430: Chris Hansen Breaks Silence on Robert Pattinson Movie, New Sting Operations & A Predator’s Playbook

Chris Hansen is in the Serialously studio and finally speaking out about the new A24 film depicting one of the most infamous chapters of his career. In this exclusive interview, Chris opens up about his career, the highly anticipated movie starring Robert Pattinson, and what he really thinks about Hollywood telling his story.. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow the show for weekly deep dives into the darkest true crime cases! To watch the video version of this episode, head over to youtube.com/@annieelise. .🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks..🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to both of my weekly true crime series 10 to Life & Serialously with Annie Elise wherever you get your podcasts on the Annie Elise Channel!🍎 Apple Podcasts | Where you can also unlock access to 100+ and growing extra exclusive deep dives.💚 Spotify🔴 YouTube🎙️ All Other Platforms.📸 Follow Annie on Socials Instagram: @_annieeliseTikTok: @_annieeliseSubstack: @annieeliseFacebook: @10toLife.⭐SponsorsHiya Health: Receive 50% off your first order on any of their products when you go to http://hiyahealth.com/ae. David Protein: Head to Walmart today to try a bar or stock up on 4-counts of your favorite flavors, like Blueberry Pie and Salted Peanut, sold exclusively at Walmart. Quince: Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to http://Quince.com/ae. Get free shipping on your order and 265-day returns. Mint Mobile: To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to http://mintmobile.com/AE. Chime Financial: Head to http://CHIME. COM/Serialously..👗 Shop Annie’s Must-Haves! ShopMY: bit.ly/AnnieElise_ShopMy Amazon: bit.ly/AnnieElise_Amazon.🫵🏻 Get Involved or Recommend a CaseAbout Annie: www.annieelise.comFor Business Inquiries: [email protected]••••••••••••••••••🚨Disclaimers1️⃣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 2️⃣ Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research. 3️⃣ The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). These views are subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and are not to be held in perpetuity. We make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this video and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their own facts.

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• 1:07Speaker 03

  I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC. Do you see how this looks?

• 1:12Speaker 04

  The just released trailer for Primetime.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  You see how this looks. You see how this looks. Again, you see how this looks. You see how this looks, right? You were worried as to whether or not. You guys are filming me. I feel like I'm being violated. This was a setup. There was a setup. Well, I think the violation was going to take place if we weren't here and it was a 15 year old girl. That's suspicious as [BLEEP]. It is suspicious AF, isn't it? Yes, it is. You see how this looks, right?

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Seriallessly. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all new episode of Seriallessly with me, your host, Annie Elise. I hope you are all having a fantastic start to your week so far that you are, you know, whatever you're doing, whether you're on your way to work,

• 2:19Speaker 00

  maybe you're at work, maybe you're cleaning, maybe you're working out, who knows? But whatever you're doing, I hope you are ready for today's episode because this is one that I personally have been looking forward to so much. I didn't even realize that this episode was going to be on my bucket list and that this interview was on my bucket list until I realized it, which kind of now that I say that out loud, like makes absolutely no sense. But you may have been seeing the trailer for the upcoming movie Primetime going viral right now. It stars Robert Pattinson. He's playing Chris Hansen, who I'm sure all of you are familiar with from back in the day. Dateline NBC, How to Catch a Predator.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  He now has his show takedown on True Blue, which he is a network he co-founded. And he's just an icon in the space, right? His name is synonymous with catching predators. And so as I said, you probably have seen this trailer going viral because Robert Pattinson channels Chris's voice, in my opinion, incredibly well. The movie feels like a thriller, but it really takes you through the early days of How to Catch a Predator. What would go into these stings? What was it like for Chris Hansen? And here's the best part about today's episode, guys. We don't need to wonder. We don't need to see the movie to understand what went into these stings, how the stings are still operating today. Because today

• 3:40Speaker 00

  I am joined by the one, the only, the child advocate of the century, Chris Hansen. And he is sharing directly with us not only things about the movie, but also what goes into stings, what he's working on now, how parents who are listening can really be educated on the dangers of Roblox, of how predators have evolved over the years from chat rooms on AOL now to video games and to text messaging and Instagram and all of the apps. And we're going to talk all things predators today. So please join me in welcoming Chris Hansen. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Seriallessly, Chris Hansen.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  Well, thank you, Annie. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  I am so happy to have you here.

• 4:22Speaker 05

  Well, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  And there is so much that I want to talk to you about.

• 4:25Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Okay, so I want to talk about the new movie because obviously Robert Pattinson is going to be starring as you in an upcoming movie called Primetime. How does that feel?

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Well, I tell you what, I've been so busy being the real Chris Hansen, I haven't had much time to check out the dramatized version. But I'm going to see it soon. And once I do, we'll talk about it.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Okay, great. I have a lot of questions about the movie.

• 4:50Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  So we'll get there. I would love to start back, let's rewind a little bit to the Dateline days.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  The How to Catch a Predator days and what goes on inside a sting?

• 5:00Speaker 05

  Well, inside a sting, there's a lot going on. In the very beginning, you know, in 2004, when we started this, we merely partnered with an online watchdog group called Perverted Justice. So it was their chatters, that group at the time would find these guys and post their identities on their website. I figured if we could combine their ability to be decoys with our ability to wire a house, it could be compelling. So we set up a house in Long Island, Bethpage. And I wasn't sure what was going to happen. But in two and a half days, 17 guys showed up.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  Including a New York City firefighter. So, once we did that, you know, this has evolved, as you can imagine, with technology, with the, the number of apps and platforms upon which adults can approach children. The whole world has changed in those 22 years. And we have had to change with it. But behind the scenes, a lot goes on. We have a location. We work a little different with each of our law enforcement partners today. We, we work everywhere from San Francisco, where we were just two weeks before this interview. We were in Maryland last week. And we continue to see shocking cases of men in even more

• 6:16Speaker 05

  bizarre scenarios than ever before, trying to exploit children.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  How often would you say, if you could even put a ratio to it, that it's men versus women predators that you catch?

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Well, I think, I think it's about half and half. It's,

• 6:30Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 6:31Speaker 05

  Well, no, I shouldn't say that. I misunderstood your question. We have only caught male predators. We have never had a female predator surface in one of our investigations. I thought you were talking about, you know, men looking for boys versus men looking for girls. That's about half and half. But in terms of female predators, we don't see them. And I think that's at least partially because the shrinks tell us that the female predators seek to know their victims. In other words, you're more likely to see a teacher student scenario. They don't like the anonymity where a male predator loves the anonymity of it, you know, likes to, to figure it out as he goes along, you know?

• 7:09Speaker 00

  So going back to the early days with one of the stings, after the Long Island sting, once you had the show How to Catch a Predator, what would the process look like? Can you walk us through that?

• 7:19Speaker 05

  The process would be to find a location, a home, in the jurisdiction of our law enforcement partner. Because it became pretty apparent early on that to not partner with law enforcement until after the fact, which is what we did in the first two, wasn't socially responsible. These guys had to face justice. So that's why we always partner with law enforcement. And that relationship has even gotten closer as the years have gone by. But typically, we find a house, our camera people and tech people wire the house, hidden cameras, remote. And then the decoys go online posing as children. When they're approached by a predator, potential predator, if they go over the threshold of a sexual solicitation, a crime occurs

• 8:03Speaker 05

  online, they're given the address. And if they show up, I confront them. And then they're arrested by authorities.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  So what role does law enforcement play within that partnership with you?

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Law enforcement is the investigative arm. Law enforcement has to take this case and the evidence of this case to a prosecutor's office so that they face justice. So now we have law enforcement decoys. In other words, everybody involved in that part of the investigation, the chatters and everybody else, they're a member of law enforcement. The onsite decoys are young or youngish looking members of law enforcement, sometimes cadets or, or, you know, sheriff's deputies who work in the county jail. They look young, but they can pull off the role. The reason we do that is because then there is no chain

• 8:55Speaker 05

  of custody issues with the evidence. The chats belong to law enforcement. I have access to it, but they belong to law enforcement. And it makes for a much more seamless prosecution.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  So they're embedded really in all aspects of the sting from start to finish.

• 9:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, and we're embedded with them too.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  Prosecution, yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 05

  Because it has to be that way. Because, you know, in the early investigations, there were some guys who were prosecuted after the fact. But we did have guys who just walked away. And those guys didn't face consequences. Now today, our successful prosecution rate is above 99%.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Wow, that's incredible.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. And it's because of the way it's set up.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Let me ask you this. In the early days before you did partner with law enforcement more formally on this, did you ever get scared at any of these things of like, what if this person?

• 9:42Speaker 05

  Well, the first one, I mean, we didn't know.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Right? We could do a little bit of background, but we didn't have their full names. We didn't have a database to run them. So,

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  You know, a guy, Mike, from, you know, wherever shows up to meet a 13 year old girl after a sexually charged conversation. I don't know who this guy is. I had security with me, Ronnie Knight, my security guy, many, many years was with me. And so I felt personally protected. I thought the crew would be protected, but it was pretty edgy. Now we've got a full team of law enforcement involved. So it's about as safe as it can possibly be.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Well, as you know, I, I mean, it goes without saying, How to Catch a Predator has become a cultural phenomenon. Everybody knows about it or has heard about it or has seen some sort of role play of it in some regard. And I've noticed, and as I'm sure you have, that a lot of people, there is like a very small group, I should say, on social media, who now try to do their own vigilante justice and do these sting operations themselves. And they're not qualified, they're not working with law enforcement. Have you seen any of that? What's your take on it?

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've seen some. So, look, I think anytime a bad guy is exposed and is stopped before they can hurt a child, or stopped before they hurt another child, obviously that's a good thing. I worry in some cases that

• 10:59Speaker 05

  The people they find don't get properly prosecuted because they don't go through the same protocols we do. No, there's some out there who do. And there are some who work with law enforcement. And there are some successful prosecutions. And I think there is definitely a place in our world for, you know, citizen journalists. I mean, look what YouTube has done for people. Look how many crimes have been solved because of this, this, you know, crowdfunding of information, if you will. So there's a place for it. It just worries me that maybe a guy gets caught and doesn't get properly prosecuted. It worries me that that sometimes the motives may not be the same as the motives we have working with

• 11:44Speaker 05

  authorities. But, you know, I'm so busy focusing on what we do, I don't really focus much on what other people do.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Well, and so, speaking of that, you've been doing this now for decades, starting with How to Catch a Predator, now evolving into Take Down. Obviously, things have changed over the years. You mentioned that earlier. Predators are getting more internet savvy, smarter, wiser. There's now so many more methods out there of how they can prey on these victims and exploit them. What was that shift like, or that evolution, like going from How to Catch a Predator to now Take Down? And how are those different?

• 12:18Speaker 05

  Well, think about this, Annie. In the beginning, we merely had decoys in chatrooms on AOL and Yahoo, right?

• 12:26Speaker 00

  I was of the AOL chatroom days. I was writing ASL in the chatroom, and I shouldn't have been.

• 12:31Speaker 05

  Exactly. Age, sex, and location. So that's where we were. Maybe that antiquated platform called MySpace.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Yep, there too.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  Today, you know, there's been an explosion in the number of platforms, including gaming platforms, where adults can approach children. And so, we are seeing cases more horrifying, more dangerous, more graphic, today than ever before. And we just finished, not too long ago, our first documentary on Roblox called Dangerous Games.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  And, you know, this is a playground for predators. And parents often don't realize it, because they look at a game where the characters appear to be innocent, you know, Lego characters, and they don't realize the danger there. And then these conversations are taken from Roblox to Discord, which is, you know, about as dirtied up as you can get.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  And, and parents don't understand this. And then it goes to the cellphone. And we had, in the Roblox investigation, in one county in Florida, we had a case where a young man was arrested for exploiting children all over the country, like a dozen cases. And we had a victim, who was 10 years old, who was exploited on Roblox by a predator in the UK. So if this is happening in Marion County, Florida, near Ocala, what's happening in the rest of the world? And what we found is there is a lot happening. And it's truly shocking. And that's just one example.

• 14:02Speaker 00

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• 15:28Speaker 05

  So we have all these different platforms now. Every week, I mean, we were on the sting in San Francisco two weeks ago, and they were using platforms I had not heard of. And there are platforms dedicated to adult hookups where children go.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Really?

• 15:44Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Like, what do you mean, like, dating apps?

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Dating apps, hookup apps. We saw, seven men were arrested in San Francisco. Five are currently being charged, the other two cases are under investigation. And one of the scenarios the decoys used, law enforcement decoys used, was a bad dad who wanted to offer up his two sons for sexual exploitation. And we had guys show up, Annie, to exploit a six and a 13-year-old boy, including a man who was a lawyer, who managed a multimillion-dollar fund, Ivy League-educated, had a child of his own, married to the dean of the San Francisco

• 16:27Speaker 05

  State Law School. This guy, at noon on a weekday, shows up at this house in running shorts and a t-shirt to try to exploit these children. And he tells me, "I'm broken."

