Original subtitles

The following program documents

real law enforcement investigations

of child sexual predators. This deeply disturbing content

may be triggering for some viewers. Please watch with care.

Next, the team targets an all-American dad,

who expects to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex.

Then, Detective Tony Godwin tracks a predator

who uses Facebook to target an underage student.

And one of Tony's officers

goes above and beyond to get the job done.

Tony tells me he needs me to decoy.

Get on the ground!

A team of police professionals

in North Dallas has one goal--

Get out of the car!

take down online predators

before they harm a real child.

Child predators are everywhere.

Online predators pose the biggest danger

to America's children today.

Kids are being targeted at an alarming rate.

This team is opening its case files

for the first time to show you how it tracks them down.

All right, he's coming this way.

And brings them to justice by any means necessary.

Put your hands on the car!

This is Detective Tony Godwin, and his team is...

the Predator Hunters.

Detective Tony is on a case that stands out.

He's hunting a predator with a good job,

a family, and a house in the suburbs.

But this all-American dad is living a double life.

And what Tony uncovers leaves him speechless.

I'm, like, at a loss for words.

This is, like, the absolute first time I've ever seen this.

He sends Tony some of the most disturbing images

he's ever seen.

First unit's out.

We need someone to get on the front of him.

And the deeper the team looks, the darker it gets.

Sometimes a case comes along that really hammers home

just how destructive a predator's behavior can be.

Take this guy, Jeffrey Toth.

His actions leave his family in ruins.

This case takes place in 2010.

Chat rooms like Yahoo! Chat were all the rage.

If you're a predator, these are the places you want to hang out.

If you're a predator hunter,

it's an even better place to hang out.

Catfishing is simply posing online in an undercover capacity

with a fake identity.

The secret behind catfishing is to have

a really good, developed profile.

So this particular profile,

I'm a 14-year-old girl, and my name is Alecia.

Photographs used come from coworkers.

And they have given me permission

to use their photographs for these types of investigations.

The only thing I require is that the photographs

are actual photographs from 12 to 14-ish,

the ages that I'm purporting to be online.

When I enter the Yahoo! chat rooms,

I enter into a room called Romance.

Typically, I go into rooms that are heavily populated.

I immediately get a private message from a user named JT.

"Hey, Alecia. Jay here.

I'm a 54-year-old male from Texas. What about you?"

"Hey, I'm 14-year-old female."

Jay replies back, "What you doing? Getting in trouble? LOL"

A normal guy who has no interest or preference in children

would have never even messaged.

I got red flags waving all over the place with this guy.

Within days, he messages me back.

"Do you have a computer in your room?

Or is it a public computer?"

"I'll bet your mom would not approve

of your chatting with an older guy."

Really typical predator behavior.

What kind of seed is this guy planting in my head, right?

He's trying to just keep this thing a secret,

all about manipulation of this kid.

I'm really concerned that he could be

currently talking to other kids. I'm really just going to play

into the role of this 14-year-old.

I just ask him, "What does JT stand for?"

He responds back and says,

"Jeffrey's my first name, but Jay is my nickname."

Jay doesn't have a picture in his profile.

He sends me three photos of himself.

He looks like the average middle-aged man.

When I've been talking to Jay for a little over three weeks,

then he sends me this message.

"I've collected some fun things for you to see. LOL"

"You have to save it to your desktop

and then delete it afterwards, OK?"

Now I'm really curious.

Now I'm thinking, "What the heck is this guy going to send me?"

What he sends are three very sexually explicit photographs.

I'm looking at the faces of the girls in these photos,

and what's happened is he has

superimposed my Alecia girl profile

onto these images to make it look like

Alecia is engaged in these sex acts.

And I'm like, at a loss for words.

This is like, the absolute first time I've ever seen this.

Jeffrey is trying to just totally desensitize me,

playing this profile, to the thought and idea

of having sex with someone like him.

This guy is revealing his absolute true colors,

what a predator he is, plain and simple.

What he just did is a felony in Texas.

Tony needs a positive ID to move forwards.

He calls in Detective Clint McNear.

Tony and I started the academy together about 30 years ago.

