June 11, 2024 • 40 mins
Geoffrey Hauptman kisses his wife goodbye as he leaves for work.
Moments later, he calls Betsy Hauptman telling her to lock the doors and check on the children because someone’s passed out in the front yard. As he calls 911, Betsy Hauptman goes from room to room, locating 5 of 6 children. Timothy is missing.
Betsy Hauptman meets her husband at the front door, hysterically explaining she can’t find Timothy. With tears in his eyes, Geoffrey Hauptman shakes his head at his wife, and she screams. The body in the front yard is Timothy, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Security cameras show Timothy sitting in the family car in the driveway for two hours the night before, frantically scrolling on his cellphone. Sumter, South Carolina PD, collected Timothy’s phone and his school Chromebook.
Just before his death, Timothy changed the passcode on his phone, so detectives focused on the task of unlocking it. Betsy Hauptman tells Detective Kelsey Wade that Timothy mainly communicated over Snapchat, and Wade issues a subpoena for the teen’s account. Eleven weeks go by with no answers, despite Hauptman calling twice a week. Wade finally informs Hauptman investigators that they are submitting a second Snapchat subpoena, along with a subpoena for Timothy’s Cash App activity.
A month later, Sumter PD unearthed dozens of suicide notes addressed to family and friends. They also find an extensive call and text record with an unsaved phone number with a New York area code. The texts included links to a second Snapchat account Timothy used.
Messages on that account reveal Timothy sent a stranger $35 a day to prevent them from posting an explicit photo of him online. One of Timothy’s last messages begged the stranger to stop, reading, “Please, I’m just a child.”
Joining Nancy Grace Today:
- Betsy Hauptman - Timothy Barnett's Mother
- Joe Cunningham - Victim's Family Lawyer
- Titania Jordan – BARK CMO Chief Marketing Officer/Chief Parenting Office
- Detective Rich Wistocki: Child Crime Expert, President of BeSure Consulting (30 years), 23-year SWAT team member; Formed the Will County Illinois States Attorney’s High Technology Crimes Unit that made over 90 sexual predator arrests in its first 3 ½ years.
- Ashley Jones - Reporter and Anchor WIS News 10 in South Carolina
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Heartbreak. There's no other way
to say it, heartbreak. A beautiful little boy, just thirteen,
commit suicide in the front yard Mommy and daddy inside
(00:22):
after a horrible online sex stortion scheme.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What is that? Now we all know what it is tonight?
What happened?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Joining us special guest, his mom, Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace.
This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Assumpter, South Carolina homeowner leaving for work think someone is
sleeping or passed out in the yard. He tells his
wife to lock the doors check on the children. As
he looks into what's going on and calls nine to
one one officers discover the person in the yard is dead,
killed by a gunshot to the ahead.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh gosh, when I hear it stated like that, all
I can think about are my own children.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
This boy.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Oh if I could just explain how he was just
totally scrubbed in sunshine, so sweet, so smart, good grades,
everything the boy every parent would want to have. How
does this happen? I really want to thank you for
being with us tonight because this whole six stortion scheme
(01:34):
that is targeting our youth our little children is vast.
As a matter of fact, I understand, and new lawsuit
has been filed naming six hundred other cases joining me
and all start pedal what happened that morning inside the
(01:57):
family home.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Listen Timothy Barnett helping out around the house and is
taken to making his mom's cup of coffee every morning.
At six point fifteen, Betsy Hopman is surprised that Timothy
isn't already in the kitchen and pours her own coffee,
kissing her husband goodbye as he leaves for work. Moments later,
Jeffrey Hoptman calls his wife, telling her to lock the
doors and check on the children because someone's passed out
(02:19):
in their front yard. As he calls nine to one one,
Betsy Hopman goes from room to room, locating five of
six children.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Timothy is missing with me right now, Timothy's mom, Betsy Hoptman,
Miss Hoptman, thank you for being with us, Thanks for
having me inty, Betsy, I almost didn't want to even
play that sound, because you know, we have routines we
go through every morning. My daughter gets up super early.
(02:48):
I can hear her turning on the bath water. My
son sleeps late. I have to go wake him up
every morning and he jumps up and gives me a
big hug, and that is the normal routine. I'm just
thinking on what I just heard that every morning.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Is this true?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Your boy would come and make you a cup of coffee.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Most mornings, guess, ma'am. Every morning, almost every morning, he
would get up. He'd be the first one up, and
I'd walk into the kitchen and he'd be having my
tea kettle on for the French.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Press, Miss Hartman.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Before I go into the facts of this case, I've
just got to tell you we are so sorry about
your loss, about losing your baby.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I am so sorry. I appreciate that again with me
an all star pedal.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
You know a lot of people haven't even heard the
word sextortion before and joining me in a few moments
is an expert in online safety to Tanya Jordan from
Bark But Betsy, tell me what happened that morning.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
Sure, it was a morning like every other morning.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
My husband and I got up with the alarm.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
He went about his day, walk up the front door.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
A few minutes later, I get a phone call saying,
lock the doors and check.
Speaker 6 (04:21):
On my kids. So I go about the kids rooms
check on them.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
They're all there except for Timothy. And I was like, okay,
well that's not abnormal. So I checked the bathroom to
see if he was in the bathroom.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
He wasn't.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Checked the kitchen, where like I said, he normally got
up and turned on the kettle for my French press,
and he wasn't there.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
So I walked up to the garage to see if
he was at our drink fridge.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Again, he wasn't there, and panic set in and I
realized when my husband told me to lock the doors,
something must have happened.
Speaker 6 (04:58):
So I called my husband back and I said, what's
going on. He's like someone's.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
Sleeping in her front yard and I said, I can't
find Timothy. And he walked me through the house again
and he's like, is he in the bathroom?
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Is he in the pantry?
Speaker 7 (05:14):
Is he in the kitchen?
Speaker 5 (05:15):
I was like no, And at that point I realized
I woke up into every mother's nightmare.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Miss Houtman, it's so hard to hear what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's so hard to hear it knowing what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I don't know how you have this strength to tell
this story.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
How do you keep going?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
How do you have this strength to tell other parents
about what happened tonight?
Speaker 5 (05:47):
The only reason I can even have that is because
God allows me to have a voice that allows education
for other parents so that they're not sitting in my seat.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
You get a call, there's somebody in the front yard.
Lock the door, go check on the children. You find
everybody but Timmy, Then what do you do?
Speaker 6 (06:07):
Like I said, I walked through the house.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
Making sure that he wasn't in his normal spot in
the morning, because, like I said.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
He normally woke up before everybody else.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
He wasn't, And at that point I knew, but my
husband told me not to come outside.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
But the cops were.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
There and a few minutes later, and it felt like eternity.
My husband walked in the front door, and he still
hasn't told me to this day what happened and who
he found in the front yard. But as soon as
I saw his face, you can hear me yell on
(06:54):
our ring doorbell, Cameron, because at that point my heart broke.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Did you learn your baby? Your little boy?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And I know you have I think three boys, but
I refer to both of my twins they're sixteen now
as my baby's When.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Did you learn you're sweet? Timothy?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
This tastes like dirt in my mouth. Had committed suicide.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
About six thirty six forty five in the morning on
April sixth of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
How did you process not just losing your child, but
learning your child committed suicide.
Speaker 6 (07:41):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
I didn't want to believe it. It didn't make sense
to me because he was such a normal kid. He
was the kid that was the life of the party
and the one that always tried to make people happy.
He's the one who would come in and cut on
(08:04):
and make sure that mom was okay. And again, it
just it truly didn't make sense to me because we
had plans. He had asked me to take him to
Tennessee to Gatlinburg.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
For his birthday, and I was like, yeah, we can
plan a trip.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
You and me like because I like to make memories
instead of do gifts, And I was like, yeah, we
can most certainly do that, and we were planning it.
So it didn't make sense at all until I found.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Out what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Guys, what do we know did happen? Why is this
beautiful boy who I keep saying it over and over.
There were no prior mental instabilities, there were no depressions.
He had never ever threatened suicide ever, never even intimated
(09:12):
anything about harming himself or anybody else. I'm telling you,
this is the boy every parent wants to have.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So why is this beautiful boy dead? What more do
we know? Listen?
Speaker 8 (09:28):
Betsy Helptman meets her husband at the front door, hysterically
explaining she can't find Timothy. With tears in his eyes.
Jeffrey Helpman shakes his head at his wife and she screams.
The body in the front yardist Timothy dead of a
self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Security cameras show
Timothy sitting in the family car in the driveway for
two hours the night before, frantically scrolling on a cell phone. Sumter,
(09:50):
South Carolina pde collect Timothy's phone in his school chromebook,
bowing to find out what drove the team to suicide.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And again, isn't it true, Betsy, that Timothy? I have
a nephew, Timothy, and I call him Timmy, even though
he's grown now. So I've now started calling your son
Timmy because I've read so much about him. Isn't it
true that your son Timothy had never gone through bouts
of depression, had never lost appetite, was never in prolonged
(10:21):
periods of sadness, to your knowledge, wasn't bullied at school,
none of the red flags.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
We look for.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
No bedwedding, no self mutilation, no slapping or bruising or
pinching himself, nothing to make you think he would ever
have committed suicide.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
There were no extreme signs. I mean, he was a
thirteen year old boy, a thirteen year old boy that
was going through puberty.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
What I classify him as a depressed child? Absolutely not.
But what teenager doesn't have the.
Speaker 9 (11:00):
Normal Yeah, it's my place in life, the normal ups
and downs of going through middle school, entering high school.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
He is just thirteen years old. I understand that that
night he was scrolling. And I've seen my daughter and
my son do this. They scroll and scroll and scroll
on their phones. So I'm like, what are you looking at?
And they typically say TikTok. And I've snuck up on
(11:33):
them so many times to see what it is. And
it's always with my son, some crazy prank. Some boys
are are you know, trying to shoot a basketball from
a car driving by some crazy thing like that. My
daughter's looking at fashion or skin care, but they look
at it all the time. So Timothy was out in
(11:54):
the car the night before, just scrolling, is that right?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
So the security cameras show him sneaking out of his
window about I want to say, two forty five three
o'clock and sitting in my car, and then you can
see him on his phone just scrolling through it. And
(12:21):
unfortunately the cameras aren't the greatest to see. We weren't
able to see what he was scrolling through or what
he was doing.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
On his phone, but just that he was on his
phone scrolling.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
And then at about five o'clock, five fifteen, he goes
off camera, and he comes back for a short few minutes,
and then he goes back off for the final time.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So you had no idea he was outside in the
car scrolling. And you know, there's something very comforting about
just sitting in the family car. I know when we
were drive home from school a lot of times in
the afternoon, we would sit in the car in the
driveway and listen to music and talk. It's just something
(13:08):
you know, your cocoon like in the car, and I'm
imagining him sitting in the car where nobody can see
what he's doing. He knows you're asleep inside, and he's scrolling.
Had he ever done that before? To your knowledge?
Speaker 5 (13:22):
He did it once before from my understanding, But that's
not an abnormal thing, because, much like you, Nancy, when
I go on.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
A trip anywhere, even if it was to the grocery store.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Or to go get gas, I sit in the car
for a few minutes and collect my thoughts because it's
that almost soundproof space where I can block everything and
anybody out. And Tim was a lot like mom where
(13:58):
he needed that clue, that sound proof space to process
his own thoughts.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Why is a thirteen year
old little boy dead?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Why did a thirteen year old who had never threatened suicide,
never had mental instability or problems, no prolonged depressions, nothing,
Why did.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
He commit suicide?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And what was he scrolling ceaselessly the night before, sitting
in the family car. What was so secretive he did
not want his parents to hear about. Joining me is
a very special guest who I've got to say is
one of the bravest ladies.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I know, speaking out so.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Other parents can learn from Timothy's death. But right now
I want to go to Titanya Jordan joining US online
safety expert, chief Parent officer of Bark Technology. It's an
online safety company that helps keep children, kids teens safe.