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, obviously. Well...

• 16:42Speaker 05

  But you don't expect people like that to be in these, in these stings. But yet, that's who we find. Last week in Maryland, a little league coach, who had been a tutor at a learning center, who was married to the, to a pharmacist at a major East Coast hospital, we had a guy who was a teacher at a Catholic private school, who was a deacon at a church, and there to meet boys. I mean, this, this, this is not stopping. And you would think, and we see people in the chat say, "I don't want to meet Chris Hansen," or "Is this the Sheriff so-and-so thing?" And they show up anyway.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Of course they do. Because they think that it's probably never going to happen.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  What are the odds?

• 17:20Speaker 00

  To your point, it's these monsters who are hiding in plain sight.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  In plain sight. And imagine the collateral damage. Imagine the call that that wife gets. And how does she explain it to the children? And then we have access, in some of these recent investigations, to the jailhouse calls. So you hear the man, the predator, the alleged predator, call the wife and say, "Oh, well, I sort of made a mistake." Yeah, you made a mistake.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, over the, so many decades that you have been doing this, and I say that respectfully, not age-wise, but you've been at this for decades. I have a question for you.

• 17:57Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  How do you restrain yourself during these stings, when you are hearing the just disgusting things that these predators are after, and what they want to do? Because I would imagine that that takes a lot.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  Well, look, the wonderful thing about the streaming world, the wonderful thing about having your own network, is that we have a little more freedom to express ourselves, right? This doesn't all have to be packaged into a neat little network segment, right? If it's, if it's worth 12 minutes, we do a 12-minute segment for Take Down on True Blue. If it's an hour, we do an hour. And so, we get a chance to dig into all these cases in a way that is important, in terms of holding this guy accountable, getting justice for potential victims out there, and to taking our viewers inside the mind of a predator, inside the sting operation, inside, you know, the cases that are built

• 18:55Speaker 05

  by these very dedicated law enforcement people across the country. And we're coast-to-coast now. Every month, a new jurisdiction comes online. We are everywhere, and we continually do this year-round. And so, my restraint, you know, look, I can get aggressive with them, right, verbally. But it's not like I'm going to jump across the table and beat the ass, you know? That's not, that's not part of the program.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  I'd bail you out if you did.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know. I appreciate that. I think a lot of people would, thankfully. But, but, you know, I'm so focused on getting inside this guy's head.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  You know, it's a chess game. How do I get this guy to talk? You know, the lawyer in San Francisco, "I want a lawyer, I want a lawyer." Well, that's fine. And that's a fine thing to tell the detectives when they interview you. But this is a different thing here. You can either talk to me and help me understand what happened today, or you cannot. But I'm gonna ask all the questions. We had a police lieutenant from DC Metro Police Department show up in an investigation a few months back in Maryland. This guy was in charge of dignitary protection for the Washington DC Metro Police Department, motorcades of the president, visiting dignitaries. And he spent 30 days online grooming a 15-year-old boy, somebody he thought was a 15-year-old boy. And he showed up, and he didn't come in the house at first.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  They took him down in the parking lot of the sting house, because, you know, maybe he's got a gun, maybe he's gonna harm himself. He's a cop. He knows what kind of trouble he's in. So by the time he comes in and I talk to him, you know, he gave me the old, "I want a lawyer. I'm not gonna talk without a lawyer." Well, that's fine. But you're gonna listen to my questions for a good 20 minutes. You're the one who showed up here. And guess what? A week prior to this interview, he pleaded guilty to those charges, took five years in prison, and now he's got another case facing him, because when they searched his house in another county in Maryland, they found a cache of CSAM, child pornography, all cataloged, all organized on his computer. So now he has to face charges in that. But

• 20:58Speaker 05

  he's gonna go away for minimum five, and then whatever he draws in the other case.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  How often would you say that during these sting operations, when you do have that period of time to talk with them before they go with law enforcement, that they actually do share things with you, rather than being just, you know, completely shut down?

• 21:14Speaker 05

  I think 97% of the time, they talk to me.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  And what's the most common thing that you hear from them?

• 21:19Speaker 05

  I was just here to check on the child.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, they're concerned.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  I was gonna tell them, yeah, that's what the teacher and the deacon teacher and the Little League coach told me last week. This is just days ago. We just finished this op. And I was gonna tell them that this is wrong. I was online when I was young, and I was exposed to this, and I was gonna sit with them and tell them, "It's impossible. It's, you know, how do you expect me to believe that?"

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:45Speaker 05

  They've thought of an excuse, haven't they? Because they know there's a chance they can get caught.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  But it's interesting that they all have the exact same excuse. Like, there's no originality with any of them. They all say the same thing.

• 21:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, once in a while, you get something that's, you know, you didn't expect, but, you know.

• 21:59Speaker 00

  What's the wildest thing you've heard?

• 22:00Speaker 05

  Well, I think the wildest thing is that they were going to just sit with the child and keep them company and wait for the mother to get home and teach them about the evil of their ways. It's like, why didn't you call the police?

• 22:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:13Speaker 05

  Why didn't you call 911? Why didn't you call Child Family Services?

• 22:17Speaker 00

  And are they bringing items with them, or is it not to know?

• 22:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, many times. Yeah, many days they bring condoms, obviously. They bring alcohol sometimes. They bring weed sometimes. They bring food. You know, we had a guy in northern Michigan brought two Happy Meals.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 22:33Speaker 05

  I mean, what does that say to you? Besides the fact that anybody who's had children remembers what a happy time it was to have the kids in the backseat going on a trip someplace, in their car seats, and hand back Happy Meals to the kids. That's an innocent passage of life. And to have somebody sully that by bringing it to a sting house.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  That gives me a pit in my stomach.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  It did.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  And so we go back, you know, I have two podcasts. I've got Predators I've Caught and Have a Seat with Chris Hansen. So we go back on these cases when there are developments, sentences, or whatever. And I did the Happy Meal guy just the other day on the podcast. And just like you, I'm going through this, and it did give me a sad feeling in my stomach. Who brings Happy Meals to a predator sting? This guy did.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Evil. Is there a particular sting over the years that stands out to you more than the rest that will stay with you?

