’re all about what T cap is doing and more than happy to help Hanson and perverted justice finally had the missing piece of their T cap formula, a willing and enthusiastic law enforcement body to back them up and make the bus actually effect arrests and prosecutions. For episode three of to catch a predator, NBC set up a sting house in Riverside, perverted justice, catfished, 50 predators into coming over to meet miners, Hanson confronted all 50 of them.
(38m 20s):
And the Riverside Sheriff’s department arrested all 50 of them back in 2002 Hanson helped break up an entire child trafficking ring in Cambodia and only 12 arrests were made over a period of months. 50 child predators were arrested over the course of a couple of days. And that was just for one episode of the show. It’s almost enough good karma to make up for anything. Any of these people went on to do for the rest of their lives. Almost the hosting, as well as all future stings were broken up into two hour long parts. The episode was an even bigger hit than the previous two, but it also came with more criticism and controversy this time around it was because NBC had started paying perverted justice for their work on the show, which other news organizations claimed was tantamount to paying a source, which is an ethical no-no in the world of journalism.
(39m 5s):
Although this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, T cap was a sensibly perverted justice, a show. It was based on their work and they were the ones that were shopping around in networks. Also, they were doing a lot more than just providing a source. They were actually working in tandem with NBC and the police to learn the predators in and get them to the houses they were doing. The heavy lifting enhancing was just jumping out of a corner and lecturing them. And the police were just shooting fish in a barrel. As the predators led the scene. Shouldn’t PJ get paid for that. Is it really that unethical to get paid for providing that kind of a service, other notable moments and T cap episodes. The time Hansen busted up a ring of pedophile rabbis. So how can I help? You got to have a seat.
(39m 46s):
I suggest you sit down and take your hands on your pockets, please. What are you doing? One, can you tell me what your plan was Not good? That’s kind of an understatement, isn’t it? It appears from this that you were setting up a meeting with a 13 year old boy, what do you do for living a rabbi now, presumably you counsel families and children in your position as around children.
(40m 34s):
What are you doing as a, a man of God, as a rabbi in this house, trying to meet a 13 year old boy, I am Chris Hanson with Dateline NBC, and we’re doing this story on computer predators. You don’t want it. You don’t want to talk to anybody you don’t want. It was really one of the only times, the only time really where somebody actually physically lunged at me now, looking back, I really don’t think I was in much danger, but you can see how the security system works.
(41m 16s):
Our guy stepped in, took care of it and diffuse the situation. I am overwhelmed with anxiety right now after watching that, that is so I completely understand why people want to watch it because it is so visceral, but oh God, that is just not idea of something I’m trying to hang out a lot. Yeah. I mean, w w w we’ll we’ll talk about this, you know, we’re going to get into a open discussion about some of these concepts of like what we think about them, but, you know, in short, we, you know, other than some of the ethical things that we’re talking about earlier with just the, you know, the weird, like way that this, this show was almost like a, like a Roman Coliseum, just watching, you know, men fight tigers.
(42m 8s):
And, you know, there’s like the modern day equivalent of that. Other than some of the ethical things we’re talking about this show, you know, it’s like, for me, it’s like, I’m glad that those 300 guys got caught, but I have no interest in watching this. Like, I’m glad that they got arrested. I think that these things should be stopped and uncovered and ended, and these people should be arrested, but I don’t want to watch a TV show about it. Yeah. Yeah. I obviously, I don’t want anybody to get hurt. It’s better. If these people don’t have access to anything that they can hurt kids with. But I, that is just not my idea of a good time to watch.
(42m 50s):
Nope. I don’t, I don’t think there’s going to be any better for you. There was a time a predator literally showed up to a sting and then showed up to another sting the next day. And You thought it was appropriate to walk into the home of a 14 year old boy who you saw buck Nick, what was your plan? What’s your full name, your school bus driver, or teach your teeth. I’m going to need to see some ideas. They just come out and get the beer that he was In the middle of being confronted. Since you can’t see that, what happened to the actor, playing the boy, walks out and opens a bag of beer that he brought, which is just amazing.
(43m 40s):
And then just walks off with it. Like, they’re like, oh, we might as well keep this. Some of the grips are getting thirsty. I am Chris Hansen, Storium computer, but anything else you’d like to say about it? We’d like to hear it. If not, you’re free to leave. Thank you. Take the tile to the garage and get drunk. So that was a, that was from one of the first two episodes where they weren’t actually involving the police yet. So they just confront them and then they just let him leave. So he left and then this happened And less than 24 hours later, there he is in a chat room trying to make a date with another younger teenage boy.
(44m 24s):
We couldn’t believe it, but it was the same screen name, same everything. So the decoy made a date and the agreement, and then nearby, we move into position. He walks out of the restaurant and we’re there winning. I haven’t been in television for 24 years. I’ll just come to get something to eat. And I have very seldom banana loss for work. So I just, I don’t even know what to ask you first. I just kind of get some strong. We’d been through this before. What are you doing? I’ve got the chat log again. Chris Hanson actually originally auditioned to play the legs.
(45m 8s):
I just, that guy get arrested. They didn’t from the first two episodes. Like no, nobody got arrested or prosecuted. Also, this is just this isn’t. This is evidence of how, how well this is constructed and how immediate the narrative communicates. Because when you hit that X on that, I was like, my gut instinct was no, I need to see what happened. Literally Stop. No. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s, it’s designed to be, it’s assigned to be attention crack. It’s like what Happened to that guy? Like, I mean, in terms of the episode, like he just, they, they sit there and grill them for five minutes and then he leaves The ethical quandary.
(45m 51s):
Definitely still exists, but thank God they have cops involved. Yeah. Or maybe not. I don’t even know, but it, the emotional need to have them arrested is very High. Well, other than what we’re going to, what we’re going to get into as this story starts to ratchet up later, whenever the cops involvement becomes pretty bad. If you’re going to do this show and do this, you probably should have them arrested at the end because otherwise, literally, what the hell are you doing this for? And possibly the most intimate segment. The sting on Lauren Armstrong, a Southern good old boy predator who famously yield. Oh God. And broke down crying. When Chris Hansen walked into the room and ironic religion has formed on the internet, around him called the church of Cod.
(46m 37s):
Hi, sir. How are you? All right. How are you doing what’s happening? Not too much. Not too much. So what are you up to tonight? Not a whole lot. Well, I’ll tell you for the last several days, you’ve been up to a lot. You’re a pretty political chatter there. You want to explain yourself? Not really. I never really was going To do anything. You weren’t really going to do anything. No. What do you think all that happened to you? I think I should Go to counseling to get off the internet. I couldn’t do something cause I can’t do What you go on. Whether it’s something I got to tell you, I’m Chris Hanson, the D-line NBC and story. It’s really hard not to go God.
(47m 18s):
Yeah. The whole thing about these, this show is the other component of these that I don’t see anybody else talking about is just all the ethical stuff aside how dark this shit is aside. It’s kind of hilarious to me that like a significant portion of the show involves improv and like a literal actor, like playing a kid and just like improving with a predator. And then like even Chris Hanson is kind of improving. Like he comes in and he’s just having a conversation with them and he’s not having a real conversation with them. He’s not just a person talking to somebody he’s performing for the camera. He’s playing Chris Hanson. So all the things he’s saying is just him thinking of like good responses to what the, what the person says.
(48m 4s):
So he’s not just thinking of responses. He’s thinking of statements and slam dunks on him or sort of winks and nods to the audience at home. And there’s just something a little funny to me about the fact that like this whole thing is like this weird play that they’re performing with with a pedophile. So strange T cap also set up stings in Greenville, Ohio, Fort Myers, Florida, Fortson Georgia Petaluma, California, long beach, California. And finally infamously Murphy, Texas in July of 2006 T cap was massively popular, but it was also under a lot of scrutiny. The call detractors criticizing the supposedly unethical nature of the show, Hansen creating news and the questionable tactics of perverted justice became stronger and stronger.
(48m 51s):
PJ became the target of many antiviral anti groups like corrupted justice. Other news orgs were really trying to put the screws to what they were doing. Like the time Byron Harris from ABC’s 2020, a main competitor to Dateline, try to confront Xavier on Eric at one of his speaking engagements to question him about the show’s tactics. The altercation gets really weird and awkward. I think You were getting in my face, kicked up to me. So you walked up to me now, your son, you are acting like, I know you’re old and don’t have problems. When you walk up to me and get in my face and tell me I’m getting here. Then we have a problem. So I’ll be right back. You hold, you’re touching me. You know, you spit in my fast.
