Predators (a 96-minute documentary produced by MTV Films and Paramount Pictures), directed by David Osit, tries to understand the motive behind developing a show like NBC’s To Catch a Predator, which was the first reality show of its kind and became quite the sensation back in the day. Osit interviews the host of the NBC show, Chris Hansen, talks to various other people who were involved in the filming process, and tries to decipher what good came out of it. There was a lot of controversy around the production of the NBC show because of the investigative nature of it. The biggest question was if Chris Hansen and his team were legally allowed to set a trap for a pedophile, do background checks on him, conduct a sting operation, catch him red-handed, and then hand him over to the police. Hansen literally carried out investigations, and for the longest time, there were a lot of debates about if a civilian should be allowed to do that, and that too for entertainment purposes. So let’s find out what really happened on the show, how a suspected pedophile killed himself because of the show’s investigation, and what Chris Hansen is up to now.
Why did Bill Conradt kill himself?
Bill Conradt was the assistant district attorney, and on 5th November 2006, he took his life in Murphy, Texas. He did that because a sting operation had revealed that Conradt was soliciting sex with minors. But the catch here was that the sting operation wasn’t conducted by the police or any state agency. It was Chris Hansen and his team from To Catch a Predator who had set up a trap for Bill, planting a decoy by the name of Dan Schrack, who lured him into the trap and then exposed him. Generally, in the show, the decoy talked to the suspected culprit over messaging apps and then called them over to meet in person. The place where the suspect was called to was set up with hidden cameras installed at every nook and corner, and the entire production team hiding in some other room, waiting for the predator to play his cards and give them an opportunity to catch him red-handed. But in Conradt’s case, something different happened, which meant Chris Hansen had to change his modus operandi. Conradt talked to the decoy and agreed to come to his place but then later didn’t show up. So Chris Hansen and his team decided to go to his house in Murphy, Texas, and expose him there. Conradt didn’t open the door for the longest time, and so the police officers broke into his house. They found Conradt sitting in his living room with a gun in his hand. The man said that he was not going to hurt the police officers and then pulled the trigger and took his life. Chris Hansen knew then that this was going to cause a lot of controversy and there probably would be legal ramifications.
Why was the NBC show criticized?
The biggest problem was that the police officers acted as agents of the NBC producers, and they often took orders from them. And the sole reason behind them taking these orders was to make sure that they filmed the entire strong operation in the most hard-hitting and dramatic way possible. So under the pretense of social welfare and justice, the show’s sole purpose was to entertain people and increase their viewership and ratings. One needs to understand that civilians cannot be made part of a legal investigation, and moreover, the police didn’t follow the proper protocol before making arrests. At times, the mayor of the town wasn’t informed, the police failed to prove that the accused arrested had an outstanding warrant in their name (which is necessary to make an arrest), and moreover the production house on many occasions failed to provide comprehensive evidence (chat logs or video recordings) after the arrest was made. The legal institutions were right in questioning the authority of the production house to take these steps when they had no connections to law enforcement. This was the reason why Patricia Conradt, sister of Bill Conradt, filed a lawsuit against NBC, and the judge ruled in favor of Patricia. It was found that NBC intentionally caused emotional distress and was even found to be in violation of civil rights. Now it is to be noted the DA dismissed the cases against many of those suspects who were exposed in Murphy, Texas. It was stated that the indictment against them would not be pursued, because proper procedure had not been followed and the evidence couldn’t establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but still the suspects were branded for life, even when the court had given them a clean chit.
Where Is Chris Hansen Now?
To date, Chris Hansen states that everything he did was in the general interest of the society. He stated that he wanted to put the perpetrators behind bars, but the fact remained that he earned a huge amount of money from it; he crossed boundaries and broke laws to dramatize the narrative, and I don’t believe that the main motive behind creating a show like To Catch a Predator was to perform social welfare. I am not saying that catching a predator or making them pay for their actions is not right. But in a civilized society, the rule of law needs to be followed. Chris Hansen’s show made a mockery of the legal system and set a really dangerous precedent. At the end of the documentary film, we saw that Chris Hansen, during one of his true crime investigations, found out about an 18-year-old who was interested in minors. They caught him, but later the court gave him a warning and wiped his record clean. Chris Hansen also took down that episode from his streaming network, and nobody saw what it did to that boy. He was given a clean chit by the court, but still, when one searched his name on the internet, all the accusations against him surfaced, and obviously, he was branded as a sex offender. Chris Hansen very casually said that people will forget and move on, but I don’t think that boy will be taking things so lightly. What I want to say here is that Chris Hansen didn’t have the authority to brand that man as an offender, especially when the court had acquitted him. The problem was that Hansen’s show didn’t even give the opportunity of rehabilitation, and it didn’t cause any deterrence, so to say. As stated earlier, the sole motive of the show was to create enough drama so that the show’s viewership would increase, even if it came at the cost of setting a horrible precedent.
Hansen left NBC around 2013, and then in 2020, he co-founded TruBlu, a factual streaming network. He still hosts a true-crime investigation show called Takedown with Chris Hansen, where he finds online predators and conducts sting operations to expose them.