• 23:26Speaker 05

  They all stay with me in one way or another, you know. And, you know, look, I'm really good about compartmentalizing this. You know, I lead a normal life. I don't dwell in the darkness. I don't, you know, I do regular guy things with my family, ski down hills, hit balls with sticks, and, you know, escape it, you know, in a lot of different ways, and have maintained what I think is a healthy level of, you know, mind and body. But there are certain things that will always stick with you. And one of them is when a guy brought his four-year-old child with him to a sting house in Fort Myers several years ago. And he wasn't going to involve the child in a sex act, but he was in charge of the child that day. And so he was gonna put him off in a room with a video while

• 24:11Speaker 05

  he exploited another child, a 14-year-old. And we saw him come up the driveway, and the whole crew. I mean, these guys have worked with me in some of the darkest places in the world, you know, overseas, undercover, in various investigations, you know. And everybody just gasped. And the guy walks in, and I sit down, and I said, "Look, you know why you're here. I know why you're here. You brought your son with you, and I'm not gonna put him through that. So off you go. Some law enforcement people will meet you outside." And they did. And they took the child away.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  So How to Catch a Predator ended, of course, and then you transitioned into Take Down, and you have your podcast, as you mentioned. Can you talk to us a little bit about how How to Catch a Predator ended? Because I think there is that infamous moment.

• 24:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. So obviously, there was a case in Texas where an assistant district attorney, a prosecutor, was caught online chatting with two different 13-year-old boys. He never showed up, but the police in that case thought there was enough evidence to charge him with the crime. The crime is, in most states, committed with the chat online. They went to go arrest him, and as they were arresting him, he decided to take his own life. Later, they found child pornography on his computer. So you can do the math on that. Never wanna see it happen, but the police couldn't control it. I certainly couldn't control it.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  Right? I would have preferred them arrest him at the DA's office the next day. That would have been more dramatic television. But this is what they decided to do. They didn't want him to destroy evidence, so they went to his house to arrest him. He chose to do that. Now, we continued doing To Catch a Predator for a long time after that. We did several other investigations. There's this feeling online that that ended the show. We continued the show. I think, and I was there at the time, they made the decision to discontinue the show, because it had become very expensive. And they realized that they could do extended versions and Predator Raw on MSNBC and make a lot of money

• 26:19Speaker 05

  without going out to shoot other investigations. And it had become very expensive, because ABC tried to steal the show away. And there was a bidding war for the tech people who worked on the show. And in those days, it still required a lot of specialty work. Today, technology allows us to set these things up a lot easier, less manpower, and certainly not have to cost $600,000 per episode, which was crazy. So I think that had more to do with it than anything else, I'm pretty sure. So...

• 26:54Speaker 00

  So the chatter online is more of a misconception.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  It is. Because we did, you know, after Texas, we went on to do other investigations. And in those days, when we did an investigation, we would go there for however many days, and they would make two hours of television and put different characters in each of those hours. You know, it had to be formatted for a network show. In streaming today, each guy has his own episode. Sometimes we combine them thematically, but most of the time, each guy has his own episode, which allows us to understand who this guy is, what he did, why he did it, if we can find out, and what happens in the case. And so I think it's much more fulfilling, not only from a television production or, you know, storytelling

• 27:38Speaker 05

  standpoint, it's also more fulfilling to see justice take its course. And in the streaming world, you can do that. Now, we do a lot of versions of these stories for Fox News. We're talking about doing some stuff with Fox Nation. So we have a network presence, which is important. And we have the independence and the ownership of distribution and content that you need in this new media world. I mean, I've watched this develop over 44 years as a reporter.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  You know, I started in 1981 as a television reporter in Lansing, Michigan. I was still in college. And so to see this go all the way to being 66, you know, it's been fascinating for me. And it's been fulfilling to ride the edge of technology here. You know, I gotta be the only guy my age in the world that's got a million point one TikTok followers. I mean, but it's a valuable asset. It's a valuable platform.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  It is.

• 28:38Speaker 05

  To share information. And the same goes with the, you know, the YouTube channels. I mean, we talk about Roblox on the Have a Seat podcast, you know, we can end up with a million people paying attention to this. And not only is that gratifying from a... A journalistic business model. It's a million people who see how to protect their children online.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Which is arguably way more important than anything else.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  So how have you felt about the evolution of media over the last, even just the last 10 years because it has shifted dramatically? I'm even seeing journalists who are on networks, who now are leaving the networks to create their own independent.

• 29:13Speaker 05

  Why would I be with a network when I have my own network? I have True Blue.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 05

  And I'm very fortunate and blessed to have these opportunities.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  So, you know, we've got, you know, every social media platform. We've got two podcasts. We've got a streaming network of our own where we produce other documentaries too. We've got a sextortion documentary coming out in a couple of weeks that is just mind boggling and a very important thing for parents to see. We've got other documentaries in the pipeline too. So there's no limit to what we can do. It's really, you know, how many places I can be at the same time, which I'm trying to be as many as I can.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  And I appreciate.

• 29:53Speaker 05

  Including here with you.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  I appreciate you being here today. So let me ask you this and feel free to be brutally honest. As a professional journalist and someone who is so highly respected in the space and you've been doing this for decades with the evolution of media, how, what's your perception or how does it make you feel when you see other people like myself who don't have a professional background in journalism or anything like that, talking about cases or seeing them spark up and cover different true crime cases or some of these people who I don't agree with are doing these things and they shouldn't be. But like, how does that make you feel given that this was your career?

• 30:31Speaker 05

  I think it's the great democratization of media, right? It's allowed people to have access and it's part of our developing first amendment, right? Everybody has a right to say and do what they think and feel and to share that. And it's up to the consumers out there to decide whether this is worthy of their consumption. And so it'll all shake out. I mean, you've done very well.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  You know, and you do a great job. Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't be here.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  And my wife became a fan and then you and I met at Crime Con and it went from there. But, you know, obviously there's some real horrible people out there who are putting crap out there that's not true and you gotta turn it out. I mean, the consumer will figure this out. There's a reason why retail stores go in and out of business. Consumers don't like to be fooled. And once they're fooled, you know, those people are done. Once they burn up, they're done. You have a loyal following because you produce content that is meaningful to people and they can relate to you in your life at your age. You speak to your demographic. You know, I've been blessed and I hope you are too, that years down the road,

• 31:46Speaker 05

  when you're my age, that you continue to have that key demographic. I've been blessed to have that. I've got people who are 15 who follow me.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 05

  And I got people who are 94 who follow me. And that's why it's important to have a presence on everything from Fox News to True Blue to podcasts to TikTok.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Catch everybody, all the different demographics. Well, and I have to say at Crime Con, when you came by the booth, you were the star of the booth. We were going to convert it to the Chris Hansen booth. Everybody was there to me and it was like, Chris Hansen's here.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  I think, look, and it goes to your point about, you know, people who are full of shit, you know, and just say whatever they want on these platforms. They get burned off. You know, the world's a self cleaning oven, right? The crap gets swept off and burned up and swept away. It's done. So people who are sincere, people who have intellectual integrity, people who have energy to go tell a story that nobody else is telling it a way nobody else is telling it will survive in this. And that's what I've done. But I mean, you know, I, you know, I'd like to be able to sit here and tell you that at your age, I thunk this up and had a plan to execute it. Well, I had a natural curiosity and a drive and an amount of energy that maybe beat my colleagues.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  But it's that same drive and curiosity and knowing that what I'm doing, I think is important and I think people respond to that. It's sincerity. And so, yes, there are parodies and South Park will do something. But to me, that just shows that you've crossed that line into some sort of, you know, recognition.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  And even though it is people poking fun at you or overly dramatizing what you do in some movie someplace, you know, people know how to find the truth. And, you know, it shows that you've done something that's meaningful.