(49m 33s):
I did. Yeah, you did. Please keep your dribble to yourself. Your back first off, I’m trying to be disrupted. Okay. Do you want to be a journalist? Yes. Josie questions. You’ll walk up to me though. You’re getting in my face. Don’t walk up to me and tell me I’m getting in your face. You know, we have it all on camera. So we’ll see what you see with the camera all day long. We’ll see what edited it the way you want it. Edit it. I’m sure you’ll do a little thing. And that’s why you’re a local reporter. Not national. That’s why you’ve been in this business. How many years? How many years? You’ve been a reporter? 35 35. And where you work? Dallas, Texas, Dallas, Texas. And he worked for a local affiliate, right? Correct. Have you ever asked yourself why you work for a local affiliate buyer? Yes. Yeah. I worked there because I want to be there.
(50m 14s):
Oh, you’ve never even had obvious opportunities to move up and you’ve turned them down. No, I actually worked for the network. Oh, you worked for him for ABC. Yeah. And that’s why you’re doing the reporting you’re doing or, you know? Yeah. Excuse me. He’s been trying to harass me. You got to be my face and said get on my face. He basically spit in my face and he’s probably trying to disrupt the conference we’re doing. So if you could use that squirrel, I didn’t do that. Well, we would like you to leave though, because we do not want our speaker to be uncomfortable. And Dave Kaplan said I could be here. Certainly I can get Dave Kathleen involved here. Why don’t we go off the shelf or together? Let’s just stay here. Why don’t you explain to Dave Kaplan while you’ve been trying to harass me and got in my face and assaulted me, he can do that.
(50m 56s):
Yeah. Cause we really do want this to be a positive experience for everyone. So thank you very much. And you can email anytime you want and we’ll be glad to get, well, let me give you my card because she would, wouldn’t like to have a conversation flyer. I have an email address as well. I think I’d like to have a phone conversation with fragging, Dell. They’re the people I really came to talk to. You know why? Because that’s up to them. Don’t ask me for them. Wouldn’t give them my business card and my phone number. I’m really busy. I’m sorry. It’s like the most aggressive fucking Kevin Smith looking motherfucker ever. Yeah. A hundred percent. One of the most awkward things I’ve ever seen.
(51m 37s):
I’m not even saying that Vani. Eric is like the bad guy in that everybody involved in that is just so uncomfortable because they’re all performing for the cause the camera’s on. Even the little, the mediator, the person that works at the building or whatever, like even she is like, I’m talking like this because I know the news camera is recording and I’m going to represent my company in the most positive way ever. And so I’m going to talk like A robot. The only thing I have to say about that is Xavier Von. Erik has a very punchable face. Yeah. I mean, cause yeah, he he’s performing too. He’s performing as the shitty low rent, Kevin Smith I’m witty. And like everything he says is just like it’s, it’s so awkward.
(52m 20s):
The best part of that too is the thing you don’t get is so he’s hosting this conference and it’s in like this rec center in bumfuck nowhere, Texas or whatever. And there’s like four people in that conference room. Literally there’s like four or five people there and they’re all spread out. It’s like a seat. It’s like a room that’s meant to seat like 200, 300 people. This was the climate under which the Murphy, Texas thing was done. It started out like any other house stink, Dateline and perverted justice worked closely with the local Murphy police to coordinate the sting. PJ would load them into the house. Handsome would confront them and Murphy PD would arrest them. However, there was something slightly different about this job. The Murphy police chief, Billy Myrick was so gung ho about his department making a name for itself with a sting.
(53m 5s):
He ignored a lot of protocol. Typically in these stings, PJ starts the online conversations with the predators, but then works in tandem with the local police to vet the predators and make sure an arrest can be made if, and when they show up. But the Murphy police were completely hands off with the actual investigation, more than happy to implicitly trust perverted justices, intelligence and investigative results. In order to the arrests, they let PJ lead and just went along with whatever they said, because Myrick just wanted to do whatever he had to do for national notoriety. He didn’t even bother telling the Murphy district attorney’s office about the sting or the partnership with NBC. So in 2006, right before this thing was supposed to actually happen. When perverted justice fax the Murphy DA’s office to discuss planning, they were shocked to see the da.
(53m 47s):
We will take no part in the planning or execution of the statement operation. We must take pains, not to implicitly authorized or direct non law enforcement entities to act as our agents during this law enforcement operation, the Collin county district attorney’s office is in the law enforcement business, not in the show business. For some Reason, this thing felt off from the beginning, from the police chiefs over enthusiasm to participate to the da stern rejection of cooperation right down to the fact that a group of concerned parents in the surrounding neighborhoods of a sting house contacted the local city government expressing concerns about a new station, learning dangerous child predators onto their streets for their children, played something just wasn’t right about this one T cap went ahead and did it anyway.
(54m 30s):
And they ended up eating in the arrest of 25 men, distinguished smoothie with no issue. And they got their guys another successful T cap episode in the can. The Murphy police can smile for the camera and take their credit and they can all rub it in the face of the Murphy DA’s office. Right? I’ll accept one detail. One of the predators who was supposed to come to the house never showed up. And when perverted justice looked back at the chat logs and profile to try and piece together, why they didn’t, they ended up making a shocking discovery. They were able to dig around and piece together. The actual identity of the predator who had attempted to solicit child pornography from who they believed was a 13 year old boy. It was Lewis William Conrad Jr. The rockstar chief prosecuting district attorney in the neighboring town of Rockwall.
(55m 10s):
He was a legend in that area of the country and described as one of the smartest DA’s in Texas, what Hanson and the Teekat crew would do next change the entire trajectory of the show’s success in their careers. And this is where I think the line of ethics is genuinely undeniably crossed for the first time. And the criticisms of creating news become severely valid. The Murphy PD had enough info to go and make the arrest. He had solicited a minor for illicit materials, which is a felony in Texas and many other states. They had him dead to rights, but Hanson wanted to be part of the show. And he and NBC had the Murphy police wrapped around their fingers, willing to do whatever they wanted, Hansen, his film crew and the Murphy PD race to the residence of Louis Conrad Anson attended a knock on the door and confront Louis, but there was no answer.
(55m 56s):
Hanson yelled into the house for him and could hear movement inside, but still no answer with probable cause to enter his home. The Murphy PD broke down the door and entered two police officers went inside and search for Conrad. They eventually ran into him in a hallway of the house. He said, one thing, I’m not going to hurt anybody. And then he turned a gun on himself and pulled the trigger. So it’s already far enough that Hanson inserted himself in his crew into this arrest. Right? Of course, after Conrad essentially committed suicide on camera, they scrap the episode, right? Nope. Dateline aired the lose Conrad Jr. Segment and told the whole story from start to finish the episode aired in February of 2007 and was just as if not more popular than previous episodes, they aired three more episodes.
(56m 41s):
After that throughout 2007, at this point, Hanson was literally a mega star and a genuine celebrity, far outreaching the fame of any other TV news reporter in history. He regularly appeared on talk, shows, wrote a bestselling book and even got a parody treatment on an episode of south park And inside. Look at Tourette syndrome. I’m Chris Hansen. I’m Chris Hansen. Mr. Hansen. I’m afraid I can’t do the show. Why not my grant? I just dad. So I have to go to Memphis. That’s not true. My grandma, Chad wants you to have a seat. I just need to get home. I’m not doing the show. Go ahead and take a seat, but I’m not going to do this, But this is where the other shoe dropped for T cap.
(57m 27s):
You see John Roche, one of the head DA’s in Murphy investigated the November, how sting and Conrad suicide, what the DA’s office discovered was that the Murphy PD did absolutely zero police work on the entire sting. They completely relied on perverted justice with no questions asked. They also discovered that the way perverted justice convinced the Murphy police to raid Conrad’s house with a full TV crew was by claiming that Conrad had been deleting evidence of his crimes off his MySpace page, which gave the police imperative to act fast and arrest him for there. Wasn’t enough evidence to arrest. This was a complete lie. Conrad hadn’t used his MySpace page in months. John Roche dismissed all 25 cases of men arrested in the Murphy bus, citing lack of evidence and misconduct by police making the arrest illegal because they didn’t have warrants.
