Original subtitles

Detective Tony Godwin hunts

a high school teacher caught sexting a student.

The team confronts a predator

with twisted ideas about love.

And detectives join forces

to trap a predator targeting both boys and girls.

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.

Tony and his team wait outside

an apartment complex for a dangerous predator.

He didn't think any of this was even illegal.

He thinks it's romance,

but it could be the biggest mistake of his life.

Every now and then,

I encounter a predator that's so brazen, I have to act fast

to take him down.

Like this guy, Sethanial Hampsten,

he was determined to meet a child for a sexual encounter.

That made him a number one priority

for my team and I to take him off the streets.

On September 18th of 2014,

I'm online using an undercover profile named Britany,

and I'm on Craigslist.

Craigslist is a normal place where people buy, sell, trade,

rent houses, that kind of stuff.

But there is a darker, devious side to Craigslist.

There is a segment of there where predators like

to hang out,

and that's really the personal ads.

As the posting party, you do have some degree of anonymity,

so there is that appeal to it from the predator standpoint.

I start to peruse some of the ads

to see if anything catches my attention, and sure enough,

I find a candidate.

The ad title is:

"Any freshman girls wanna come over?"

And it's followed by kind of a sexual solicitation: "Hey,

"I'm bored and I'm off work for a few days.

"I want you to just come over and let's get naughty.

Please send me a pic. The younger the better."

The freshman reference in the title

of his ad could mean the first year of somebody in college,

but then it follows up with "The younger the better."

And that really solidified for me

that his opener relates to high school.

So ninth grade, that's, like, 14 or 15 years of age.

And that's what I believe this guy is lookin' for.

He's very clear with what his intentions are,

and I am very willing to reply.

"Hey, I'm a freshman.

I'll be 15 in November. Is that cool?"

Right from the beginning,

I make it very clear that I'm underage.

Most people at this point would just completely walk away.

Not this guy.

The speed in which this guy's movin' is really fast.

He's talking in a sexual way.

The reality is: I'm a fake profile.

And what could be happening is he's talking

to real kids this way.

And that's a big issue for me.

I've gotta get this guy identified.

So the communications continue.

I can't actually send my own photo

'cause I don't look very much like a 14-year-old girl,

but a coworker who is a detective

in the department has given me permission to use photos

of her when she was 13 and 14.

This is an opportunity for me.

I'm tryin' to gather intel on this guy.

So I need to see what he looks like.

So I do send him a photograph.

His response is wildly inappropriate and morally wrong,

and almost immediately he comes back with two photos of himself.

He looks like a creep. This has to be the real guy.

Like, who would use a photo like this if it wasn't really them?

So as my Britany profile,

I tell him he's really cute, and he's really enamored by that.

He tells me "I'm about to take a bath."

And then he sends me this sexually graphic image.

It's illegal to send obscene material to a child.

That's really disturbing.

He kind of blows me away with what he says.

I mean, what is this guy thinkin'?

It feeds my drive to wanna get this guy into custody.

At this point, we've been on Craigslist the whole time,

but then he coughs up a phone number.

I send a text message.

And then I get the break I need.

He gives me the most valuable piece

of information I could ever ask for: his real name.

I've never heard that before.

This guy is gonna be easy to find, I hope.

Tony calls in backup to track Sethaniel:

Criminal intelligence specialist,

Detective Mark Casteel.

Normally, it's quite difficult

to locate a Texas driver's license based on a first name,

but Sethaniel is a very uncommon name.

I get a hit on a Sethaniel Winston Hampsten,

a white male, 23 years old, and he lives in Dublin, Texas.

The city is three and a half hours' drive

from Britany's location in North Dallas.

And I was able to positively identify Sethaniel

as the same person that had been contacting Tony.

We're movin' fast.

We've only been talkin' four hours

and I've already got this guy positively identified.

This is great.

I need Seth to make his intentions very clear

about, not only meeting,

but the fact that the meeting is going to be sexual in nature.

But then he throws me a curveball.

It's the message I dread.

He wants confirmation that the person he's talking

to on text is, in fact, a real kid.

There's a real sense of urgency, and if I don't act fast,

he's going to get really sus and probably pull away.

To make the play work,

Tony turns to Patrol Corporal Amanda Weatherford.

He asked her to call Sethaniel.

I've known Tony about nine years.

I met him in a class that he was teachin'.

I am nervous that he is asking me

to make a phone call right now.