• 33:35Speaker 06

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• 34:05Speaker 00

  Well, and I do, I promise everybody, we are going to get to the movie of it all. And I do want to hear more about that. But first you did bring up Roblox a couple of times.

• 34:14Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  And I want.

• 34:15Speaker 05

  And parents cannot be more careful.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  I've been saying that for years. And so I am so happy.

• 34:22Speaker 05

  And you're right to say that.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  That you're here and you can educate a little bit on that. So obviously things have shifted drastically since the How to Catch a Predator day. So speaking of Roblox, that is obviously not new, but it's one of the new age technologies.

• 34:35Speaker 05

  Sure is.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  From instant messaging or the chat room. Can you explain a little bit to the listeners what Roblox is?

• 34:41Speaker 05

  Roblox is a multi level gaming platform upon which anybody from the age of five to 105 can play games and also create games and communities in which you can have these interactions, gaming, many times healthy. And Roblox's stated goal is to create this community where people can engage, creators can engage and people can learn and have fun and grow. And Roblox has, in response to some of these criticisms, created age verification systems and facial recognition systems.

• 35:25Speaker 05

  And it does take part in mandatory reporting of inappropriate activity to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCC, as it's supposed to. But too often, I think these companies, and Roblox is right at the top of the list, don't want to take those extra steps because extra steps mean limiting engagement. And when you are a multi billion dollar publicly traded company, limiting engagement means limiting profits. And so they have a responsibility to their users and to society in general to make sure the platform is as safe as it can make it.

• 36:06Speaker 05

  And I don't think, and many experts in this field, including those in law enforcement, don't think they're doing everything they can. And these victims go back years. In the Dangerous Games documentary, we did two hours, two different parts. And I've got a third on the way because this 764, this insidious nihilistic hate group is now exploiting Roblox as well. That's a whole other story. But we went back years. I interviewed a 30 year old man who was in the military. This guy can deadlift 716 pounds. And he was brought to tears in this interview talking about how he was exploited by a predator at Roblox.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  We had a woman in the course of this investigation. You know who Schlep is, right? You probably met him at Crime Con. Schlep is a young content creator who himself was exploited on Roblox, became an advocate, tried to work with Roblox. What does Roblox do? Fans him. We're at Crime Con this last time. We do a panel with the Louisiana Attorney General, lawyer for Schlep. Schlep, Schlep gets somebody to make an account and he shows me how to go on Roblox. And we watch as we're approached by a potential predator. Either somebody from Roblox was in that audience or knew what we were doing. And ban the account.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  Really?

• 37:30Speaker 05

  You can go to Have a See with Chris Hansen.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  I've heard, yes, I've heard this happening.

• 37:34Speaker 05

  We used that presentation at CrimeCon in our segment, our latest Roblox segment on the Have a See with Chris Hansen. People need to see this.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 05

  It happens live on stage.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Now, why is Roblox so attractive to predators?

• 37:51Speaker 05

  Because it is designed for kids in many ways. Look at the characters. You know, but then you dig a little deeper and there are bathroom games and there are bedroom games and games that simulate violent acts that have torn apart our society. Mass shootings. And again, Roblox says it tries to police these things and balance user freedom and privacy with a safe platform. But ask Roblox this. Why don't you let law enforcement conduct sting operations on your platform?

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  Why not? Why not do that?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Because they wouldn't have as many users.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Well, and so just to circle back a little bit again, for anyone who's listening, who's a parent, who doesn't know not only what Roblox is, but how these predators would then attempt to groom their child who's using it. Can you walk them through like the live chat feature and what that process looks like?

• 38:47Speaker 05

  There's a live chat feature, there's a friend feature. There have been limits put on some of these features by Roblox, right? But still, a kid can go into an area, chat. They can be approached by an adult unless the parent has absolutely prohibited this. And that's why parents need to understand how Roblox works. Because there are ways that parents can make this safer. But still, there are a lot of common areas on Roblox. And so if your child is approached, and it can be somebody posing as a kid who's not a kid, right? I tell people all the time, just because they say they're 15 years old doesn't mean they're 55 years old, sitting in their underwear in their mom's basement, surrounded by empty pizza boxes. You can say whatever you want. You don't know that person in real life. You don't know that person.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  So then they have the conversation. Sometimes they take them over to Discord, where Roblox has a big presence.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  And can you explain a little bit about Discord?

• 39:39Speaker 05

  So Discord is a public sewer, essentially. I mean, they're gonna get angry when I say this, but Discord is a widely unregulated space where people can do all kinds of things. Gaming, viewing, interactions, not particularly well-regulated, law enforcement would suggest. So now they go on there, they have more freedom to have a conversation. But Roblox has a server on Discord. There's a tight relationship there. And then, depending on how the grooming process goes, it goes to the cellphone and texting and all, let's meet up and let's do this and let's do that. We had a case during the early phases of the Dangerous Games investigation,

• 40:22Speaker 05

  Roblox investigation, where a woman from Texas reached out on TikTok and said, you know, I'm trying to get ahold of Chris Hansen's team because I caught my husband grooming a child on Roblox. My wife, who monitors, Gabrielle monitors the TikTok account very closely, flags me and I said, well, we're gonna get on this, track her down, talk to her. We go to Harlingen, Texas, where this takes place. It turns out, the wife caught the husband chatting with somebody who was 15 in California. And they were clearly inappropriate. He was grooming her. She saw the text, confronted him. Oh, it's nothing, it's nothing, don't worry about it. You're gonna ruin our whole family.