Spent our whole career together, raised our kids together.

He's been a brother I've never had for the last 31 years.

This is the subpoena that was sent to Yahoo,

trying to identify JT.

And what we get in return is whatever blanket information,

in this case Yahoo, has on that person.

The results aren't great.

Not a lot of useful information in there.

We get an IP address, and we get a location that he is in Austin.

However, the name on the subpoena came back as Mr. JT.

For all we know that's a made-up screen name

- that he may have been using. - We know where he is,

but we're no closer to finding out who he is.

Knowing how these cases lay out in court,

I know I have the elements, but what I really need

is for him to set up a meeting in person.

Then he pops this question on me--

"What's your schedule like on Thursday?"

"OK, I'll be driving through Dallas on Thursday."

Bam, we got this. This guy wants to meet in person.

We're confident in where he's wanting to go

with this communication he's having with Alecia.

He sent pornographic images,

he's sharing about his sexual fantasies.

With all that has taken place so far,

clearly, he intends to harm a child.

We need to bring the guy in.

I decide I'm going to push

to one of my favorite takedown locations.

It's kind of a U-shaped driveway,

which gives us the tactical advantage.

It's one way in and one way out.

There's a lot of team members, and I have to place them

strategically from an outer perimeter

to an inner perimeter so that when the target,

Jeffrey, arrives, we know that ahead of time,

we see him ahead of time, and then it gets passed off

to Clint, sitting close by.

Yeah, you staged me just outside,

so no matter which angle he approached from,

he was going to have to drive right in front of me,

and then I could pull out and trail him right inside.

The reason we want to be able to control it is

that he doesn't get out and harm the public,

or if they see another child,

to harm them, or it turns into a car chase.

So this is the best ability

for us to control a very dangerous situation.

Just days before the takedown,

Jeffrey starts to back off.

I really think the gravity of what's going on

is kind of setting in with him,

and it's kind of weighing on his shoulders, because he says,

"I'm a little nervous."

And I respond back, "Me too. I'm really nervous."

So then Jeffrey hits me with this.

"I could land in jail.

I have visions of the police scooping me up as I walk out."

What they're doing is obviously a crime.

They know that they're coming to meet a child,

and so they get cold feet.

I try to reassure him.

At the end of the day, I've still got him.

We're about to put our hands on him.

Now I just need him to show up.

So April 22nd at 9:30 a.m.,

I text him, and I let him know what the address is,

and where he's coming.

This guy potentially could be armed.

My number one priority is that nobody gets hurt.

I'm setting up on surveillance,

waiting for a traveler to come in.

He's identified himself as J or Jeffrey.

If it goes accordingly,

he will pull in on the east side of the complex,

which is this location that I have on video.

You're sitting out there,

then you start thinking, "OK, this guy's not going to show up.

"Is this going to really go down,

or are they going to get nervous and bail?"

I'm getting a text message right now.

Said he's caught in some construction,

taking a little longer than expected.

We don't know if he's gaming Tony.

We don't know if he already may be there doing a heat run,

driving by looking for us.

I just received this a few minutes ago.

"Yes, all OK.

About 45 minutes outside of Dallas in Waxahachie."

I responded back, "OK, I'm getting excited."

And he sent back, "Me too."

All I want to hear is one of my spotters say,

"I have eyes on him."

11:18 a.m., I just received a text

from the suspect who said he is ten minutes away.

Tony's team is ready to take down a child predator

in a North Dallas apartment complex.

I'm setting up on surveillance,

waiting for a traveler to come in.

He's identified himself as Jay or Jeffrey.

These operations take a huge amount of resources,

because I have to have covert vehicles,

covert detectives, uniform people.

There's a lot of moving parts

and a lot of risk that is involved.

He's in front of the complex right now.

Stand by. I got a visual on him. This is him.

He's parking. Come in, come in, come in.

First unit's out.

We need someone to get on the front of him.

They do a textbook takedown,

they approach Jeffrey.

They've got him.

He does comply.

Here's our suspect.

When the police are running up,

banging on the window,

I think it's just an overwhelming surprise.