But I think of, "What if that was my child?"

It's very disturbing that they're trying to meet a child

for sexual gratification.

The challenge really is just to make yourself sound

as much like a 14-year-old girl as you can.

Like, little giggles or, like, you're just unsure.

Just goofy kid stuff.

If it starts to get weird or uncomfortable or crazy,

all she's got to do is say,

"My grandfather's about to be here"

and that'll get us out of it.

My adrenaline is very high.

I am trying to make sure that I don't say the wrong things

or reference something that they haven't been talking about.

Man...

When he says, "You don't need a job yet,

you're not old enough."

This is really key evidence for us.

He's now acknowledging on tape

that he knows this is a real kid,

and that works for me.

You did a great job. That was fantastic.

So the phone call went off perfectly.

The next day, Hampsten suggests a meeting in person.

He suggests the meeting.

He's coming here for the purpose of a sexual act

with a 14-year-old girl.

And I have a case on this guy now.

So the game is on.

Now, I got to put a team together to make it happen.

It's take down time.

Detective Tony Godwin sets up the trap

for child predator Sethaniel Hampsten.

I give Hampsten an address

of where my character Britany lives,

but what he doesn't know is

that this is a location I use for takedowns.

So I'm at the takedown location,

hidden in a covert vehicle where I have a clear line of sight

of where I've asked Hampsten to park,

and I've got covert people strewn all over the place.

Detective Casteel, his job is to let me know when he gets eyes

on Hampsten pulling into the location.

It's Monday, September 22nd,

at 11:34, Detective Casteel...

A possible traveler comin' this morning.

He's coming over here to meet a minor to have sex with her.

I mean, worst case scenario, he doesn't show up.

He gets cold feet and backs out.

Running checks: he does own a red Geo tracker.

Supposedly, that's what he'll

be drivin' when he comes into the complex here.

So Hampsten is texting as he's driving to the location.

It makes me feel disgusted that I have to go through

and tolerate this kind of talk.

But if I don't do it,

the chances of him finding a real kid are very high.

One of the surveillance units outside the complex has said

that the red Ford truck is pulling in.

Our predator has arrived.

Now that I have a visual on Hampsten,

everything's on my shoulders.

We are ready to pounce.

But then a curveball.

Be advised we have a maintenance man walkin' through

with a ball cap behind his vehicle right now.

We're going to have to let the civilian get out

of the takedown area.

The last thing I want is for a civilian to get hurt.

As soon as that civilian gets out of our scene, it's go time.

Four armed guys all the way around him.

Hampsten is pulled out of his vehicle.

He's handcuffed. He doesn't resist.

This guy drove three and a half hours to come

and meet a 14-year-old child to have sex.

Seeing him arrested and in handcuffs...

Man, that makes me feel good.

Detectives search Hampsten's car after his arrest.

They find a box of condoms in the passenger footwell.

Going into an interview,

these predatory types, I expect them to lie to me.

But Hampsten... he didn't do that at all.

I mean, he told me everything.

So the one thing that did shock me is that he made a claim

that he didn't think any of this was even illegal.

I don't believe that he actually believes this.

I'm glad to have been the guy that put him away.

Hampton will be a registered sex

offender until September of 2044.

Texas will be a safer place because of this.

Detective Tony Godwin confronts a high school

teacher with the evidence that he sexted a student.

He is like, "I'm so busted."

This drama teacher fails to grasp the seriousness

of what he's done.

This guy, Edgin,

he's trusted by his community and he's got access to kids.

This guy's a disgusting pervert.

I got to get my hands on him fast.

On April 16th of 2018,

I received a phone call from a really frantic

and distressed mother.

Her and her husband tell me that over the course

of the past month,

they've noticed their son has been really preoccupied

with his phone.

His phone's been blowin' up,

and that's just really unusual for him.

So the father takes a look at his son's phone,

and he notices a large amount of very sexually explicit messages.

The mom tells me that she's not sure if she should

be botherin' me at all, because her son is 17,

which is a legal age of consent in Texas,

and so we don't even know

at this point if anything illegal has happened.

It really needs to be looked into a little bit further.

For the purpose of this story,

I'm going to call this young man Christopher,

even though that's not his real name.

So Christopher told his father that the messages came

from someone that he met on Snapchat by the name of Rob.

After a week of chatting,

they moved over to regular SMS messaging.

The parents provided me with screenshots

of the messages they saw they saw and they're really upset.