• 41:06Speaker 05

  Calls the cops, totally betrayed. The cops start investigating. We find out about it all. We go to Harlingen, interview the woman, find the husband. Now, at this point, they're separated, heading for divorce, obviously because of what happened. Take him off in the parking lot of his workplace, confront him with the text. I mean, I had the text, his chat with the 15-year-old girl. The wife then conducts her own investigation, goes online, right? Like I always say, there's nobody better than a housewife or a college girl to find stuff online. They'll find it. And gets ahold through her own investigation on social media, Facebook and whatnot, finds who the girl is, calls the mother, enlists the mother. She's shocked that this guy was grooming her daughter.

• 41:51Speaker 05

  They give a full statement to the Harlingen Police Department. They get a warrant. I get a call saying they're gonna arrest him. Now, I've already done the interview with him, took him down to the parking lot, Predator-style, done the interview with the poor wife, whose life is torn to pieces over this thing. They've got a bunch of kids. So then, I said, when are they gonna arrest him? Well, I had no time to get to Harlingen. I said, do me a favor, get the video on your cellphone. She gets a video of him being arrested. This whole thing is a segment within the Dangerous Games documentary.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 42:21Speaker 05

  And it was so organic and so powerful that it drove the point home on so many levels. One, law enforcement's gotta really be aggressive. Two, you have to advocate your own case as a parent. This woman made this case against her husband, turned her life upside down financially, emotionally. The husband's family's all upset. She's gotta explain this to her kids. And the dirtbag husbands gets locked up. Now she's gotta figure out how she's gonna manage this and put it all back together and work enough jobs to feed her kids and keep them clothed.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Fortunately, it's a tight-knit family and they all pitch in here. Grandma's there and everything else. But, I mean, that's a risk. And now you understand from an organic level why sometimes spouses don't turn their worst halves in in these cases. Because they don't want, not everybody is equipped to do that. And God bless this woman for doing it.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  It takes a lot of courage to intentionally blow up your life in order for the greater good.

• 43:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  And now going back to Discord, and I've only been on Discord a little bit here and there in the past. And to your point, it was like a sewer. I was like, get me out of here. I couldn't run away fast enough. But to break it down even more simply for those listening, would you compare, is it fair to compare it to like Discord? It's instant messaging. It's almost as like what AOL chat rooms were back in the day.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Right, it's a combination of chat rooms, Twitch, gaming, all of it all in one.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  So you're luring them from one platform to the other.

• 43:59Speaker 05

  Right, there's all kinds of stuff in there.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  And then ultimately to texting.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Now, there's a lot of other apps. I know, because I have a seven-year-old son and he has the Switch and he's doing all this and I like, I'm like a helicopter parent, looking at every single game, turning off every single chat feature, everything. No friend request, no this, no that. Are there any other apps aside from Roblox and Discord that stick out to you as big red flags?

• 44:21Speaker 05

  I think they're all potentially dangerous. I mean, we've had cases, horrifying cases, that started on Instagram, right? And you think Instagram's safe, what could go wrong there? Well, there are predators just looking, just trolling, saying, hmm, there's something, there could be some vulnerability there. And they start looking, watching. If you're putting pictures of your potential model daughter in bathing suits up, guess who's gonna look at those? And so you have to protect your kids. You have to have, you know, an extra layer of common sense and just awareness about it because it is everywhere. And you have to, and you know, we talked for a minute earlier about this extortion stuff going on.

• 45:06Speaker 05

  And that, to me, I mean, I've sat across too many parents whose children have killed themselves. Good parents, good kids, good homes, professional people whose children got caught up in a moment they couldn't see their way out of. And it speaks to my mantra, which is you gotta tell kids that you're out here playing on the superhighway and stuff can happen.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 05

  And stuff probably will happen. And you're gonna make a dopey, childlike mistake. You will, because that's what kids do. When I was a kid, that mistake didn't hold the consequences it does today. You know, you got your ass whipped when you got home because you, you know, you did something dopey. The consequences are much more severe today. And so you gotta tell your kids that, look, if you do make a mistake and there's a likelihood that you may, here are the rules. But if you mess it up, you need to come to me and I'm not gonna beat you up over it. Together, we will solve it. We'll report it and we'll go to the police department. And it's different now than it was 20 years ago. 20 years ago, not every police department

• 46:16Speaker 05

  had the wherewithal to go after these cases. Today, they're excited to go after them. They have the technology. They have a cyber squad. They have people dedicated to this cause. And they will, to the best of their ability, investigate these cases. But what you don't want is a 15 or 16 year old kid who's embarrassed because they sent explicit pictures to somebody they thought was a hot girl, who ended up being a Nigerian con artist. And now they're beating this kid up for 50 bucks every day on a gift card to say, oh, my God, my world is over. Kids are so closely aligned with their social media presence. And the thought of an embarrassing picture getting out there, or grandma seeing

• 46:57Speaker 05

  it, it just, it just crushes them. But it's a 30 minute crisis. And even if it does get out there, so what?

• 47:04Speaker 00

  Who cares? Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 05

  You're off to college in a year.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:07Speaker 05

  Nobody knows.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  But it feels so much bigger at the time.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  When you look at people, I'm sure, say critical things about you. They say it about me. Hard to, hard to believe, because we're good people.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  It's so hard to believe, Chris.

• 47:17Speaker 05

  But we do, we're good people who do good stuff, right? We're not evil people. We do a job. It's an important job, and people will nitpick at you anyway. We can't listen to it. You gotta be a stoic.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 05

  You gotta think about courage, discipline, wisdom, justice. Those are the things you worry about in life. And you have to apply those to everything you do. At least, I think so. And so if you think about it that way, and shut out the noise, and you need to share that with your kids.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:44Speaker 05

  It doesn't matter. That person's on X, that person's on here, that person's there. They're not real.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  They're not real.

• 47:49Speaker 05

  And nobody gives a rat's ass what they say.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  People are so consumed with themselves.

• 47:53Speaker 05

  Be yourself, right.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  They don't care about what's happening with you.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Now, you brought up something interesting. You had mentioned when people are posting photos or videos of their 15 year old girl in a bathing suit.

• 48:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  One of the things that I had touched on, and I went into a big, deep dive about a year ago on, was people posting their children on the internet.

• 48:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm not a fan.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, and trying to make their children mini influencers, if you will, and getting this partnerships with Pampers, with this, with that. And when you look into it, I know how it works with brand deals, as I'm sure you've explored as well.

• 48:25Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  They want the analytics. They want your demographics. So there was one woman who showed that when she shared her analytics with a diaper company, I'm just gonna say that, that the majority of her followers were men, the majority of the people saving her photos were men of her toddler aged daughter, and Pampers still went forward saying, we're gonna pay you for that.