(58m 10s):
By this time, the media had caught wind of the controversy behind the Conrad sting and it was all over rival news headlines, however, vile and reprehensible. He was an NBC show had literally caused a man suicide. This did not look good for the network for perverted justice or for Hansen. Advertisers started pulling out of the show on mass Conrad sister sued NBC for $105 million claiming they had caused his wrongful death. They settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. Teacups audience shares none of this criticism. This is all coming from the media and law enforcement T cap fans don’t give a rat’s ass of a child, predator killed himself. And honestly it really is kind of hard to mourn the death of somebody like that, or really go into the weeds of the ethical quandary at represents.
(58m 52s):
So the viewer apathy towards T caps wrongdoing is understandable. However, despite the popularity and fan support, the show was officially canceled in 2008. Many speculate that Indian the show was most likely part of the settlement agreement with Conrad sister, because it came out of nowhere during a time of seemingly great ratings. The Murphy police chief, Billy Myrick, as well as the Murphy city manager are both fired over the debacle. So this whole thing really didn’t end well for anyone involved, despite all the good that teak hap and perverted justice did. And regardless of any criticisms or ethical grays, from my perspective, arguing that they didn’t objective, we do a great public service is literally insane in Xavier bond. Eric’s final flourish of towing the line between altruistic hero and self-serving troll.
(59m 33s):
He put all the money PJ ever earned from to catch a predator into a nonprofit called perverted justice foundation, Inc. Promising to use the funds to create and develop software that would train police and parents on how to spot online predators. However, in reality, most of the money went to paying the salaries of perverted justices. Employees. Xavier then got married and disappeared off the face of the map. And the internet perverted justice was eventually shut down in 2019. And the website became an archive of all the chat logs that they had ever released. The organization claimed that the world had grown out of the need for their services. As the advent of social media has made the landscape of online predators, too large for them to be able to handle. And now most law enforcement organizations have specific cyber crime units dedicated to dealing with these types of crimes.
(1h 0m 16s):
I think it’s hilarious that Xavier, Ron, Eric kissed a girl and was just like, you know what? Fuck it. Yup. Seriously. He was like, oh wait, Some cars are comfy on the inside, but don’t have power on the outside. And some cars have the horsepower, but none of the comfort I used to think there weren’t any cars that were the total package, but that all changed. When I got my Honda SUV, it’s rugged and sophisticated. And right now Honda has deals on the entire Honda SUV lineup, CRV, HRV pilot passport, you name it. So if you’re looking for a car, that’s the total package. The only place you’ll find it is that your local Honda dealer hurry before they’re all gone.
(1h 0m 60s):
Some cars are comfy on the inside, but don’t have power on the outside. And some cars have the horsepower, but none of the comfort I used to think there weren’t any cars that were the total package, but that all changed. When I got my Honda SUV, it’s rugged and sophisticated. And right now Honda has deals on the entire Honda SUV lineup, CRV, HRV pilot passport, you name it. So if you’re looking for a car, that’s the total package. The only place you’ll find it is at your local Honda dealer. Hurry before they’re all gone. All right, I’m abandoning all of this. I didn’t realize that this was this good. I could, I could touch on some boobies. I was going to do that By internet, by kayfabe pedophile hunting crew in the end, Vani Ark, as well as the whole perverted justice became the most extreme example of the problematic fav.
(1h 1m 51s):
They accomplished something so objectively, morally righteous, and the mere thought of anything like this, even remotely happening to one of your own children, only for this baggy pants and hockey Jersey wearing neck bearded ass, mountain Dew code red swigging patrol to swoop out of nowhere and save them from a lifetime of trauma is enough for a gust of pride to swell up in your chest and tears to well in your eyes. And yet everything about the reason that they did what they did is so steeped in ethical murkiness. That it’s just hard to view them as fully the realm of lawful good or even chaotic good chaotic neutral with leaning towards good, maybe, but that’s where the story ends for perverted justice, at least for now. So how is Hanson gonna fare without the aid of the vigilant watchdog group?
(1h 2m 31s):
That was actually the brains behind this operation? Well, NBC had a problem. Hanson was their star quarterback, their golden child. He was what the people wanted moving forward without him would be like breaking bad, just randomly writing off Walter White in the fourth season and hoping that people for some reason still tuned in, but they had to steer clear of anything involving busting child predators because of the controversy. But the reason that people loved Hanson was because he busted child predators. It was a real catch 22 for the network in Dateline. So what do they do split the difference. Maybe Dateline began attempting to capitalize off of the popularity of T cap, but without the P they launched new investigative segments with Hansen, like to catch a con man or to catch an ID.
(1h 3m 13s):
Thief turns out the shot Freud of watching a disgusting child predator get exposed and grilled was really a key component of T cap. And these new segments didn’t do nearly as well. Handsome was still considered a hero because it was reputation from T cap, but people slowly stopped paying attention to him. And his work was suffering as well. It became less about breaking out sanding stories and more about just trying to repackage the T cap formula, but with less ethical or PR risk, he was running Steens on credit card scammers and other petty feeds. And people just didn’t seem to get us fully on board with humiliating, poor people trying to make ends meet as they could with child predators, but the problems were only beginning for Hansen. And it wouldn’t be long before he was being asked to have a seat.
(1h 3m 55s):
No, he’s not child predator. That’s to click baity Thanks for listening to this episode, you should definitely go like the Facebook page for the deep cuts pod, because we do lots of cool video content on there that you’ll be sure to like also please join our Facebook group. That’s Deep cuts podcast on Facebook and the deep cuts podcast. Facebook group also follow us on Instagram at deep cuts pond In 2011, Chris Hansen was no longer the Chris Hanson.
(1h 4m 36s):
We knew a few years ago. He wasn’t riding a massive wave of success and popularity, but his predator lecturing mug was still worth something. And most people when they saw it were filled with warm feelings of respect and admiration. So NBC was keeping him around to capitalize off of that. As much as possible that year he was sent to Florida to cover the disappearance of Jimmy Trindad. This might have almost seemed like he was coming full circle with his career from his early beginnings, watching the Hoffa disappearance. But after all he’d been through in the Heights, he’d climbed, this was a definitive downgrade. However, while there he met a fellow reporter, Kristen Cadelle from WP TV, channel five and NBC affiliate.
(1h 5m 16s):
And we’re just going to, to the chase here, because there didn’t seem to be any gradual process of making it to this point, no moral backslide, no long descent into hitting rock bottom and doing this out of desperation. It seemed to just in and come naturally to the reporter Hanson, hit it off with Cadel. And that very night they checked into a hotel and began a months long affair Hanson, quietly broke things off with Cadel before returning back to his Connecticut home to be with his family again. But the reason we know about this is because five days after the Dateline segment on Trin date aired, the national Enquirer broke a story about Hansen’s affair. How do they find out they got an anonymous tip and then had a photographer follow them and get photographic evidence.
(1h 5m 57s):
Celebrity affairs are usually scandalous, but the media coverage of this story was particularly strange, perhaps in some cathartic fit of vindication. After years of jealousy at the success of T cap news organizations across the country, ran this story with headlines, framing it as the tables being turned on Hansen as if there was some kind of sick irony to a man who was known for catching people, doing illicit things on camera and exposing them being caught on camera, doing something illicit and being exposed, which I guess is some pretty low hanging fruit of how you’d approach presenting the story. But really how is this anywhere even remotely close to the crimes that predators on T cap committed the media presented the story as if the king of predator busting was himself a predator all along, but that’s just insane.
(1h 6m 39s):
So much for the journalistic standards. They were touting a few years ago in response to T cap Henson denied the affair outright and his wife believed in stuck by him, but there was immediately fallout. Hanson was close to being up for a promotion to anchor at Dateline. And despite the fact that he never really had much interest in the anchor position and wanting to be out in the field, his career had cooled off enough. And he felt like the time was right to slide into a cushy anchor job. However, in the wake of the affair scandal, the promotion was put on hiatus Hanson continued to try and recapture his success. Doing more shows, exposing small time and petty crooks, all the while getting more desperate and shameless as his personal and public life spiraled out of control. The worst most ethically gray moment in this stage of his career is when he and his team find out the owner of a preschool has a criminal past.