(15:19):
And I've got to tell you, my children know, the
whole family knows that.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I have Bark.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Bark is kind of an online program you download on
your phone and your children's phones and you sink them
and they're like a safety net that catches problems at
curse words of bullying. I don't really know how they
do it, but I will give you this brief anecdote.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
My son is the goalie.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
He's been a goalie forever in soccer, and when he
was about in the seventh or eighth grade, he made
this incredible save and he was really horizontal, went horizontal
to stop the goal and he did stop it, but
his arm went through the net and he got a
big bruise from the net and he took a picture
of it and he sent it to some of his
(16:11):
friends and went, look what I got saving a goal.
He was proud of the bruies. Well, Bark caught the
bruise and alerted me about self harm. That's how sensitive
it is. So that's what bark is Titania Snapchat. A
lot of parents think if you go on to your
(16:34):
child's scrolling history their Internet use, then you know what
they've been doing. That is not true. All of this
happened on Snapchat. Just very briefly explain what is snapchat.
What's a snap.
Speaker 10 (16:51):
Snapchat is an app that was launched to send disappearing
photos and children do not need the ability to send
to appearing photos. It has now expanded to offer location sharing,
which is problematic. It's become rife with drug dealers and
now sextortion scams guys.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Very often, I'll be sitting with the twins and one
of them will start laughing.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I'm like, what what is it? And they go, it's
a funny snap from so and so. I'm like, let
me see it, and they go, it's already disappeared. Mom,
I can't show it to you.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
To Betsy Hoptman, this is Timothy's mom, Betsy, when did
you find out about this horrible sixtortion scheme against Timothy
on Snapchat?
Speaker 5 (17:39):
So? I found out Timothy passed away on April sixth,
and I found out from the Captain of investigations here
in Summer on October fourth.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Joining me now is Ashley Jones, investigative reporter and anchor
WIS News South Carolina. Ashley, thank you for being with us.
I want to go back to the day that Timothy
was killed.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Tell me what you know.
Speaker 11 (18:08):
So from what I know as far as what Sumter
PD said in an incident report, on the morning of
April sixth, Timothy's father found his body laying outside in
the front yard and from there they called the Sumter
Police Department, who came out and began an investigation.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
However, there was some I believe.
Speaker 11 (18:29):
Discrepancies as far as Sumter Police Department actually doing the investigation.
There was something about they couldn't get into Timothy's phone
to figure out what may have happened. There was a
lot of back and forth.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Oh, Ashley, you know, it's amazing that you said that,
because you guys have already lived through this in South
Carolina with the Alex Murdoch trial.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Remember what all we had to get go through.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
They had to bring in the Secret Service to unlock
a phone in order to place Alex Murdock at the
dog kennels where his wife.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And some were murdered at the time of the murder.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Remember that I sat through that Secret Service guy testimony
and it was very, very intricate about unlocking the phone. Okay,
so what is Timothy looking at for two hours and
then commit suicide in the front yard?
Speaker 12 (19:24):
Listen, just before his death, Timothy changed the passcode to
his phone, so detectives focus on the task of unlocking it.
Betsy Hoptman tells detective Kelsey Wade that Timothy mainly communicated
over Snapchat, and Wade issues a subpoena for the teen's account.
Eleven weeks go by with no answers, despite Hoptomen calling
(19:45):
twice a week. Wade finally informs Hoptman investigators are submitting
a second Snapchat subpoena along with a subpoena for Timothy's
cash app activity.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Joining me in addition to Timothy's mom, Betsy is the
family lawyer Joe Cunningham, high profile lawyer in that jurisdiction.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Joe, thank you for being with us.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
They have to send a second subpoena to Snapchat.