• 48:46Speaker 05

  I have never seen CSAM, right? I've never seen it. I never want to see it.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  But I know what it is. And I know people whose job it is to, to identify it, examine it, and prosecute these cases. And the same guys who watched that, the bad cop who had hundreds of images categorized, cataloged, is the same guy who's looking at that stuff.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  Because that's fueling their desire. And if you think for one minute, there isn't a link between viewing of CSAM and offending, then you're not in the real world, because there is definitely a link. People talk about, well, they're just looking at something, it's not, no, no, no. They're gonna offend. They will offend, without question.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Well, it's interesting, too. I had a forensic psychologist on when we were talking about this, and she has worked with so many pedophiles over the years. And she said, all they need is one image. They make up a voice for them. They make up this whole backstory, and they're saving these images. And with the brand deal with that, too, it's like, they don't care, because all they want is the exposure of their product within it.

• 49:50Speaker 05

  To them, it's another click. It's another eyeball.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  And so what would your warning be to people listening who are posting their children?

• 49:56Speaker 05

  Protect your child. Would you put your child in a diaper and let him alone in the park?

• 50:00Speaker 00

  No.

• 50:00Speaker 05

  No. Would you let them crawl around the mall by themselves, or an airport by themselves? No. So why would you put them out on the internet version of that? It's a, don't do it. Could it be that important to, to?

• 50:12Speaker 00

  Show them on Instagram and get the likes. Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  I, I'm very cautious about posting. I mean, even though it's my job, and I post stuff related to work, we post nice vacation photos with our adult children, we do a lot of stuff. But I, I even am careful about locations. I don't need everybody knowing where I am at, or where my kids are, who my kids are.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  You're protecting your family.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. And people need to take that same precaution.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Let me ask you this, and it's a dark question, and I don't know if you know the answer. But what would you say, like, one out of every X amount of people is a predator?

• 50:46Speaker 05

  That's so hard. You know, people used to always ask, you know, how many predators are online at any given time? And we got focused on this 50,000 number, which means nothing. It was just something that was out there in the, in the sphere of discussion. You don't know. I mean, the internet is so ubiquitous. I mean, I'm sure somebody's got a percentage of humanity who thinks about this and then acts, does something evil. I don't know. But what I do know is every predator we catch, forever predator we catch, we've saved a child from being, if not more children.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Probably multiple.

• 51:20Speaker 05

  From being offended.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 51:22Speaker 05

  From being victimized.

• 51:23Speaker 06

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• 51:53Speaker 00

  So, okay, let's move into the movie of it all. Because obviously, Primetime is coming out with Robert Pattinson starring as you, which is crazy to think, I would imagine. What was it like getting that call? Not only that they were going to be doing a movie, but also that he was going to be playing you.

• 52:09Speaker 05

  Well, we had heard, you know, obviously, with all the different properties I have and all the platforms, some of the people who are involved in the management also tangentially have relationships in the Hollywood world. So we had heard that this was in the works. Couple months ago, they came out and said, hey, look, we're doing this. We'd like you to, you know, have some sort of, you know, consideration in terms of helping us with this. I haven't seen it. You know?

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Did you sit in on any of the filming?

• 52:39Speaker 05

  No.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  Or work as a consultant or anything?

• 52:41Speaker 05

  No.

• 52:41Speaker 00

  So they, they put together their whole storyline?

• 52:43Speaker 05

  And then came to me.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  Just independently?

• 52:45Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 52:45Speaker 05

  So I'm going to get a private screening in the next week or so. And then I'll be able to tell you whether I like it or don't like it. And how dramatized it is. And, and my suspicion is that they used my name because it helps in a commercial enterprise. And until I see the full movie, you know, I, as a reporter, it's sort of silly for me to talk about something that I haven't seen yet. So I'm gonna see it.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  Have you seen the trailer?

• 53:18Speaker 05

  I've seen the trailer.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  What are your thoughts on the trailer?

• 53:20Speaker 05

  It looks dramatic.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 53:22Speaker 05

  It looks very dramatic. But again, you know, I've been busy being the real Chris Hansen. So I don't have a lot of time to focus on the fake Chris Hansen in the movie.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  You can't focus on Robert Pattinson playing you.

• 53:31Speaker 05

  I mean, look, yeah, I, look, I know that, you know, he's a very popular actor. I know that the director is a popular actor. But I also have some questions, you know, what's Hollywood's motive here? We don't know. But I'll find out. And I'll promise I'll let you know.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  I want the follow up.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'll do it.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  You know, I'm kind of, I wonder why they wouldn't have enlisted you to come on board as, I don't know what the exact term would be like, but kind of like a consultant role as they're filming, to be like, is this accurate? Are we having the proper representation of what actually took place in all of these years?

• 54:06Speaker 05

  Well, we're fit to find out.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. All right. So when you got the call, not only that they were making the movie, but that he was going to be playing you, what was that like? Because he is an A-list star.

• 54:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, obviously, they, they want a commercial endeavor to succeed. And they think this is the way it's going to succeed. You know, I, I didn't get to choose my own, my own guy here.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Who would you have chosen?

• 54:28Speaker 05

  That's a good question. And I knew it was coming, and I should have had a better answer prepared for you. But I always thought, you know, I had discussions years ago about, I had crafted a script, and I thought Dennis Leary would be a good guy to play me, depending on the age of it all. We are, by the way, just started, we signed a two book deal with Simon and Schuster for a Chris Hansen thriller series.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Congratulations.

• 54:55Speaker 05

  And we're deep into that. So every day, I've got a, is this the book Chris Hansen? Who has a different name in the book? Is this the fake movie Chris Hansen? Is this what I've really got to do today? Who am I today?

• 55:08Speaker 00

  An identity crisis, just the meme with all the numbers going.

• 55:11Speaker 05

  Existential crisis every morning to figure out where I've got to be. Well, you know, I work with a wonderful writing partner named Joe Garner, who produces some of the podcasts. And I have such an incredible team. And I gotta mention Kelly McClear, who you know from Crime Con, who does all the work, the, the producing work for, for Takedown. But

• 55:32Speaker 05

  You know, it allows you, and I've written a book before, I wrote a book about the Predator Experience 15, 16 years ago, I suppose, but it's really a great exercise in creativity to take all the things you set aside, all the ideas, all the things you wanted to express but didn't have time to in the actual production of the stories. And I've got this great vault of creative stuff that's just ready to go into these books. I'm very excited for it.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  So aside from the books, True Blue, Take Down, your podcast, what else, what's next? As if you don't have enough on your plate?