(1h 7m 22s):
They ambush him at the preschool under the guise of doing a slice of life puff piece about the life of a child educator exposed his criminal record, enhancing grills him on the perceived unethical nature of him failing to disclose his criminal record to staff or parents at the school. 20 years prior to the segment, the man had been arrested for battery. He was turned down by the state to inherit his mother’s childcare business, but made such a good case that they decided to let him and he’d had a spotless record ever since turning his life around the interview just feels gross. The dude has rehabilitated his life and worked hard to rebuild himself and create a business. And Chris Hanson essentially outs him and ruins his career for a feather in his cap, in a segment on TV Simpson and his wife runs storybook ranch in Tampa, which was started by Simpson’s mother 32 years ago.
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Back in the 1990s, Simpson was arrested for battery twice, both times. He served probation. I wanted to ask you if you yourself Have a criminal history. No, you’re not. You’ve never pleaded guilty to any crime, nothing. Well then what is this? That looks like a photograph of me when I was wrongfully accused of battery wrongfully accused that has a whole different time in my life. I was a kid Shouldn’t said we weren’t being fair, said he’s been running the center without incident for 13 years. And I met the requirements. I had to jump through a lot of hoops, Mr.
(1h 8m 47s):
Hanson, to get this position. But the more I tried to ask questions, the more heat, the conversation. Yeah, God, this Is a waste of my time. We have done nothing but provide exemplary service to the people of this area for 32 years. And you guys come in here with it and wasting my time. It’s just how we find me some songs nonsense. You’re the evil and you’re the demon. I watched all your shows to catch the predator and all that. You are a piece came here to give you a chance to talk about this can go and you can go up a rope and you can pay money to get any information else for me. Okay. I’m embarrassed for you.
(1h 9m 27s):
You’re a slug. You’re a slug. Thank you. All of you. Get the hell off my property. Based On this confrontation Hanson went to the city school board and attempted to get the man fired based on the fact that he’d lost his cool and Guild during the ambush. And therefore he might be unstable and volatile around children as well. Hence his next stop on his magical mystery tour of fucking over hardworking people, trying to hustle to make ends meet was a segment in which he catfishes local New York marijuana dealers and confronts them about dealing illegal drugs. This segment especially feels tone deaf. Now in 2020, when marijuana is largely decriminalized in several states.
(1h 10m 7s):
But the worst part is that Hanson gets completely owned by the guy he’s attempting to expose. And the segment turns into a humble weed dealer, educating a rich white man about the realities of street life in New York city Marijuana in large amounts is a felony in New York that doesn’t seem to bother Atkins in the slightest. I’m not ashamed of what I show because I mean, let’s face it. There’s a lot of hypocrisy involved. You know, the politics, nobody wants to touch it, but everyone smoked. People were going to abuse drugs, and they’re going to do what they want. And it makes it look bad. But I can call a for people. You know what I’m saying? That that I deal with who have cancer, who are wholeheartedly great, honest people. That healthcare is too much for it, but you want to get out.
(1h 10m 48s):
Well, I want to get out from the perspective of having to watch my back to do it. You know what I mean? Like I’m getting a, like, do you have to carry a gun? Do you worry about robbing you? Or I deliver to people who are down in this area, doorman buildings, co-ops and houses. This sounds less like a tough nose, investigative reporter getting to the heart of a story and more like an out of touch. Dad having his kid explain tick, talk to him. So handsomely, everything Comes to dad energy with Chris Hanson all the time. He’s disappointed dad out of touch dad pre divorced, lonely, trying to have sex with a fellow reporter dad. Like he’s just every version of dad, Chris Hansen. He he’s all dads.
(1h 11m 29s):
We are dad, dad, Dad. Dad’s up. Let the second time that pod has been referenced on this podcast. Well, yeah, the pod sounds stands for payable upon, upon dad. Oh yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Fuck. How far does this rabbit hole go? So handsome is really in an uncertain place with NBC because nothing he did seem to be sticking in the same way that T cap did and then came the final blow. Kristen Cadelle the woman he had allegedly had an affair with during his months long stint covering the Jimmy Trin Dade case in Florida decided after two years to come forward with her story on July 27th, 2013, the national Enquirer published a tell all expos aid by Cadelle detailing.
(1h 12m 10s):
The true reality of the airfare. According to her, Chris had coerced her into a relationship by telling her that his marriage to his wife at the time Mary was on the rocks. And basically for show the ring he ward was just to keep up appearances recently getting out of a divorce herself. She fell for it, hook line and sinker, and was sure for months that he was planning on finally leaving his wife for her Hanson, even spoke with her parents on the phone. At one point, she also had tons of photographic proof once he was done with the trend Dade case and had to return home. Not only did he abruptly end things with Kristen, he also urged her to keep quiet about the relationship. When the Inquirer leaked the story about their affair. She lied to her employees and said it never happened. She was subsequently fired all the while.
(1h 12m 52s):
Hanson suffered virtually no negative repercussions from the affair for the next two years. Cadell’s life and career were essentially ruined. Nobody would hire her because of the controversy. And she was unable to find any more work in journalism. But now the tables have turned because as a result of this expo say NBC made the all too easy and probably inevitable. Anyway, decision to fire Hanson. They ended their contract with him saying publicly that the split was amicable. But in reality, they just grown tired of the controversy. Cadelle however, pretty much immediately got her first job in journalism since being fired in 2011, working for ABC, she went on to win an Emmy for her reporting. The year following his firing from NBC Hanson was completely out of pocket. Nobody really knows what he was doing during this period.
(1h 13m 34s):
He became a ghost. He became estranged from his wife, Mary, and they eventually divorced in 2018. Although tons of details, including some court documents from their divorce proceedings, show them living at different addresses long before the expo’s aid was released, indicating that their marriage might have been over for longer than anybody knew publicly in 2014, Hanson racked up $57,000 in credit card debt doing God knows what that same year. You also gets hired to host a show called killer instinct for investigation discovery, which is supposed to be an in-depth exploration of history’s most gruesome murders, but it doesn’t resonate either. And only gets two seasons perhaps having finally let it sink that his days on network television were over on April 25th, 2015 Hanson launched a Kickstarter to fund a new series of predator stings.
(1h 14m 20s):
He was met with a warm welcome. At this point, the controversy from his affair had died down and he was also communicating through the internet without the filter of network executives and rival critics to stand between him and viewers. And remember the actual Teekat fans had no issue whatsoever with any of T cap, perverted justice or Hanson suppose ethical issues. They just wanted to see hands and take downs and perverts. This is the beginning of his weird exploitation of catching pedophiles. He uses the have a seat right over there, catchphrase in the Kickstarter video in a joking way, which feels weird, but it’s nothing compared to what he eventually becomes. The campaign met its goal of $75,000 and ultimately earned nearly $89,000.
(1h 14m 60s):
It was a success, but isn’t that kind of crazy. At the end of the day to catch a predator was perverted justice to show they develop the technique. They did all of the work of Loring, the predators, and they cooperated with police to make arrests literally all hands and ever did was pop out and try to interview the predators. Undoubtedly, his contribution as a charismatic figurehead was valuable for the show success, but how could he do this on his own without the help of perverted justice? The Kickstarter campaign also promised several perks for donators, namely Chris Hanson related merchandise like coffee mugs, t-shirts et cetera. With an estimated delivery of December, 2015 in July of 2015 production on Hanson’s new series of investigations started, but he goes completely dark for the rest of the year.
(1h 15m 41s):
December comes and goes through any purchase being delivered or any update from the Kickstarter page in February of 2016, Hanson comes back to say that he’s finished shooting the series of investigations and is now pitching them to networks. Still no word of the rewards that were supposed to be delivered in December in April of 2016, the Kickstarter page gives another update promising the show and the rewards are coming soon. Also the same month Hanson is named as the new host of crime watch daily, a nationally syndicated true crime series and Hanson reveals that his crowdfunded investigations are going to air. As part of that show, here’s a snippet of the press release, announcing Hanson joining as host of the show, A bigger, more respected name in crime reporting than Chris Hanson.
(1h 16m 22s):
We hunted down Chris, the way he hunts down predators to take this job, we are excited to take. That’s such a weird way to phrase that. I mean, that’s what the fuck does that mean? Like they just waited in his kitchen and then we’re like, what are you doing here today? And Chris Hansen’s like, I live here and they’re like, no, but really? What are you? I live here. Do you want a job? Yes, Please. For God’s sake please. I have seven Rolex’s. We Hunted down Chris, the way he hunts down predators to take this job, we are excited to have him lead out amazing team of correspondence to build on our success and to take crime, watch daily to the next level.