These people are so focused on this fantasy

that they think is going to play out.

When we click the cuffs on is really satisfaction.

Today, this person won't harm a child.

They search him and his car.

The team finds a webcam, a digital camera,

a laptop, and a bottle of lubricant.

I'm not shocked,

but I wasn't anticipating finding that at all.

They recover his driver's license,

which identifies him as Jeffrey Blaze Toth.

I do a search on him and determine that Jeffrey

is married with two children.

Toth is transported to the police station,

where he's booked in for online solicitation of a minor.

What most people don't understand

is there's an interview, and there's an interrogation.

And during an interview is when I'm just building rapport.

But once I feel like I'm in that zone is when I will trigger

and switch over to an interrogation.

He opens up and makes admissions.

Jeffrey has no idea that I played the role of Alecia.

I want them to believe

the entire time this was a real child.

I do that because I want to have success in the interview.

I want them to be very, very transparent and open with me.

And oftentimes, when these predators

believe that it's a real child,

it puts them in a different mindset.

You kind of see a little deflection in his demeanor.

He's like, "I know, I know," like the head nod.

The acknowledgment that, "Yeah, I really screwed up."

He also understands he is in deep trouble.

Officers take Toth to jail

after his interview with Tony.

Toth then calls home.

Please continue to hold

while the operator attempts to connect your call.

When I hear the call, I feel so much empathy for his wife,

because her world literally just shattered.

And so it's a bittersweet moment.

I'm super grateful that he's never going to have

an opportunity to harm another kid.

But I know it comes at a price for someone else.

The next day, a team from Austin PD

searches Jeffrey Toth's home.

It seizes over 150,000 images of child sexual abuse material.

The size of this collection is unbelievably large.

It's unfathomable that somebody would have this much.

Every one of those are real victims somewhere.

This guy had everything going in his life.

Like, he had wealth and a family.

And he threw it all away.

It's 2012.

Tony is tracking a man who used Facebook

to target an underage girl.

To catch him,

Tony must take over the identity of a real child,

and switch takedown locations

when the predator throws a curveball.

OK, I got eyes on him.

Suspect's coming up to Travis.

When Tony finally sets the trap,

the predator walks right into it.

Every once in a while, we get notified that there's a predator

that has contact with the child right now.

That's what the scenario was with this guy, Andrew McKee.

My team and I, we had to act really fast

on a developing situation.

April 23rd of 2012, I got a phone call

from one of our school resource officers.

This guy's job is to keep middle school students safe.

So the SRO tells me that a 14-year-old student

had come to him at the school and told him

she got some really unsolicited messages on her phone.

So the messages were really sexual in nature,

really troubling to this kid,

why she came to the school to report it.

There's a real sense of urgency,

because I'm a father and I have daughters.

I tend to put that victim in the sense of being my own child.

If something like this happened to my daughter,

I'm going to flip the world upside down

to make it get right.

Tony is tracking a predator who used Facebook

to target an underage girl.

The question really is, "Why is this adult reaching out

to a kid who he doesn't know on any level whatsoever?"

So I tasked one of my teammates,

David Galvan, to start this investigation.

This is a file on the victim.

So Tony, we met in the academy in 1994.

He's a great cop.

He's one of those guys that you could depend on on the street.

Definitely one of the best in his field.

When it comes to the sexual abuse,

any type of abuse of a child takes toll on you,

because you carry the weight of the children in your heart,

and what has happened to them.

I go to the school and I do talk with the young girl.

She's distraught about it.

She feels like, of course, like she's done something wrong,

like she's in trouble for this when actually she's the victim.

So what she tells us is that ten days earlier,

she got an unsolicited friend request

from this guy named Andrew McKee, which she did accept.

And then he immediately sends her a message,

says, "Hey, how are you?"

But she ignored this.

Online, kids will friend everybody,

whether they know them or not.

And they're divulging information that shouldn't be

divulged about themselves, where they live, phone numbers

and things like where they go to school.

It's a very dangerous place.

Mistakes will be made. This child happened to

have a lot of information on her Facebook page,

one of which was her phone number.