• 56:09Speaker 05

  Well, you know, we explore a lot of potential documentaries, you know, this extortion, for instance. There's the, I cooperated in the I'm Chris Hansen documentary, which is more of a profile of me that's coming out right around the same time the movie is, just after the 824 movie. And so I have a lot of topics that interest me, you know, and so we get to those as we have time. But I've probably got six or seven other documentaries in the works, either shooting or conceptually, or, you know, getting the write-ups ready to go. So it's, it's a busy, you know, look, it's a great time alive, right? My kids are grown, everybody's working, you know, I've got a wonderful wife, and I have time to do

• 56:53Speaker 05

  all this stuff. And so it really opens you up creatively and gives you a great deal of energy to go out and do this. And, you know, I'm a student of the world, and I get to write a report about it every Thursday, and every Wednesday, and every Monday, every time these different shows-

• 57:09Speaker 00

  Daily Show, that's what we need, Chris. We need a daily show.

• 57:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, we may, you know, we may try that one day, but-

• 57:13Speaker 00

  Aside from the Predator, Predator piece of it, and bringing them down, is there anything else, like, in the crime universe that you're interested in, or cases right now that you're following?

• 57:24Speaker 05

  So next up is fraud.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 57:26Speaker 05

  Waste, mismanagement, theft. I've got some cases that will blow your mind, and-

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Can you give us a teaser?

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Well, I think when you talk about systems that are set up in society so that the challenged, economically challenged people get a leg up on, you know, the EBT cards, or the certain benefits, they're being abused across the country, in this state, and virtually every state. And I've got some people who have been undercover for months on this, who I've been working with. And what you're gonna see on some of this fraud stuff is really just outrageous.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  You're gonna be everywhere. Ooh, to catch a fraudster. If you haven't trademarked it yet, you better do it fast. Get the website, get the handles, do everything you need to do.

• 58:19Speaker 05

  Do it all. It's in process.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. Okay, so what, out of all these projects that you have going on, that you've done, what's been the most rewarding one for you?

• 58:25Speaker 05

  Well, they all are rewarding, in different ways. I mean, obviously, the Take Down Predator franchise is very rewarding, because we're creating dialogue and awareness that, you know, doesn't exist, or doesn't exist at the level it should. We're preventing these guys from harming children. We're, I think, in some cases, helping law enforcement to realize, we can do this, and we can partner with you, me, and really make something that's compelling, and sends a message to the community that we're not gonna stand for this. And so we have more law enforcement agencies than ever before, wanting to collaborate on these things.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Have you ever worked, or have you ever heard of Child Rescue Coalition?

• 59:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  So I work with them, and I have a partnership with them. You do? I was just gonna say, everything feels like it's such like, an organic thing that was like aligned so well.

• 59:18Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. No, we love Child Rescue Coalition. In fact, I was, I hosted their event last, this past year in Delray.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  That's right, with Greg.

• 59:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. Greg, I've had Greg on the podcast.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  And so the technology, where you can see the, the trade of child explicit material in real time, is shocking. I was chatting with Greg today.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  When they pulled up that map for me, and you see it just kind of light up like a Christmas tree, it's unbelievable.

• 59:41Speaker 05

  I did it on my podcast, and we, we, we were very involved. We raised a lot of money for them this year.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  Oh, fantastic. That, yeah, that feels like such a great partnership.

• 59:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, and we've got some stuff going with them, too.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  Okay. So can you let everybody know where they can find you?

• 59:54Speaker 05

  True Blue, T-R-U-B-L-U. Watch TrueBlue.com. That's where the Take Down Predator investigative series is. I think we're up to like 270 episodes so far.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  Lots to binge, guys.

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, so get into it. We've got the podcast, Predators I've Caught, drops every Monday. And Have a Seat with Chris Hansen, that comes out Wednesday. The Take Down episodes drop every Thursday, every Thursday. Never a miss. Three brand-new pieces of content every week. The documentaries, Extortion's coming out, I'm Chris Hansen's coming out, Fox News, Jesse Waters, we do a lot of work there. And, and To Catch a Fraudster.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  Coming soon.

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  I don't think I missed anything.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  I love that. Well, and I'll put all the links in there. I do have a follow-up. Did you ever anticipate that your iconic lines would become, as bold as they are, where people have shirts made with them now?

• 1:00:46Speaker 05

  No, I never did. And it's funny, because the "have a seat" line was basically a way to get control of the environment, especially in the early investigations where we didn't have law enforcement. Now, you know, we have a briefing with law enforcement, and, you know, if, sometimes law enforcement takes them into custody before I even get a chance to interview them. It's in a, it's in an interview room at a sheriff's office. And that's fine, because it's still a very compelling interview. Sometimes they come in, and I get a chance to talk to them first. Now, if he gets fidgety, or tries to run, he's grabbed.

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Speaker 05

  He's handcuffed, and then I talk to him. But in the early days, we didn't have those options. It was either I get him to have a seat, or he runs and he's gone. We couldn't chase him.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  We weren't allowed to. So the "have a seat," have a seat right over there, and the focus on the physicality of the room was critical. And that was my way of controlling the situation.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Well, even thinking back to when I used to watch How to Catch a Predator, like, you know how this looks, or like, what's that in the bag?

• 1:01:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, what you have in the bag there. Well, it was all, all developed organically. We had one investigation in Ohio, years ago. And a guy came in, and he was a bad guy. He had a court date the following Monday for sexually assaulting a young relative. He was there to assault a girl, and he was a short person, like dwarf. And he worked at a military base. So he comes in, and I said, you gotta hop up and have a seat. And he goes, no, I'm good right here. I said, and I'm thinking, if he doesn't get in the stool, he's out of the camera shot, because he was so short. And so he hops up there, and then we have our interview right there. But, you know, all those, those little things

• 1:02:30Speaker 05

  that, behind the scenes, they're so challenging, and darkly humorous. And yes, I mean, the dark humor of it is, is part of, I think, the popularity. And so, yeah, I lean into that, of course I do.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I have to tell you, I not only am a fan, but I appreciate so much what you're doing as a parent, as just a human being, everything, all the work that you do. Thank you so much.

• 1:02:50Speaker 05

  Well, thank you.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  And thank you so much for joining me today.

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  Thank you for having us in beautiful Orange County, California.

• 1:02:54Speaker 00

  I'm so glad you're here. You definitely have to come back once you see the movie, and like, we have to have a team session.

• 1:02:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I promise. Absolutely.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Okay. Thank you so much, Chris.

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

  Done and done. Thank you, Annie.

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