So the parents asked Christopher for more information

about this guy Rob,

and he explains that he's about 19 or 20 years of age.

But now the parents find something shocking.

Rob has sent their son a nude image.

The parents take away their son's phone,

and they monitor all the messages that are coming in

and see in the messages a photograph of the lower portion

of Rob's face, which is a gray beard.

They know right away that he's not 19 or 20.

They're really concerned.

Christopher's mom takes the phone number

that Rob is communicating from,

she pops it into a search engine.

She comes up with a full name: Robert Edgin.

They find his social media page,

and what they see is a 48-year-old man

livin' what seems like a normal, happy life to them,

but they find somethin' absolutely shocking.

He's a teacher at a local high school.

The parents are in complete disbelief

that their teenage son is in some kind

of a relationship with a teacher.

Detective Godwin is investigating drama

teacher Robert Edgin,

who has been caught grooming a student online.

At this point,

the parents don't know

that anything illegal has actually taken place.

But I can assure them that a crime has been committed.

The law in Texas is very clear.

It's that power balance between the educator and the student

that leads to sexual exploitation.

Edgin is a teacher

and Christopher is a 17-year-old student.

And therefore it makes it illegal.

What's prevalent in my mind is the fact

that I've got this educator who is actively employed in a school

with access to real children.

Now I have to act super fast.

I meet with Christopher to interview him.

He tells me that Edgin sent him ten nude images of himself

and one video where he was pleasuring himself in the video.

The simple exchange of the images

and videos described by Christopher,

that alone is a crime.

Detective Godwin brings

in forensic expert Robert Golladay to extract data

from Christopher's phone.

As I'm going through the phone,

I do find some things that are concerning to me.

Edgin asks, "Are you on spring break?"

Edgin tells Christopher he should come over tonight.

And Christopher replies, "I can't stay the night.

My parents won't let me."

It's very obvious to me

that the adult clearly knows this is a 17-year-old child

that he's talking to that lives at home with his parents.

It's not even clear to me at this point

that Christopher sees himself as a victim.

But grooming is the process that these predators use so

that the child believes that nothing's ever going wrong.

Christopher tells me that Edgin asked him to produce nude images

and that he did comply with this.

That's an entirely new charge.

That's called production of child pornography.

It's still a crime for imagery to be produced, shared,

or transmitted back and forth if you're under the age of 18.

It's reached a really serious level.

I have a strong feeling that Edgin is probably communicating

with others that are juveniles, not just Christopher.

I've got enough to get an arrest warrant,

and I'm gonna surprise Edgin by showin' up at his school just

to see what he has to say.

Myself and Detective Golladay,

we drive to the high school

and they have Edgin escorted from his room.

This guy looks scared to death. He looks like he's gonna puke.

Yes, he really does.

I really have to tread carefully and methodically.

I do my very best not to spook him.

We start to talk about his social media and what platforms

that he is operating on.

Edgin is cooperative, but he's cautious.

He is limited in what he's telling me.

Snapchat...

It's interesting that he mentions his Snapchat last

because that is the one he was communicating on.

How convenient.

He wants to be able to delete it.

Right.

We're not even a minute into this.

And we already know he's lying to us.

What a stumble, right?

I'm like, "Hey, is it on your phone?"

He's like, "Yeah... Uh, no."

He's gettin' really nervous.

He's fumblin' around,

and he's almost acting like he doesn't know what

the passcode is.

I was trying to sit there and watch him,

what numbers he punched in, so

that I knew once we seized the phone,

then I would have the passcode to get in the phone.

I'm more concerned that he's going to do something

to delete the device or wipe the device.

And then that's when I reached over

and kinda grabbed his phone away from him.

Like, he goes into panic mode. He's like, "Wait."

Puts his hand out to try to get it back.

Detective Godwin interviews teacher Robert Edgin.

Now his team holds Edgin's phone.

The truth begins to surface.

Relax. Relax. Relax.

I mean, at this point,

this dude's against the ropes, right?

I'm gonna deliberately avoid talkin' about Christopher.

I wanna keep it open ended and just see what he reveals.

Ultimately, he says yes and acknowledges the fact

that he did do this.

Now I need to dig further

and see what else he's gonna tell me about.

He can't specifically name which child it is.

And this gives me great concern

because what it tells me is there's other children.

So some of the facts that I already know is

that Christopher admitted to me that he did send,

at Edgin's request, nude imagery to him.