(1h 17m 5s):
Isn’t that kind of weird? Isn’t it strange how Hanson and people surrounding him have started just casually using the iconography of a hard hitting news program about catching child predators in the act of making goofy puns. It consistently bumps me in learning about any of this stuff, how he eventually, you know, became this self-parody. And it’s really weird to me that he just says his little catch phrases as like a fun little thing. Like you were referencing confronting a pedophile who was attempting to rape somebody and you’re just being like, have a seat over there.
(1h 17m 44s):
I remember that. Remember that from that thing, remember that? Yeah. You remember that at this point, the Kickstarter backers are starting to get frustrated, not only about the lack of delivery of the rewards, but just the complete lack of acknowledgement of the issue by Hansen. The new season of crime watch daily with Hanson sting, house segments airs, and people love it. It feels exactly like classic T cap with the exact same setup of a watchdog group this time one called Tetris core, but decidedly less troubling name cooperating with law enforcement to lower predators, to a decoy house where an actor portraying a minor, welcomes them in only to be confronted by Chris motherfucking Hansen. People love the show, but they still want to know where the hell the rewards are, where the fuck are my perks, bro.
(1h 18m 29s):
This is my nightmare. Yeah, but at such a larger scale, cause it’s just like a rabid fan base that it kind of goes back to that bill of foreign conversation of like the way that those Disney stars like rip the bandaid of this weird culturally agreed upon kayfabe of how pure they are. And they’re just like, I do not want to live in the fucking light box of that. So I’m just going to like do the craziest shit I can think of so that I can redefine people’s expectations of me. Ultimately at the end of the day, people would be disappointed if you weren’t able to deliver on what you’ve promised in one of your Kickstarters or whatever, but like they don’t understand. But Chris Hanson, these people were like, you are a Saint.
(1h 19m 12s):
You are literally like a God among man. So when he’s doesn’t follow through on delivering you a coffee mug, you’re just like, what is Happening? Why is this happening In September of 20 17, 2 years after delivery expectation, Hanson bought $13,000 worth of merchandise from a Connecticut vendor. But his check bounced, the vendor complains and he issues another check. Seven months later, it bounces again. Chris apologizes and asks for more time, he sells a boat to pay for it. Or at least he claims he does, but he never issues. A check. A warrant is put up for his arrest and he turns himself in he’s arrested on fraud charges.
(1h 19m 53s):
As it turns out, Hanson is in deep, deep debt, like millions of dollars in debt after his arrest is made public January 18th, 2018, the daily mail post an article revealing Hansen’s debt, $58,000 to American express, 126,000 to TD bank, 15,000 to ally financial and over 1 million to his mortgage lender, us bank trust. You also owed 205,000 in back taxes. The mail acquire this information from court complaints. He’s eventually bailed out and figures out a way to cover costs of the bounced check and the charges are eventually dropped. What was he buying? It was A turtlenecks Brode. And you see him in that, that podcast interview. So many turtlenecks, so many turtlenecks, so many turtle X and Chris Hanson.
(1h 20m 38s):
And I were really bad suits and turtlenecks. Yeah, so many turtlenecks, so many fucking what, even Arlene, he was just like Brooks brothers suits. What if he just really was obsessed with like getting his hair cut? And he’s just in like millions of dollars of debt. Cause he gets his hair cut like every two Days. Like I discovered that I feel like I’m living my best truth with a fresh haircut. And I’m very, self-conscious when it grows even the slightest bit. So now that I have disposable income for my massively successful show, I get a haircut every day from only the finest of salons. I’m Chris Hanson. Welcome to deep cuts. The podcast where we talk about haircuts.
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Finally, Hanson is eventually evicted from his New York apartment for not paying rent for five months, worth it. Five months of the greatest haircuts of my life. So how does this happen? How does a successful famous news reporter with a massively popular show, get this deep in debt to the point where they land in jail on fraud charges. The answer is simple. He got very used to the lifestyle that he kept in its ratings. Heyday offered him once the money dried up. He had become dependent on that lifestyle and financially overextended himself to maintain it with the hopes that his next big tear and success was just around the corner. And he could make up for all the spending he was doing. Unfortunately, that tear never came having exhausted all of their efforts to make his big comeback Hansen then did what any desperate downtrodden delusional, sad sack would do.
(1h 22m 11s):
He started a YouTube channel at some point in 2017. The YouTube channel Hanson vs predator popped up and started posting a cocktail of incredibly low quality rips of old T cap episodes. The crime watch daily segments, random talk show appearance he’d made over the years and even clips from all the times he’d been parodied in cartoons. He didn’t own any of this content and fellow YouTube content creators were quick to point out that Hanson was committing several acts of copyright infringement on a daily basis. However, at this point, the YouTube community has welcomed him with open arms and he’s viewed as a veteran hero that they’re all lucky to count amongst their ranks, even if he doesn’t quite understand how YouTube works and is giving off major technologically incompetent data.
(1h 22m 52s):
All dad, always all dad, all dad In addition, yeah. To recycling stolen clips, Hanson starts running live streams where he discusses current true crime stories. He’s being helped by a man named Vincent Nakota, who is a self-proclaimed software developer and website designer who was offered to run the technical side of Hansen’s YouTube channel and live streams and exchange for exposure and the ability to advertise his company. Then interactive media, all over Hanson, social media pages. These live streams are essentially just multiple hour long ramblings about random crime news stories along with endless repetitive promises that the new batches of predator investigations are coming soon, months and months pass. And he keeps giving empty promises about new investigations while continuing to just exclusively post old stolen clips and run these meandering livestreams in one of his most egregious ripoff schemes of what we’ll call the phase of his social media influencer career.
(1h 23m 47s):
He starts selling a subscription service on his official website for $10 a month or $85 a year. You’d have access to any of these new investigations as they were released, but literally in the entire life of the subscription service Hansen never released a single piece of new content except one time when they released an unaired clip from the old crime watch daily investigations that they decided not to run at the time because the predator was 19 years old. So possibly thousands of people were paying for this service for months and months in hopes of getting access to new Hanson vs predator content and never got a single thing for it. They also never got a refund. And this is when fans started losing faith enhancing. And when the so-called drama channels got involved, notable YouTube content creators with varying sizes of audiences started posting videos, criticizing Hansen’s financial practices, and generally commenting on the seemingly bait and switch nature of his entire YouTube content strategy.
(1h 24m 40s):
That’s me in the corner losing my Chris Hansen In retaliation, Hanson and Dakota used the copyright take down system on YouTube to get these critical videos removed. In some cases, entire channels deleted the way this works is that on YouTube. If you see that somebody has stolen and used your copyrighted content, you can file a complaint with YouTube using an automated form, reporting that the channels had stolen from you. This is a great tool for any creator out there that notices their content has been shamelessly stolen and reposted by somebody else. However, the whole system is almost completely automated, very indiscriminate and the actions the platform will take are very drastic.
(1h 25m 21s):
So Hanson and Dakota were filing complaints against videos claiming that they were violating Hansen’s copyright. When in reality they were just videos criticizing Hansen. But since the process is largely automated, the system would just believe the complaints were genuine and take action against the allegedly offending channel. YouTube would delete videos, take away a channel’s ability to monetize videos, or even just delete the channel altogether. And not only would this automated system blindly take unfair action against these channels, simply exercising their right to free speech and the ability to criticize public figures, but also it’s infamously near impossible to actually get a human being at YouTube to review a situation with their actual human eyes. So if somebody is abusing the system like this, sometimes the victim is just basically screwed.
(1h 26m 4s):
The whole incompetent system solely relies on the social contract that people just won’t abuse it in this way, but they often do. And yeah, this is, this is like a common tactic. It’s weird. It’s weird. There’s gonna be more of this coming up in the future, but through Hansen’s sort of association with people that he places trust in to work with him and do these technological things that he doesn’t understand, he ends up multiple times throughout this whole YouTube debacle doing these really inappropriate predatory and sometimes illegal things that are common tactics of scammers and online hostile hackers and things like that.
(1h 26m 45s):
And this is a thing that is done by people whenever they want to launch a sort of take-down campaign of a YouTuber that they don’t like, they’ll exploit the copyright, take down system to send multiple copyright takedowns of a page. It’d be like, this person stole this video from me and they’ll do it for like 20 videos. And because of the really inefficient and kind of non-functional way that that YouTube sort of operates with the system, they can get channels deleted, completely erroneously, and the channel will be freaking out and be like, I’m getting all these strikes. And I can’t get YouTube to respond to my emails and I can’t get anyone to actually acknowledge this problem.
