ABC's 20/20 sides with online child-predator scum

Tonight's episode of ABC's 20/20 opened with an "expose" on the NBC show To Catch a Predator. In it they claimed that NBC and Chris Hansen had caused the death of dirtbag child predator Kaufman (Tex) County Assistant District Attorney William Conradt:

Ex-Asst. DA and child predator Conradt turned himself into a grease spot

But the one man, the one very important man "Dateline" thought it had caught, did not show up. William Conradt, 56, an assistant district attorney in a neighboring county, did not go to the sting house even after Dateline had one of its actors call him three different times to get him to walk into the trap.

With Conradt not taking the bait, a decision was made to go get him at his home in the nearby town of Terrell. It was a decision that would raise questions about why the rush to arrest him on a Sunday afternoon.

Conradt's sister Patricia told "20/20" the police broke in and then headed down a hallway to the bedroom where her brother was waiting for them with a gun in his hand.

"They came in, and they see him," Patricia said. "He says, 'Guys, I'm not gonna hurt anybody.' And then he put the gun to his head and shot."

"I understand he took his own life, but I have a feeling that he took his own life when he looked out the door and saw there were a bunch of television cameras outside," said former Murphy detective Walt Weiss..."

Well...boo freakin' hoo. Remember, Conradt made the first contact online with someone he thought was a 13-year old boy. And as NBC revealed on Wednesday, it turns out he had more to hide than that:

Conradt also sent pornography to the decoy -- another possible felony in Texas. Conradt said he'd love to see the boy masturbate.

Just last week, Dateline obtained a forensic police report describing what was found on Conradt's computers and in his home. The investigator reported he recovered the graphic chats between Conradt and the Perverted Justice decoy and all the photos Conradt had sent.

And there was more. It also said that Conradt's CDs, laptop computers and cell phone all contained pornographic material -- some included child pornography.

Of course someone is looking to cash in on this "tragedy". The pervert's sister is looking to get paid:

The sister of a man who was suspected of being a sexual predator and killed himself as the cameras of "Dateline NBC" closed in on him sued NBC Universal Inc. on Monday for $105 million.

Patricia Conradt's brother, Bill Conradt Jr., shot himself last November in a Dallas suburb as police knocked at his door and a camera crew for the newsmagazine waited in the street.

Patricia Conradt is planning on donating the $105 million to victims of child pornography. OK, I made that up. She's really just looking to profit off her brother's perversion.

But there is more. Turns out there's another weasel District Attorney in Texas (I mean, besides the now-deceased Conradt and buddy of illegal alien drug dealers, Johnny Sutton):

As six other police departments had done before, the Murphy, Texas police department made a deal with "Dateline": to allow NBC cameras to record the sting and to let people hired by "Dateline" actually set up and run the sting, much to the astonishment of a local district attorney.

In a letter sent to the Murphy police department in advance, Collin County District Attorney John Roach said the deal was a bad idea.

We're "in the law enforcement business, not show business," read the letter.

Roach: In the "Law Enforcement" bidness...unless the crime is looking for sex from a teenager

Well, except that John Roach didn't really mean it when he says he's in the "law enforcement business." You see, the Murphy police department did arrest 23 scumbags who solicited sex online from who they hoped were teenagers. So how many did the appropriately-surnamed Roach prosecute?

ZERO.

For four days men showed up at an undercover house in Murphy, Texas.

They had all chatted online about sex with a decoy pretending to be a young teen.

The men ranged in age from 23 years old to 63. One man was a teacher. All the men were arrested by Murphy police, who had been staked out in a van next door.

Later, the men were charged with online solicitation of a minor and faced up to 10 years in prison -- but that may never happen.

Six months after these suspects were thrown in jail, the local prosecutor, Collin County District Attorney John Roach, decided to drop the charges.

I am not going to try to analyze the legal mumbo-jumbo Roach tried to use for his excuse not to prosecute. Follow the link and you can read it for yourself. But over a hundred men across the country who have been profiled on To Catch a Predator have been successfully prosecuted or sent to jail. You can read here how another Texas DA with substantially more testicular matter than Roach has breaks down Texas law.

Not surprisingly, Roach did not have the guts to come on Dateline to defend himself. Which all leaves me to surmise that either Roach is lazy or he is a big pussy.

I am not a fan of To Catch a Predator. I think it's cheap television, and that Chris Hansen is a wannabe "journalist" who'd rather be news than report it. But if the program is successful at exposing and perhaps deterring online child predators, I'm all for it.

And 20/20 can go suck eggs for trying to make a child-predator pervert into a sympathetic victim.