From a legal standpoint,

if Edgin forwarded those illegal images or videos sent to him

by a child victim,

that's a third charge that can be added,

called transportation of obscene material of a minor.

Edgin's situation is compounding the more he opens his mouth.

I mean there's a discussion...

Right.

I mean, look at his face. He's, like, head in hand.

He is like, "I'm so busted."

He didn't necessarily quantify the gravity of the seriousness

of what he had just admitted to.

Unfortunately for Mr. Edgin,

he's not gonna make that dress rehearsal tonight.

Officers arrest Edgin,

and digital analysts search his phone.

After forensic review of his cell phone

and the contents in there,

we determined there's two additional victims,

one who is 15 and one who is 16.

Both victims declined to press charges,

but their statements helped

to strengthen the case against Edgin.

Investigators find no evidence that Robert Edgin engaged

in sexual communications or contact with any students

from the school where he taught.

His arrest and charges really sent a shock wave

through the community.

It is not uncommon at all

for someone who has a predatory nature towards children

to position themselves into these roles where they do have

trust and they do have authority because it puts them

in the vicinity of kids.

Parents need to do what these parents did.

You notice a behavior change? Be intentional. Pay attention.

Look at what's going on.

Get involved in your kid's life,

not just what's going on in school,

but know what's going on on these devices.

You will help yourself out immensely in the long run.

a prolific predator is on Tony's radar.

His appetites are wide-ranging and extreme.

It takes two detectives to bring him in.

He's a non-preferential offender.

He likes boys and girls.

Taking him down becomes the team's top priority.

Robert Guerra...

This guy's fantasies were nasty and varied.

To get him off the street,

myself and another detective worked two undercover profiles

to get Guerra into custody.

I got a call from a colleague of mine, Detective Brandon Poor,

who works in internet crimes against children

in another agency.

I always say I'm like the little brother

Tony never wanted.

We are really close friends. We talk all the time.

Brandon told me he had been doin'

an undercover proactive case online.

He was using a platform called Kik.

Some of the kids in our community were using it

as a chat platform.

And it was also kind of a haven for predators.

I set up a profile of a 13-year-old boy named Lucas.

I'm using a picture of a teenage boy that was given to me by one

of my colleagues, another officer, when he was that age.

Brandon's Lucas profile joins

a Dallas-Fort Worth chat room for hookups.

I'm approached by a user named RobG4.

Early on in the communications, he's asking me for a picture,

and so I send him a picture

of me as Lucas,

and in turn he sends me a picture

of himself not wearing a shirt, lying in bed.

He's already got the sexual topic on his mind.

And then right after that,

he sends me four more pictures of himself.

He's trying to send me pictures that make him look interesting

or put him in the best light.

If a 13-year-old boy sees a really cool-lookin' dude wearing

a leather jacket or riding a motorcycle,

I guess maybe he's trying to say,

"This is why you should be interested in me."

He asked me how old I am...

...and he tells me that he's 36.

The normal response is, "You're too young.

Stop talking to me. Don't send me anything else."

But he doesn't do that.

Definitely stands out as a red flag to me

because that grooming conversation starts so quickly.

Detective Brandon Poor is catfishing online

as a 14-year-old boy.

He has a predator named RobG4 on the hook.

We continue communicating,

but this time it's a very sharp turn from where we started.

He tells me he... He likes both boys and girls.

He's a non-preferential offender.

He starts asking me questions of a sexual nature.

All of these things are grooming in that they're trying

to normalize sexualized behavior with a child.

We keep talking, and three or four days later,

the conversation turns sexual again.

but this time there's a big change

and it's not talking sexually about me.

He says...

So I replied to him,

"My cousin is kinda slutty, I think,"

knowing that it's an opportunity for me

to introduce another investigator, my colleague Tony.

I create this undercover profile for a girl named Jordan,

who's 13 years old, and she's going to be Lucas's cousin,

which is Brandon's profile that he's been chattin' under.

Detective Poor tells me

that he's gonna share my Jordan profile's phone number

with this perpetrator, RobG4,

and almost right away I get a message.

"Can I have a pic of you?"

So I'm going to reach out to my colleague,

Audrey Palmer. and see if she can help me out.

Tony comes to me

because he can use my current photos,

but edit them in such a way

that I look a little bit younger.

It is super odd to be getting these requests

from a colleague of mine,

but I know that it is for the greater good

and that Tony is using these to help save children.