(1h 27m 30s):
And, you know, notice that I’m being unfairly targeted and then a channel will get deleted because of this. And then, you know, nothing happens that sometimes they can’t ever get YouTube to actually acknowledge them. And sometimes they do, but then it’s kind of too late because they’ve already deleted the channel. And I guess the way that YouTube does it, they don’t archive it. So once it’s deleted, it’s just gone. I guess, another sort of famous person that has employed this tactic in the past is poppy who basically did the same thing. There was a bunch of these commentary channels that were releasing these videos that were critical of her and her team basically did this where they issued a bunch of copyright strikes to these channels that got them, the videos taken down, or sometimes channels deleted, which is, you know, just illegally exploiting a copyright system to silence detractors.
(1h 28m 20s):
But honestly, you know, the, as you know, as we’ll continue to talk about, I think the slippery slope on Chris Hanson’s role in this situation gets steeper and steeper as time goes on. But now, as in, I also think later on a lot of this stuff has to do with the fact that I just don’t think Chris Hanson like understood what was happening. I think he’s just literally just an old dude who just, he just didn’t know what this was. He didn’t know what this Vincent Guy was doing. He had no idea that he was like exploiting the system in this way. He just kinda was like, can you do something about these people who are criticizing me? And then he was like, oh, I’ll take care of it. And he did this, you know, if anything, he was complicit in it, but I just didn’t.
(1h 29m 1s):
I genuinely don’t think he understood what was going on. And this is what happened is several channels on YouTube, some losing their channels altogether with no action taken by YouTube to restore them Hansen received major backlash from this and took to his livestream to explain his actions. All right. So moving on to another topic that’s been brewing this week, I do those of you who follow Hanson versus predators.com and YouTube channel here. It’s kind of an odd thing that happened last week, and this is the best as I can figure how all this started last week, I was in Toronto as many of you know, because I posted on social media from there working on an unrelated television project, unrelated to predators.
(1h 29m 42s):
And I mentioned I was there and I did last week’s show from Derek. And a request came in from somebody who I guess I don’t really know them. And sometimes it’s hard to know who people are because they have 2, 3, 4 aliases online asking if, if that phone is going to be available after the live broadcast to meet up. And I guess later I learned through Vincent possibly sign a book and you know, it just didn’t work out. And I guess the people or that person and some other people were upset about that. And they went to the YouTube channel here and they, they did what is called a copyright strike.
(1h 30m 22s):
This person put a strike out on, on a piece of material. That is my face, my image, my voice, my name. And so there we were. And, and there was a lot of sure that built up to it in a, in a small section of the TTF the predator community or the predator investigation followed with, from theory out there for predators. And then there was another, and all of a sudden, you know, we’re, we’re kind of looking at each other. That’s a nice thing what’s behind this. And people started to get angry that, you know, on the website, we haven’t been quick enough for new comment content rather than, you know, accusations that, that, that we were striking back at people because they’re being critical of us, which is the farthest from the truth.
(1h 31m 14s):
I mean, you know, while I’ll defend to anybody’s rights first and have a right to say whatever they want, whether it’s unpleasant or not about me and it, and it just got really mean, and there were false accusations and things had, so, you know, facing these two copyrights strikes, you know, we struck back and it was, it was an effort honestly, to protect the property, to protect what we were doing from, from whatever was motivating these people to do. However, in reality, the strikes weren’t coming from other YouTube creators, manually filing complaints, they were automated copyright strikes, triggered by Hanson shameless and constant use of stolen video clips that were being detected by YouTube digital rights manager.
(1h 31m 55s):
And, you know, this is another thing where it’s like, I can’t believe how Chris Hanson knows about this because you know, he’s, he’s not technologically savvy. He doesn’t understand computers or YouTube or any of these things, but he has been working in the entertainment industry for decades. But the thing, the thing that Chris Hanson sort of talks about, and the thing that he thinks is he thinks he has the right to post these clips on his YouTube channel because it’s him and his face and he owns the copyright to his face. And so he thinks that because he’s in episodes of T cap, that he, that he owns the rights to them.
(1h 32m 36s):
And it’s like, how do you, How do you think that, how that works? Sorry. It’s so bizarre to me that he thinks that has It been a while since you flipped that thermostat from heat to cool turn to the experts at Griffith energy services before you do for an $88 AC start and check to make sure your AC is in tip top shape, riff it specializes in carrier, but services. All brands visit Griffith energy services.com today, your local carrier expert that’s Griffith energy services.com, license number MTH VCR zero one dash 2, 2 7 8 Griffith Energy services down on dependable From earaches to strep tests. There’s mini clinic at CVS. See a provider, fill a prescription and grab essentials, or see us online with telehealth options.
(1h 33m 20s):
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(1h 34m 2s):
That’s like copyright law, which has existed for fucking hundreds of years. At this point, Hanson’s fans began to lose interest. He’s been on YouTube for months, promising exciting new content just around the corner, but has literally never delivered anything more than rambling live streams about new stories. Hanson has nothing to do with his views. Start to tank. Then Hanson strikes a vein of gold in the YouTube ecosystem. When he one day decides to cover an interesting news story from directly within the YouTube content creator space itself. It’s a story that not only plays right into the tight-knit community of YouTube viewers, but it also has a salacious twist and child predator angle that Hanson is most famous for. Hanson decides to invite a woman named Blair white onto one of his live streams to discuss who was .
(1h 34m 48s):
He was a massively popular YouTube content creator who in early 2019, along with his husband, Kai was accused of sexually grooming a 15 year old and engaging in sexual misconduct with her at the age of 19 Kai, who at the time identified as a bisexual woman, Laney had started an online friendship with the 14 year old Sarah eventually at the behest of onesie on Sarah was flown out to stay with the couple. And then after staying with them for a few months left a few years later in 2019, Sarah comes forward and says that Oneonta and Kai engaged in a romantic sexual three-way relationship with her when she was 15 and had sexually groomed her over a period of years, When and found out about this, he obviously immediately sunk his teeth into it and started reaching out to survivors witnesses and anybody else who might have any information on the case.
(1h 35m 40s):
His first interview he conducted or was with Blair, who was a political commentator, who had spoken with some victims and wanted him to tell their stories about . This became Hansen’s new focus. Every livestream he does becomes about his quote unquote onesie on investigation, which is essentially just him having sit-down interviews over zoom with people close to the story. He interviewed , which is another YouTuber who had been following ODC on for years and publicly commenting on his troubling behavior, Shiloh, a Nissan’s former fiance who alleged that he abused her during the relationship. Alayah Corina, a friend of another alleged victim of a Nissan. And eventually Sarah herself, the interview showed a huge boost to Hansen’s viewership, but he received immediate criticisms from people who say he was exploiting the stories of the survivors for views.
(1h 36m 24s):
Do you know anything about this? Do you like, were you aware of a Nissan or anything? I was aware of him by name only I knew that there was a YouTuber named , who was in some kind of controversy and had basically been canceled. And that was the extent of what I knew about it, but, you know, we could have had a whole chapter, like in the same way that we explored perverted justice, we could have like, had acts that were specifically like, this is the Nissan story. And then an act that was like, this is the Davi vanity story. And I almost kind of contemplated doing that just to make this like a really definitive episode of this whole saga.
(1h 37m 4s):
But ultimately what I decided was this episode is already deals with some dark territory and imagery, and we’re talking about some really dark stuff and this onesie on story and the Dobie vanity story that we’re gonna talk about later are dark. And because it wasn’t the central focus of the episode, I just didn’t want to get into the weeds of how horrible and fucked up these stories were and have to take us and the listeners through that journey, because we’re already talking about child abuse and all these things, and these stories are graphic, but if you are interested and you want to find out more about, you know, these stories, they there’s a lot of stuff on YouTube, specifically dealing with these two stories and, you know, long story short ODC on is he hasn’t been sort of formally charged with any kind of crime.
(1h 37m 56s):
He hasn’t been arrested. Nobody’s ever been able to figure out a way to get anything to like legally stick to him. But it’s pretty clear from the information that’s available, that he is just a horrible manipulative child predator, or at least a person who has at many times sexually groomed underage women to be in this weird kind of cuckold relationship with his, at the time, his wife, but then eventually his husband were at the time, what was his wife had come out as BI. And so he publicly YouTube videos like this, isn’t just something they discussed. They would like make vlogs about this.
