Retired police chief, 69, nabs online predators

Kauffman declined Wednesday to discuss the specifics of his case, including how he plans to plea and his lawyer did not return a phone message.

Kauffman did not propose an actual meeting in any of the exchanges listed in the charging documents.

But according to court documents, prosecutors say Murray was logged into a Yahoo! chat room as a 13-year-old girl named "cindyndiamond" using the screen name "Cin" when he was first contacted Nov. 15 by "duke dukead," who prosecutors allege was Kauffman.

Duke contacted Cindy again the next day and said he was 55 years old. The exchange included:

Cin: i like to french kiss ... senior boy taught me.

duke dukeadk: but it depends on where you want to be kissed at lol.

In at least five instant-message sessions through mid-December, Duke allegedly went on to tell Cindy he wanted to have sex with her, asked for nude photos of her and suggested Cindy have sex with another girl in front of a Webcam so that Duke could watch.

Murray has arrested other men arriving for trysts they believed they were setting up with the detective's teenage persona.

Murray was chief of police in the farm town of Diamond from 1995 to 2000. He got a personal computer after retiring and discovered chat rooms and was angered when he was offered pictures of young girls.

He contacted experts in the field of Internet sting operation and got training from the National White Collar Crime Center on basic computer data recovery.

Now, Murray patrols the Web from a cramped home office divided between his police computer and a personal computer ringed with photos of his six grandchildren and three adult kids.

Murray remains a detective on reserve status with the Diamond police but he donates his investigation time. He says he only spends about 30 minutes a week on average in chats but several hours more going over hard drives of arrested suspects looking for contacts with other potential victims.

"Several people have stopped me at Wal-Mart and the filling station and said they appreciate what we're doing on the Internet stuff. And that's a good feeling."

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