A parade of potential predators in a small town

40-year-old Alonzo Wade brought a case of alcohol to meet a person he thought was 15.

Alonzo Wade: All I wanted to do is party and you’re trying to find a pedophile, I’m not.

Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent: But you’re here.

Wade: I’m here to party.

Hansen: And maybe have sex with a teenager?

Wade: Maybe.

He decides he’s had enough, picks up his alcohol and starts to leave.

Wade: If you put this on the air, I’ll sue.

A few men other men head for the door as soon as they find out who I am. But in Ohio, many of the men keep talking even after they find out they’re going to be on TV.

Josh Tuttle: It’s in the laws hands and God’s hands,

Hansen: You sound like a pretty religious guy.

Tuttle: Yes sir.

Hansen: Again you’re free to leave free to have your condom back.

Tuttle: (laughs) Thank you. I’m ashamed.

Hansen: Okay.

Tuttle: Truly ashamed.

And what about the men who’ve seen our previous investigations?

On 23-year-old man who drove across state lines and brought alcohol for a 13-year-old. 

Hansen: You’ve seen this on TV before, so you know what’s about to happen?

Ronnell: Oh no.

Hansen: This is the part where I say, “I’m Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC” and the cameras come out.

Ronnell: Okay I realize I made, coming here was a mistake, but, good thing that it didn’t progress to nothin’ further.

Hansen: It’s a good thing we were here and a 13 year old girl was not

Ronnell: Well...

Hansen: So that’s the good news tonight.

Ronnell: I don’t know I just apologize for offending anybody.

Hansen: Did you ever see our stories on computer predators?

One 21-year-old paramedic with the apparent foot fetish came to meet a 13-year-old.

Hansen: So you’ve seen these stories before?

Jason Schoeppner: Yeah.

Hansen: Didn’t you for one minute think that this might have been something just like that?

Schoeppner: Yeah.

Hansen: But you came anyway.

It looks as if he doesn’t want to leave. Since he’s admitted seeing our earlier broadcasts, he probably knows what’s going to happen next.

Finally, after several requests...

Hansen: Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to go.

He gets up and walks out the door, right into the arms of the detectives from the Darke County Sheriff’s Office.

All along Del from Perverted-Justice has been running across the street giving the detectives chat logs of potential predators before they arrive.

Det. Mike Burns, Darke County Sheriff’s office: We were able to look down through the chat logs and determine whether or not a crime had been committed once we knew for sure that somebody was coming. I was maintaining contact with Perverted-Justice through radio means.

So as the men leave, the deputies move in and arrest them, and charge them with attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor—a felony. In Ohio, in order for prosecutors to file the most serious charges, a police officer needs to be involved in the online chat or phone conversation.

Since in this case, Perverted-Justice members are the decoys, the sheriff’s department temporarily deputized the volunteers who were in our house.

After they are read their rights, the men are taken to an auxiliary building for an official interview. Now it’s the detectives turn to ask the questions.

Detective: Why did you come here in the first place?

Nathan Downhour: To see a 13-year old girl in that house.

What they’ve already told “Dateline” is eye opening.

Now wait until you hear what they reveal to detectives. “Greeneyed121,” the 23-year-old student at an evangelical Christian college who typed a detailed description about having sex with a 13-year-old.

Downhour: I couldn’t stop thinking about it, what would happen if I got caught. I was caught.

Sheriff’s deputies find a box of condoms in his car, but he tells the detective they just happened to be there. 

Detective: Have you ever had sex before?

Downhour: Nope.

Detective: Never? so you have a box of condoms with you, you’ve never had sex before, the whole plan was to have sex with this 13-year old when you got here correct?

Downhour: That was the original plan.

Detective: Okay.

He insists he wasn’t going to go through with it. Detectives also question the 42-year-old who showed up at 2 a.m. planning to meet a girl who told him she was 15.

He tries to convince the detective he had no intention of having sex with a 15-year-old.

Detective: You would like me to believe that you just traveled 112 miles for a couple of hours.

Tim Isaac: You know what, I would like you to believe that.

Detective: --just to visit a 15 year old girl whose parents aren’t home and you want her to keep that a secret?

Isaac: Yup.

Detective: Ok and you still want me to believe despite the fact that I have chat here about you talking about ‘Are you wet yet, I want to suck this’

Isaac: Well, I would like for you to think the better half of me but you got what you got there and it doesn’t look good on me.

It doesn’t look good for the 21-year-old paramedic who has a thing about feet.

Detective: What did you and Kat discuss or plan specifically to do once you met, or known she was 13 years old?

Jason Schoeppner: Hang out.

Detective: Hang out, nothing else.

Schoeppner: I guess sexual stuff—kiss, rub her feet, stuff like that.

Cop: Rub her feet.

Schoeppner: Yeah.

Once the interrogations are over, the men are taken to the county jail where they’re photographed, finger printed, stripped searched and put behind bars—awaiting a hearing before a judge. Most face up to 18 months in prison.

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