(1h 38m 38s):
But he was basically like in this weird, like trying to be woke kind of way. He was like, I think that it would be okay for, for Laney to have a girlfriend. And I support that. And if she wants to experience that and experiment with having relationships with women, I’m not going to stand in a way of that because I think that she should be able to express herself in that way. And I don’t get jealous about it because I feel like a woman could bring her things that I wouldn’t be able to bring her. And so I am in support of it. And so he’s like kind of trying to be this like woke feminist ally or whatever. But in reality, he just wants her to hook up with a girl because he gets off on it.
(1h 39m 22s):
And it goes to the point where he actually like pressures her. Like she doesn’t even want to have she, like, she acknowledges these feelings, but she doesn’t want to have a girlfriend. She doesn’t want to do these things. She’s just like, I am attracted to women as well, but we’re married and I’m, and I want to be in a monogamous relationship. And he actually pressures her into getting into a relationship with some other woman. And then he eventually uses it as a, as a opportunity to ingratiate himself. And then he will engage in a sexual relationship with the woman. And the first time they do it, it’s still weird and psychologically fucked up and probably very abusive, but the woman was technically 18, so it wasn’t breaking a law.
(1h 40m 7s):
But then the second time that they do it, it’s a 14 year old girl, despite the initial, the wave of relevance, the ANU Seon coverage afforded Hansen, he almost immediately saw backlash to what is being perceived as his attempting to insert himself into a situation he doesn’t understand or truly care about and exploited to grow his YouTube channel, all of the interview subjects, except Shiloh, start speaking out on social media saying that Hanson and a coach coached them before the interviews to focus on details that aren’t necessarily true. Hansen starts trying to shift the narrative to be about OTC on starting an internet cult, even though nobody actually believes this to be true. Hansen asks leading questions during the interviews and is criticized for using his credibility and influence to intimidate these young girls on a livestream into saying that they do think a Nissan is a cult leader simply because Hanson thinks it would be a jucier story with criticism mounting enhancing, attempting to do damage control his YouTube channel Hanson vs predator suddenly disappears.
(1h 41m 1s):
Hanson claims that it was deleted by YouTube because they had banned any use of the word predator on their platform. But some watchdogs dug into the situation and discovered that the channel had been deleted due to numerous copyright strikes from Hanson and Nakota uploading stolen clips. Hanson created a new channel called have a seat with Chris Hanson and continued pushing the Nissan as a cult leader narrative. But people on the platform are largely starting to see him as a complete joke. At this point, criticism towards Hanson is strong and several popular YouTubers basically create an entire cottage industry on making what fucked up thing did Chris Hanson do two day videos. Now that the eyes of all these watchdog YouTubers are on Hansen, they start paying attention to every move. He and his team, which is basically just Vincent tra make eventually several screenshots of Vincent making extremely inappropriate ablest and racist jokes on Twitter are brought to light Vincent claims.
(1h 41m 51s):
He was hacked, but nobody is buying it. One of the main YouTube is leading the charge of outing. Vincent, as a hateful bigot is west most who happens to be black, which leads to this text exchange between Vincent enhancing. So Chris, this Has gone far enough with these trolls, sorry to ruin your new year’s Eve, but I’m taking matters into my own hands with these fucking and we’re trolls. That’s right. I said, in all caps and word, because these troll is a fucking N-word. This is not your problem for a discussion or debate.
(1h 42m 31s):
My family is attacked with a cue in the middle of the attack where the second day it would be maybe if I got fucking paid, I would be more calm and talk to a shrink about this bullshit To rich Hanson response. Whoa. So funny to me, you saw this screenshot, this screenshot of this text exchange where he’s this, this like racist fucking screed is just typed in all caps, all these emotional typos. And then just Chris Hanson just goes, whoa.
(1h 43m 13s):
After this it’s it goes on to dock. Several of these people criticizing him, including west, most doxing being releasing illegitimately obtained private information about a person publicly on the internet. Usually in an effort to prompt people, to harass them in some way, these same watchdogs that he refers to as trolls also end up outing him and his company as a total sham, Vincent offers selling certain types of software to help with building websites and running live streams that he claims to have developed himself. But after doing some digging, these YouTubers discovered that he had just purchased the code for software off of some open source software sites and pass it off as his own. At this point, Hanson fires, Vincent, as you know, I’ve recently been reviewing the actions online and in person of my web producer, Vincent Kotara, things he’s said and done without my permission.
(1h 43m 60s):
And without my knowledge, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t condone much of what he’s said and done. And I can no longer work with him in any way going forward. He’s not going to be involved in any further projects. Great. Right. Vincent ended up being a terrible person, but Hanson didn’t know that at first. And when his impropriety came to light Hanson, swiftly severed ties with him, well, that would be all well and fine. If not for the next person that Hanson decides to partner up with in his place. The question I have about all of this, this revolving door of all these people that are helping and by all these people, I mean Vincent and the next guy there. So if they’re not getting paid, is Chris Hanson are these videos monetized? And Chris Hanson is just keeping the money.
(1h 44m 41s):
Is there just not a lot of money? Like I doubt there’s a lot of money because it’s really hard to make any significant cash from YouTube. Now, like in the past couple years, YouTube was, can’t make money off of their videos anymore. It’s like, you can, so many YouTubers have showed like done videos where they’re like, this is how much money I made from getting 50 million downloads, 50 million views. I made $2,000 and all this stuff. So I’d already made significant amount of money, but yeah, I also don’t, I don’t think he’s paid. I think, I think the, the, the exchange was you do all this stuff for me.
(1h 45m 22s):
You run my live streams, you run my YouTube channel and my website. And in exchange, you get to associate yourself with me. And I’m sure, especially to this Vincent Nakota guy to be like, you’re, you’re basically my perverted justice. You are the lone gunman like behind the scenes person running Chris Hanson’s operations. So I think that was the alert that he gave to these people. After the firing of Vincent Hanson announced lawyer Mike Morris, as joining his team to work on investigations. Whoa, not only did Hanson ditch this racist and competent asshole, but he also leveled up his ability to investigate predators properly by working with a lawyer, Mike Morris at the time of being hired and still currently to this day is embroiled in several different lawsuits, featuring accusations of a sexual assault from multiple women.
(1h 46m 18s):
Yep. Hansen hired a literal alleged predator to help him bust predators. And honestly, he’s never really answered to this. This, this seems to be a weird elephant in the room where, you know, Mike Morris, his whole stance is just that these are baseless claims. The same thing that every person who’s accused of sexual assault says, which legally kind of holds water. It’s like, you’ve made this accusation towards me. I roundly deny all these accusations. And you know, until there’s a charge, that’s kind of the end of it. There are multiple women involved in this and have like dozens of women. And it’s not, it’s not as intense as like a bill Cosby situation, but dozens of women that he’s worked with that have said he’s made inappropriate comments and advances and touch, you know, touch them in inappropriate ways and things.
(1h 47m 3s):
And the extreme irony of working with somebody like that on a show that’s about busting predators aside. Number one, it’s so bizarre that it’s never really been fully acknowledged or reconciled. And Chris Hanson has never just been like, he’s never addressed it in any way. He’s never been like, oh, this is my explanation for why I’m doing this. They’ve just sort of taken the approach of like ignore that and never acknowledge it. Part of me is kind of surprised though, that it’s not the other way around. Like part of me is surprised that, I mean, yeah, I know that Chris Hanson had an affair and everyone was like, look, you’re human too.
(1h 47m 43s):
But usually when people are drawn to that type of position in life, there’s a, there’s a deeper reason. You know what I mean? Like I don’t give a shit. I mean, I look, I feel for Chris Hanson’s wife and his kids that sucks, but at the end of the day, life is messy. People have affairs people cheat on each other. It fucking sucks. I’m not saying that it’s like a great morally upstanding thing to do, but like it’s not something that should end your career, Adult cheating on your wife or your husband or whatever is, is not, it’s not good. I don’t wanna endorse it, but it’s not a crime. It’s not the worst thing a person can do in the world.