So a week later, the student's in class,

and she gets this message on her phone that says,

"This is Andrew from Facebook.

So what girl do you know that will want $100?"

He sends a third message to her.

And this time, he sends a picture.

And this is a picture of a man and woman's genitals

that are touching.

So now this student, like she's totally confused.

He's offering her $100 to go find another girl to have sex.

How disgusting is this guy?

So when you have somebody that is that upfront

about things like that,

especially when it comes to money and other children,

it's very concerning. We need to do something quickly.

We need to figure out who this person actually is

and get more information on them,

more intelligence on that person.

I have to figure out if this is a real guy

or this is a fake profile.

So I do some database searches on Andrew McKee.

I get some DMV information from Oklahoma.

And included in that is a driver's license photo.

And that photo matches up 100% to the photo

that was used on the Facebook profile.

We've got to find him. And I've got an idea.

The victim, in this case, along with her parents,

gives me permission to do a takeover

of this Facebook account.

To become that child, use her phone,

use her accounts, and target Mr. McKee.

It's a really dangerous area to operate in,

but I don't have any other alternatives at this point.

I send a text message to McKee.

I just play along with him at this point.

So I give him some details of the girl I've allegedly found.

So Britany is me, right?

I'm playing, now, my undercover role.

And so I give McKee the phone number I use

on my undercover phone so that we can keep things going.

And he replies back immediately.

"Your friend gave me your number. How old are you?"

So I just confirm with him. "Well, I'm 14. Is that cool?"

He tells me, "Yeah, I'm cool with that."

This guy is a big problem, and he could really harm a real kid.

So on April 24th, I text McKee as Britany,

and we talk for hours. And it gets really pornographic.

I mean, some nasty stuff starts happening.

The majority of the things that he sent

were so highly sexually graphic and disgusting

that we're not able to show that type of material.

We're not willing to expose other people to his depravity.

He's a sick guy.

In order to make this case a more solid case in court,

he has to offer up or make a substantial step

for a meeting in person for a sex act.

Eventually, McKee does suggest a meeting in person.

And we are on.

So I give McKee an address to the apartment complex

where Britany lives.

I'm going to use that to lure him in.

McKee says he's traveling on the train

and he wants Britany to meet at the station.

The idea that we could do a takedown

at a public train station

is not something that would get even approved up my chain.

There's too many people, innocent bodies.

They have no idea what's going on.

We have no real control, tactically.

So as Britany, I just ask him to stick to the plan.

Just come to the apartments like he suggested.

So I post two people at the train station. Both are covert.

Their job is just to blend into the crowd,

and wait until they get a visual on McKee,

and notify us on the radio that he's arrived.

Tony lies in wait for Andrew McKee.

The predator thinks he's about to meet a 14-year-old girl.

April 26th, 2012. The current time is 10:06 a.m.

This is Detective Godwin. We are set up to meet a traveler

in an online solicitation of a minor case.

The suspect we are looking for

is identified in this photograph.

His name is Andrew Dale McKee. He's a 35-year-old male.

At 10:16 a.m., my covert officers at the station

tell me that McKee has arrived.

But McKee is lost.

Tony steps in to keep the takedown on track.

So I come up with a plan to shift everything

by over a half a mile.

I send him a message and say, "Hey, there's a store

about halfway between you and me, I'll meet you there."

The fact that we have to move from Plan A to Plan B,

it elevates the risk level.

Because the traffic concerns, the public safety concerns.

Logistically, it's a nightmare for me.

We have changed the takedown location

to the S&K Food Store next door to this tire shop.

We do have undercover officers inside this location right now.

Is that him at Travis?

I thought, "Man, I lost this dude."

And all of a sudden, I get this message back.

OK, I got eyes on him.

I'm expecting McKee to sort of bolt in a direction.

It's not like he's not going to see

these cars and squad cars screeching up on him.

So I give the team the order to take him down.

10:55.

Get on the ground!

This is the arrest of Mr. McKee.

Who arrived to have sex with what he believes

to be is a 14-year-old child.

I realized he suffers from a hearing loss,

a very significant hearing loss.

