Retired police chief, 69, nabs online predators

By Marcus Kabel

updated 8:09 p.m. ET Jan. 25, 2008

DIAMOND, Mo. - No one will ever confuse Jim Murray with a teenager. His tall frame, broad shoulders and clipped gray hair give him away for the grandfather he is.

But the 69-year-old retired police chief of this small Missouri town cuts a credible figure as a 13-year-old girl surfing the Web, looking for friends. He knows all the instant-messaging shorthand, the emoticons.

Murray's retirement job from a rural home office has netted 20 arrests since he started in 2002. His latest catch was the biggest: four felony enticement charges against a town mayor, who after his arrest called Murray up and begged him to make the case go away.

Nineteen other defendants have included a Missouri furniture company executive, an Arkansas professor and a Tulsa, Okla., school security guard. Ten of those men have been convicted and sent to prison. One was deported. The other cases are still pending.

The defendants ranged in age from 24 to 62, with an average age of 39.4 years, and mainly come from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, Diamond police said.

Internet child safety experts say police officers like Murray are heroes who do good work at the cost of wading through the muck of online pedophile fantasies.

"He's a trailblazer. 2002 was very early for smaller police departments to start doing this," said Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a children's Internet safety group.

Murray, who taught elementary school for 27 years before switching to police work, is more humble.

"This is really about the kids," he said.

The first thing he hands a reporter at the start of an interview is a neat packet of newspaper stories about Kacie Woody, a 13-year-old girl in neighboring Arkansas who was abducted, raped and killed by a man she met online. It's not a case Murray worked on. Instead, he said, it's "a motivator."

Murray said he manages to shake the online conversations out of his head after a while, but they can still make him angry.

"There'll be times when you just want to reach through the screen and choke them or slap them," he said. "To think they could talk that way to a girl."

The latest defendant is Allen Kauffman, 63, who resigned as mayor of Collins and pastor of Temple Lot Church after he was arrested Jan. 11 at home in his small town about 110 miles southeast of Kansas City.

MORE FROM SECURITY

Security Section Front

Facebook hit by ‘Control Your Info’ intruder Twitter phishing ploy goes for ‘Direct Messages’ Red Tape: Your chance to spy on Google Hacking ring caught in $9 million fraud Tagged.com settles with states in invite fight Framed for child porn — by a PC virus Obama gets mixed reviews in China's blogosphere Spain: Internet-related child porn on the rise Google providing better view of personal data EU agrees on new Internet user rights Security Section Front   Add Security headlines to your news reader: