'To Catch a Predator' III

It's been a disturbing scene, watching grown men show up hoping to have sex with a 12- or 13-year-old child, in our investigation the child has been a decoy. 

Del (hidden camera footage): Tell me did you want to be the cop or the robber?

Bodnar: Well, I don't care.

But for some of these men, there are real victims.

Dazarie Holcomb: I can't believe that he's still out there doing this.

Dazarie Holcomb was stunned when Dateline tracked her down and told her about this man from her past.

Holcomb: I'm just floored. It's just sickening.

He's 42-year-old Thomas Bodnar. We found him online with a decoy posing as a 13-year-old boy. Bodnar said he loved him and asked if he could be his first.

Hansen: So how's it going.

Bodnar runs out the door as soon as he sees me and gets tackled by investigators. And with his head bleeding from the tackle, Bodnar speaks to the detective at the booking station.

Sheldon:  What'd you do your time for? What were you charged with?

Bodner: Uh, I'd rather not say on camera.

Sheldon: Oh, I'll find out.

Bodner: I know.

Sheldon: I know you were charged. I knew you were arrested up in Oregon. 

Bodner: Yeah.

Sheldon: That's why you 29-directed. For molesting a child up there.

Bodner: Yeah.

And the child he molested in that case 20 years ago was Dazarie Holcomb. She was only a third grader when she first met Bodnar.   

Holcomb: He was great, he was wonderful. You would trust him. I mean, anybody would.

He was a volunteer at a boys club "special friend program." Dazarie's mom went to Bodnar for male companionship for her three children because their father wasn't around.

Holcomb: He used to just like I mean go above and beyond the call of duty as far as a big brother figure, I mean he was just supposedly this great guy.

But not long after he befriended Dazarie and her family, Bodnar began to molest the three children one by one.

Holcomb: He got my brother Ed the worst. He's mentally challenged so I think that he got the worst of the sexual abuse and I was in the middle and then my brother my youngest brother was...got the least of the sexual abuse.

Dazarie describes how he would come to her room in the middle of the night. She was nine years old.

Holcomb: I would wake up out of a dead sleep to him French kissing me and touching my privates.

Dazarie finally told her mother about the abuse. She went straight to the police.

Jerry Moore: I met them at the front counter where I interviewed all four of them

It was 1985 when Sgt. Jerry Moore of the Salem Police Department in Oregon wrote this police report detailing the repeated incidents of child molestation.

Moore: I certainly had enough to know that there was some criminal behavior going on here and that these children were in danger.

A detective questioned Bodnar who admitted to almost everything. He was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Holcomb: It was a devastation to all of us. We still suffer from what he's done to us.

And his trail of victims doesn't end there. It also led to Palm Springs, California. In 1999 he was convicted of oral copulation with a person under the age of 16.

Hearing of Bodnar's latest arrest brought back haunting memories for Dazarie -- of a shattered childhood. 

Holcomb: You ask yourself how can this happen. How many more innocent children? They're losing their innocence because of him.

As for what he was doing at our house, he's not admitting to anything.

Sheldon: How old did he say he was?

Bodner: He never really did.

Sheldon: Sure he did. You know why I know? Because I have a log. It's called a chat log. I even got the pictures you sent him. The naked pictures. Remember sending those?

Bodner: No.

Sheldon: Remember sending that?

Bodner: No. That's me.

Sheldon: Yeah.

Sheldon: And why you sending him pictures of someone's penis?

Bodner: That I don't remember sending. 

Sheldon: It came from your computer. During the chat, where did the conversation get?

Bodner: I don't remember saying that. I don't remember when in the conversation it was said.

So what will happen to him now? Riverside County California Deputy District Attorney Michelle Paradise is counting on sending him back to prison. In fact if she has her way, all the men arrested in our sting will spend time behind bars.

Paradise: We will look at all the cases individually, but rest assured they'll all get jail time if not prison time.

Several of the men have pled not guilty. Others have not yet gone before a judge. But as we know some of these men will get out. And the chances are good they'll be back on their computers. So what can you do to protect your kids?

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