McKee says he's been talking to a girl,

but she didn't really let him know how old she was.

I need him to know I know everything about this case.

Now I'm going to give it to him.

He knew exactly that this kid was underage. I mean, come on.

He wants me to believe all this crap?

I don't buy it for a second.

McKee's admission gives me every bit of evidence

that I need to put him away for a very long time.

The McKee case shows that parents shouldn't rely on

social media platforms to protect their kids.

Parents need to police

their kids' privacy settings themselves.

Kids really shouldn't have their full names,

their direct cell phone number, or anything about their address

on their social media.

To lure the next predator,

Tony uses one of his officers as a decoy.

That's when the nerves kicked in.

This case is about grooming,

control, and the long game.

Put your hands up!

But when this predator lands in custody,

he denies everything.

You know, I depend on my coworkers

to help me bring predators to justice.

That was the case with this predator, Marty Taylor.

I had to think outside the box to catch this guy.

This case took place on the website Backpage.

Backpage was a unique place. You can buy and sell,

you can apply for jobs, find a house, a rent.

But there's a real deviant side to Backpage in the personal ads,

and that's where we tend to focus our attention,

because that's where we see predatory behavior.

I navigate over to the Backpage Dallas area for men seeking men.

What I'm looking for is those ads

that appear to be a little ambiguous,

looking potentially for kids, versus a consenting adult.

I've only been on the site for just a couple of minutes,

and "Sugar Dad looking for his son"

really catches my attention.

"Looking for a younger guy for companionship,

he must be 18 to 30-ish." He wants love. In return,

he's offering up a nice place, three meals a day.

This ad, in my experience,

tells me that this is someone who's got some wiggle room

in what they're looking for, meaning most likely younger,

knowing they can't put that onto that ad

without getting it flagged or removed.

This is a predator that's looking for a kid.

Tony devises a plan

to lure in the Backpage Sugar Daddy.

He creates a profile for a 14-year-old boy named Bryan.

The email address I set up is BryanBoiCurious,

and I'm painting the picture that he is curious

about where he is in his sexuality.

I reply to the ad, "Well, I'm 14. I'll be 15 in November."

Any adult that saw a response like this

would know immediately, "Hold up, this is a kid,

this is illegal," and they would walk away.

I get a reply, and it says, "No, I'm not OK with it.

"You can be absolutely gorgeous, but it isn't worth jail

to be with a hot young stud. Sorry, I'm Marty, by the way."

On one side of this, he's acknowledging,

"I know this is wrong,

I know this is illegal, I could go to jail."

But on the flip side of it, he's very interested.

When you see the messages from these predatory types,

they know it's wrong,

and they know they have to be very cryptic in what they say.

Marty brings up that he wants to transition

from email over to text messaging,

and that is absolutely a home run for me.

Now, I've got his phone number.

He fully believes I'm a 14-year-old boy,

and we go from there.

As soon as we start texting,

Marty sends me a picture of himself.

And knowing what Marty looks like,

or is purporting to look like, is a big advantage for me.

The flipside to getting a picture from Marty

is that within a few hours,

he wants to know what Bryan looks like,

and he needs validation that this is a real kid.

Tony enlists Officer Bobby Taylor

to bring the character of Bryan to life.

I first met Tony in the academy.

He came to teach us about

the Internet Crimes Against Children unit.

During that time is when he asked if

any of us would be willing

to work with him once we finished training.

I was 23,

I still looked pretty closely to what I did in high school,

and so I took him some of my pictures from when I was a kid.

So the profile picture that I send him of Bryan,

which is actually Bobby at that age,

is a really big hit with Marty.

Right off the bat, he escalates things.

Marty's tone and what he's saying is his way

of trying to normalize the deviance

that he wants to interject, and that's just another example

of the grooming process and his power and control.

September 17th of 2014, Marty sends me a message.

He says to me "We'll only do what you feel up to.

"I don't think kissing is illegal.

We can go back to my place and kiss and talk."

He wants to come across like it's innocent,

but it doesn't really emphasize what he's really wanting to do,

and how wildly inappropriate something like that would be

between a guy in his fifties and a 14-year-old kid.

