What happened to potential predators?

Even after two investigations, in two states, with millions having seen our broadcasts—men still arrived at Dateline’s door.

Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent: Have you ever seen our stories on computer predators?

Daniel Pulido: Yes.

Hansen: this is one of them.

Unlike our previous hidden camera operations—where after leaving the house some men were able to make a run for it—this time at our home in Southern California, things would be different. Law enforcement was waiting.

Sgt. Chad Bianco: We were approached by Perverted-Justice to do this large sting.

Bianco, with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and a Perverted-Justice volunteer screenname Frag devised a plan.

Sgt. Chad Bianco: We were in telephone contact and two-way radio contact with Perverted-Justice and they would let us know when someone was getting close.      

The sergeant and his men are staked out in a mobile home parked in the driveway next door. Perverted-Justice hands them the chat logs so they’re prepared.

We’re off and running in California, and it isn’t long before a trucker—an actor --  and a songwriter are confronted by Dateline, and then the cops.

Police officer:  You brought Viagra, you brought lubricants? and Cialis?.

Stephen Coates:  That, that’s all there in the car in case I would have run into someone else not necessarily this girl.

At one point, the crowd of potential predators gets so large, Sgt. Bianco, who has a total of fifteen people working for him, runs out of manpower.

Bianco: I had no one available. We had all of my investigators dealing with people that we had arrested and there was still people coming to the house.

One of the men who came to meet an underage teen is a federal agent working for the department of Homeland Security.

Michael Burks: My father was a police officer. I was a police officer.

And here comes “kinky-man-in corona.” You’ll never guess what he does for a living.

Walter Edward Babst: I’m in education.

Hansen: You’re in education?

Babst: Yeah.

Hansen: A teacher?

Babst: Yes.

43-year-old Walter Edward Babst—a high school teacher  is a married man with children.

Hansen: what are you doing here?

Walter Edward Babst: Getting my ass kicked.

Hansen: Getting your ass kicked?

Babst: Yeah, I knew it, I knew it was a set-up.

Hansen: I need you to sit down.

Babst: I need you to just arrest me and take me to jail and execute me.

Hansen: I need to talk to you first.

He was arrested and charged with attempting a lewd act with a child under 14. His teaching certificate was suspended.

It’s been a disturbing scene, watching grown men show up after discussing sex with someone posing as a 12 or 13-year-old child. 

Hansen:  Why don’t you have a seat right there, please.?

One 68-year-old sex offender, Robert Emmet Lyons was arrested only five  months ago for a lewd sex act with a person 15 or younger. Now he’s in our kitchen planning to meet a young boy.

Hansen:  So you had intercourse with an underage boy.

Robert Lyons:  Yes. I  made a mistake, didn’t even know he was 15.  He told me he was 18.

Hansen: How long were you in prison for that offense?

Lyons: I wasn’t in prison.

Hansen: You got probation?

Lyons: Correct.

Hansen: How long were you on probation?

Lyons: I’m still on probation.

Hansen: You’re still on probation now? So you’re on probation for having sex with a boy how old?”

Lyons: 15.

Hansen: And now you’re here in this house to have sex with a 13 year old boy.

Lyons: No, that was not my intention.

Hansen: What was your intention?

Lyons: Just to talk or whatever.

Now he’ll have to do his talking to deputies.  As he walks out dateline’s door, he is arrested and jailed until his trial.  He’s charged with attempting a lewd act with a child under 14.  But, he’s not the only registered sex offender who showed up at our house.

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

Hansen: How you doing?

Thomas Bodnar runs out the door as soon as he sees me....and gets tackled by investigators.

And with his head still bleeding from the tackle, Bodnar speaks to the detective at the booking station.  It’s not his first arrest.

Police: What’d you do your time for? What were you charged with?

Bodnar: Uh, I’d rather not say right here...

What he doesn’t want to say is that he molested a child more than 20 years ago—Dazarie Holcomb. Dateline tracked her down and told her about this man from her past. 

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

She was only a third grader when she first met Bodnar.  He was a volunteer at a Boys club “special friend program.”     

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 he worst of the sexual abuse and I was in the middle and then my brother my youngest brother was, got the less of the sexual abuse.

It took months, but Dazarie finally told her mother about the abuse—she went straight to the police.  Bodnar was convicted of sodomy and later sentenced to 10 years in prison.

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

Now he faces a new charge of attempting a lewd act with a child under 14.  He’ll remain in jail until his trial.

Bodnar was just one of the 50 men arrested in the riverside investigation.  The four registered sex offenders are behind bars awaiting trial.  For the others, their cases are winding their way through the legal system.  Already, three men have pleaded guilty.

Daniel Allen who had a prior conviction for stalking, Robert Forte, and Eric Palleson, who ran out the door when we started asking questions quietly entered his guilty plea two weeks ago.

All three will be sentenced in June.

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