(1h 48m 23s):
Certainly not anywhere comparable to child predatorial behavior. Like they were kind of comparing it to in those, in those headlines. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a thing that a significant amount of a significant percentage of the us population engages in it at one point or another. Yeah. Because life is messy and you you’re, you know, you’re, you’re not always in a position where one door opens and one doors closing at the, you know, in the opportune time, sometimes there’s overlap, whatever, whatever. I mean, I’m not defending anybody like everybody, there are these, all these motherfuckers are adults. They can, you know, do whatever they’re going to do. I, I that’s, I guess that’s what I’m getting at is it’s just like, everybody’s consensual nothing.
(1h 49m 5s):
Nobody’s hurting anybody aside from like the emotional side of, you know, not being true and honest, but also like at that point, then when you draw the line, like lying, like, you know, fucking doing drugs, like which drugs and how much. And let’s just like, I just don’t care about any of that. Like just you’re you do, you I’ll do me or right. Like fucking let’s calm down. But I’m the people that are typically drawn to positions where they get to be like, I see what you’re doing. They typically have something inside of them. That is, I don’t know if that’s not aligned in. And that gets off on that because they subconsciously are excited about the fact that they get to show someone else up in a way that they would not want to be up.
(1h 49m 48s):
Yeah. It’s why cops have so much control issues and so many control issues and, you know, straight Republicans from the south they’re like homosexuals are gonna burn in hell. And like every single one of them is, you know, got a 19 year old blonde dude on the side. That’s how humanity works, right. Is there’s always the thing you rail against the most is the thing that probably has something to do with you. Not always, but a lot of the time there’s that component. And it’s interesting to me that while Chris Hanson obviously is a very flawed and very shady person in some respects that that aspect of his character doesn’t really appear to be there. Well, I mean, so far as we know, You know, there, there, there Could be things like that, but also, I mean, some, some of the things that we get into later kind of do get into that territory a little bit.
(1h 50m 38s):
We don’t know anything outwardly that would point in the direction of he’s got some skeletons in his closet of child predatory to behavior that he’s ever committed. Like, nothing like that exists, but some of the stuff that we get into later on with the way that he shamelessly exploits, the horrible trauma of sexual assault survivors is close. It’s pretty close to That is, yeah, you’re right. Despite His newfound freedom from Vincent and his new partner, people have mostly completely lost interest in the investigation. Mostly because most of the people Hansen interviews on the show, aren’t actual victims of a Nissan, but rather random people with varying levels of tenuous connection to the story.
(1h 51m 22s):
At one point, he interviews Holly Hayes who merely runs a tumbler about onesie on called Annecy on Hertz people.tumbler.com. She doesn’t know him or any alleged victims. She just hates him and runs a call-out tumbler about him. During this interview, she seems high on drugs and later admits she was high on Xanax. The Annecy on investigation, kind of fizzles out after that in one last ditch effort to resurrect his relevance in the case and get people interested in on his site. Again, he returned to an old tactic from his news days that has both rocketed him to massive fame, as well as gotten him in deep trouble. Which would it be this time Hanson and a camera crew flew to Washington state went to a Nissan’s house and attempted to confront him Are recording.
(1h 52m 5s):
Hi, there’s a person who’s been stalking me online and they just showed up to my house. And they’re outside now? Yes, they’re not no my door. Oh, okay. And do you know if they have any weapons? They have a bunch of camera. People like their YouTube they’re YouTube stalkers. Okay. But no weapons seen, I didn’t see any weapons. I just saw like six guys in my driveway and one of them is knocking on my door. Okay. For a second here. And the one that’s knocking on your door, is he the main one that you said has been stalking you? Yes. He’s a soccer. He’s, he’s yelling. He’s yelling things that make you the door now. Okay. And what do we know his name is Chris.
(1h 52m 48s):
Greg, are you there? Ty, this would be a great opportunity for you guys to tell your side of the story here and talk about the controversy, the allegations, The allegations of grooming. That was probably the most surreal phone call of that nine 11 operator’s life. This story is so messed up because it forces you to somehow take the side of somebody who by all accounts is likely a viral child predator. But just to assure you that there are literally no heroes in this story, and nobody comes out looking at any way superior because of the confrontation, as well as Hansen’s ongoing investigations, attempted to Sue him for slander, but the suit quietly died after a Niecy on accidentally served the wrong Chris Hanson.
(1h 53m 44s):
I love it. You can’t make this shit up so Good. I love it. That was probably the most surreal subpoena of that Chris Hanson’s life, despite all the backlash, despite all the criticism and despite all the flagrant written competence. At this point, Hanson’s still had some writer, dye fans from the T cap days who he could essentially do no wrong by as mentioned before, the amazing humanitarian accomplishment that was putting 300 online child predators behind bars during the making of T cap was almost enough of a karmic boost to make up for anything Hansen could ever do in the future. But only almost the final shoe dropped for a lot of even Hanson’s most diehard fans.
(1h 54m 29s):
When Sarah, the woman who had been groomed by Tennessean and Kai at 14 years old came forward and revealed that after her interview on Chris Hanson show, she had told them about a laptop. She owned that contained explicit pictures of Kai when he was still identifying as Laney that had been sent to her when she was definitely still under age, the timestamps on the photos would prove it. And it could be hard evidence that would actually lead to prosecution. Hanson told Sarah to have the laptop ship to Vincent and Hansen would tap some of his FBI contacts to get it properly seized and examined by federal law enforcement. She shipped it off, assuming that fucking Chris Hanson knew what he was doing and then heard nothing back for months in January of 2020 journalists, Steve posted on social media.
(1h 55m 14s):
The story related to him by Sarah, that Hanson had asked for her to ship the laptop to Vincent promising, to hand it over to the FBI only to find out months later that they hadn’t touched the laptop at all and furious and confused, ask them to ship it back to her. After this story goes out, Hanson spoke out to defend himself, claiming that he wanted to make sure he knew the proper chain of custody before sending the laptop to anyone at the FBI in case sending it to the wrong person would somehow invalidate the evidence and make it inadmissible. However, in an ironic turn of events, the fact that Chris Hanson, a person that has been publicly campaigning for to go to prison for nearly a year, who literally went to his house and stood outside, harassing him, ever had possession of the laptop was considered tampering with evidence and made it completely inadmissible in court.
(1h 55m 58s):
Hansen’s fuckery had certainly proved to be nothing but a distraction and largely unhelpful for the case in the past. But this was the first time that he had actively in arguably damaged the chances of the victim, getting justice with his mere involvement. The T cap community started to see Hansen differently and he immediately started to lose supporters is once rabid fan base slash attack dogs were turning against him. The quote unquote onesie on investigation was dead, but old, dirty Chrissy Han hands still had one more ACE up his sleeve. His name was Davi vanity. So how you feeling about Chris Hanson right now? Has he gone too far for you yet?
(1h 56m 38s):
Well, while he’s fallen farther than you probably could have possibly ever imagined, he has so much farther to fall from endorsing pyramid schemes to participating in the doxing of innocent people, to actively obstructing justice. Find out the thrilling conclusion of this fall from grace next week on case file number 30, Chris Hanson, episode three, I’m Dave baker and I’m Andrew Price. This has been deep cuts and find me on the internet@heydaybaker.com, where you can purchase comics like action hospital, fuck off squad, making a wonderful whole bunch of other stuff. And you’re working. People find you on the Internet. You can find me responding to a racist tirade by just simply saying, whoa, and you can also find me@dapricerights.com, where you get my book deadbolt a hi private deep cuts is a production by boy genius media.
(1h 57m 50s):
If you’d like to find this show and others like it, please visit Boyd genius, media.com or deep cuts pod.com. If You want to join in on post episode discussions, please join the deep cuts podcast. Facebook group. Finally subscribe to our YouTube channel for additional video content. The incidental music for this episode was created by Catalino whose music can be found at. We keep on hours.bandcamp.com and the dead boy detectives who Thank you to deep cuts for the amazing episode. If you want the rest of the story right now, check the links in the show notes to subscribe to deep cuts. Otherwise the rest of the story we’ll be right here on true crime by Indy drop-in tomorrow.
(1h 58m 33s):
Thanks again for listening to true crime by Indy drop-in. If you would like your show featured, reach out to us at Indy drop-in on all social media or go to Indi drop in.com. See you next time. Hundred 50 years Of breakthroughs, milestones and triumphs. 150 years of children’s national hospital. 150 years of generous community support. You can give kids a future where they get freckles instead of chemotherapy and paper cuts. Instead of surgery children’s national hospital, 150 year stronger with your help, please give today. Visit children’s national.org/ 150 years. That’s children’s national.org/ 150 years.
(1h 59m 17s):
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