Marty's really clear in the messages about meeting,

to make sure that I don't tell any adults.

"Your mom will never find out about me."

But he's still nervous, so he messages me.

"OK, I have to ask this to protect myself--

"you're not a cop, and you don't work for the police, right?

Because I'm not a cop, and I don't work for them."

I just reassure him.

I mean, this is really classic predator behavior, right?

This guy is scared, obviously.

He's having some very rational thoughts,

but that doesn't deter him.

So I need to get Marty identified.

I kick off legal process to the cell provider,

and while I'm waiting for that to happen,

Marty messages me just after 6 o'clock the next morning.

"Good morning, my boy. I hope you slept well.

"I thought about you a lot last night,

and this morning when I woke up,"

and just really out of nowhere, he sends me a picture

of his white Chevy Silverado.

There's this gotcha moment

because his license plate's in the actual photo.

I run this plate through the DMV,

and I come back with a full name.

Jack Marty Taylor, 59-year-old male from Dallas, Texas.

So Taylor's not married.

He has no criminal history I can find,

and he has no access to kids that I can find.

In order for this case to move forward

and me to put a charge onto Taylor,

I need a couple of things to happen.

One, I need him to set up a specific date and time

for when this meeting will happen,

and then two, I need him to show what his intentions are.

Does he want to have a sexual relationship with this child?

And if so, it's game on.

It takes about three months,

but eventually, Marty gives me exactly what we're looking for.

Marty's message

reveals his true intentions towards Bryan.

This guy's a real danger to minors.

I need to lock in a date for him to meet,

so I can arrest him, and charge him,

and eventually get him convicted and put in prison.

Tony prepares to take down predator Marty Taylor,

using a fellow police officer as bait.

The use of a live decoy is not such a hurdle to get over

because the person that we're using is a police officer.

The biggest threat to that

is if our bad guy shows up and kind of realizes,

"Wait a minute, that's not a real kid."

Marty needs validation

that what he believes in his mind right now,

which is he's got the pot of gold,

which is why I asked Bobby to help me in this case.

Tony tells me he needs me to decoy,

and he's going to need me to dress up as a kid,

because this guy is very eager, but very cautious.

This is the spot where I tell Marty

to come over and meet Bryan.

My intention is to put him right out in the middle of this field.

You wanted me on this side of the field,

so there was distance between us

where you thought he was going to park.

The advantage of having Marty meet Bryan over here

is a bunch of things.

The drive to come in, just a one way in and one way out.

We have good coverage for surveillance units.

If Marty starts to freak out, he has nowhere to go.

The moment you said, "Hey, he's en route,"

that's when the nerves kicked in.

And all I could think of was,

"I am the most junior guy in this operation.

I can't mess this up."

Marty's pickup pulls in at 4:15 p.m.

Marty starts flashing his lights at me to let me know it's him.

And I remember freezing.

Tony tells me, "Pretend you're texting."

As I'm walking towards him, I get about halfway.

And at that point, as I see red and blue lights,

I take off running and I hide.

So I give the team the order to take him down.

Two squad cars race across the parking lot

to block Marty's escape.

I think he's in a degree of shock at that moment

because of everything that's happened,

the culmination of this, the gravity of this now.

He's in handcuffs, he's in the back of a squad car.

And so his mind is racing a million miles an hour.

When Marty gets into custody, he's sort of

pleading his innocence and that he's a nice guy,

just trying to help. Nothing's happened.

The reality is, he knows full well what he was doing.

So he's sort of minimizing things with partial truths,

but he's also telling partial lies.

The reality is that's an online solicitation of a minor.

Marty tells me in his confession that he lost control.

Ultimately, he was doing what it is

he really, truly wanted to do,

and would have done had there been no police intervention.

The Taylor case shows that boys as well as girls are at risk

from online predators.

In fact, one in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse.

Parents need to show their kids that they're approachable,

and that their kids can talk to them about important life stuff.

Because if a kid feels different or lonely,

like my undercover identity Bryan did,

their mixture of vulnerability and curiosity

puts them at a higher risk

of being targeted by an online predator.