I provide pictures of Audrey from the age

that I'm saying I am, 13, 14-ish, and he bites right away.

All the while Tony's talking to Rob,

I'm continuing conversations with him as Lucas.

We're just building evidence against this guy,

not with one profile, now with two profiles.

So I need to make him aware that he's talking to a child.

He has an opportunity to walk away,

but that's not what he does.

What he does do is respond back.

And now it turns sexual.

And then without any prompting whatsoever,

another image comes across.

And this time it's a full frontal nude image of this guy.

Very clear to me what this guy's doin' is grooming this kid

for a sexual relationship.

So in my mind,

we're do the point where there are potential criminal acts

that have happened.

And so I send a subpoena to Kik to try and identify RobG4,

and I get a hit.

They give me the information.

And his name is Robert Guerra IV.

He's a 37-year-old male who lives in Fort Worth.

With that information,

I'm able to check the driver's license database, and I get

an image of him.

It's pretty clear that this is the same individual.

Now, I know that RobG4,

whom I've been talking to on Kik, is Robert Guerra IV.

So as Jordan, I keep texting with Guerra,

his communications are getting more and more depraved.

His suggestions are really disgusting.

I've got Guerra on the hook at this point,

but then there's a problem.

This is really a common situation with predators.

They want a proof pic or a validation pic,

so I need to act super quick.

I gotta maintain the deception that this Jordan girl is real.

I reach back out to my coworker, Audrey Palmer.

I honestly don't know how to respond.

I just try to think about what Tony is needing from me rather

than what the suspect is needing.

So I send him a picture of me with a finger in my mouth.

I have to wonder, "Is he gonna buy it?:

Within a couple minutes,

I get a message that says, "Thank you, babe.

You're really beautiful. I love your eyes."

This guy is.... He's in. He's in it to win it.

After nearly 100 hours of communication,

Guerra asked to meet Jordan in person.

What a charmer this guy is. It's horrible.

The fact that Guerra has now suggested a meeting in person

for a sexual purpose, a crime has been committed.

That's online solicitation of a minor.

As Jordan, I agree to this meeting

because I'm ready to pounce.

So it's the time for the meet. I go there with Brandon Poor.

10:07 a.m., my profile Jordan's phone goes off

with a text message, and it's from Guerra, and he says...

He arrives earlier than expected.

So I'm on pins and needles,

just waiting for that perfect opportunity

to give the order to execute.

Emotions are up. Anxiety's up.

It's, you know, very high stress.

I see Guerra pull up and park where he's supposed to park.

At that moment, I give the order to execute.

Detective Tony Godwin and his team prepare

to bring Robert Guerra's predatory game to an end.

long enough.

Three cars, they swoop in on him.

Two minutes ago,

he thought he was gonna have sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Now he's got cops just descending in on him.

The handcuffs go on Guerra.

And that provides a great sense of relief.

They got him into custody with no issues.

And it was a good day for us.

I mean, you can see he's in the back of that car,

and he's movin' back and forth like the weight

of the world is on this dude's shoulders.

And it should be.

Brandon and I, we get this guy into an interview room,

and this is our playground.

This is what we love the most.

I'm glad that I'm sitting back a little ways.

It gives you that opportunity to start rapport

with him without being overwhelmed by a second person.

It is a little game of back and forth, like chess.

I already know the answer to some of these questions.

I wanna plant the seed in their mind so

that they will think, "Oh, crap."

Like, "He does know about that."

When I confront Guerra about Jordan's age being 13,

he suddenly is absentminded that she was 13.

It's always good

to ask questions we already know the answers to.

Because if he lies, it's so apparent.

I think he's probably

at the point where he might actually break down

and give us a little more honesty.

So he's admitting to sending pictures,

sexual pictures, to both profiles.

All right, man, at this point, it's time to just, like,

let's blow this dude out of the water.

At this point, he's not denying anything.

Like, he seems defeated. He's against the ropes.

The fact that he's got this information and these images

on his phone, that's a crime.

Bad guys, zero; good guys, one.

It's wonderful that he's off the street.

In my mind,

there's no telling how many kids that we've prevented him

from harming in the future.

Takeaway for me on this case is

that these social media platforms,

like Kik and Snapchat,

these are places where kids are goin'

to have what they think is fun and talk with their friends.

This isn't a place where they should be subjected

to predatory behavior.

Gone are the days of the predator

in the playground.

We live in this environment and we need to do better

to safeguard for our children.