Speaker 13 (20:12):
Why well, Nancy, what we know is that the first
subpoena that was sent to snap Apparently from Snap's response
was not comprehensive enough or detailed enough to provide a response,
so that required them to send a second one. And
since then this investigation has been handed over to the
federal agencies of the U. S. Attorney's Office, who is
now handling this.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So it's amazing to me that in light of Timothy's death,
you have to basically threaten Snapchat in order to get responses,
and you've got the mom, Betsy Houtman, basically begging to
get answers.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What was my son looking at? Betsy?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
What was going through your mind when you're having to
call twice a week to get answers and still not
getting answers?
Speaker 5 (20:57):
What were they doing to find out why my phone
killed himself? And unfortunately I was told it wasn't Sumpter's police.
Sumpter Police Department's job to find out why he did it,
just said he did it.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
That is amazing to me.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
And I'm going to circle back in a moment, Betsy
about when you took the phone away from him for
a period of months, But right now I want to
focus on why the local police department told you to
just figure it out yourself. Imagine you being in Betsy's position.
You're trying and trying to find out the cause your
(21:38):
boy committed suicide, and he believed the answer is on
his phone. I want you to listen to this.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Five months after Timothy's death, Betsy Hopman gets a notification
on Life three sixty that Timothy completed to drive. Hopeful
that detectives crack his passcode, Hopman calls Detective Wade with
no response and drives down to the police station, refusing
to leave until she speaks with Wade. Hours later, two
unfamiliar detectives informer that Timothy's phone is equivalent to a paperweight.
(22:10):
They're closing the investigation and it isn't their job to
figure out why her son killed himself.
Speaker 12 (22:15):
A month later, Betsy Hoptmann discovers Sumter PD unearthed dozens
of suicide notes addressed to family and friends. They also
found an extensive call and text record with an unsaved
phone number with a New York area code. The text
includes links to a second Snapchat account Timothy used. Messages
(22:35):
on that account revealed Timothy sent a stranger thirty five
dollars a day to prevent them from posting an explicit
photo of him online. One of Timothy's last messages begged
the stranger to stop reading. Quote please, I'm just a child.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Sextortion, That's what's happening. That is why this little boy
belt there was no way out and killed himself. Sextortion.
To Tanya jordan Bart.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Child safety expert, what is sextortion?
Speaker 10 (23:10):
Sextortion is a combination of the words sex and extortion,
and extortion is using threats are forced to coerce someone
into doing something, and so in the case of sextortion,
a child, a person is threatened that they're nude photos
or videos will be released unless they provide valuables, money,
or release more sexual photos or videos too.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Ashley Jones joining us WIS News t in South Carolina, Ashley,
what was the threat on Timothy?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
What was the sextortion?
Speaker 11 (23:40):
Well, so from what we know is that this person,
whomever it was, was basically telling Timothy unless he sent
them thirty five dollars a day via cash app, then
they would post this nude photo of him online.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Oh my stars, Oh my stars.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
To think this boy is gone because some evil person
is extorting a little child. To Joe Cunningham, the family lawyer.
What more do we know about the plot, who was
behind it?
Speaker 13 (24:12):
Well, this is still under investigation by the US Attorney's Office, Nancy. Unfortunately,
what we know is this is not an isolate incidents.
A lot of these originate from the Ivory coast of Africa,
where people pose as young teenage girls and befriend teenage
boys and engage in a flirtatious manners soliciting nude pictures,
(24:38):
only to later on comeback, screenshot the list of their
friends and family members and extort them for money, otherwise
they'll release these particular pictures. This has become very common.
I want to thank you for shining a light onto
this because here's a statistic that your viewers need to know.
Snapchat did a survey a while back and said that
(25:00):
two thirds of gen Z teens or young adults, either
themselves or people they knew, had been victims of sex
stortion two thirds. So this is Unfortunately, it's non isolated incidant.
This is the worst case scenario though for any family
to have to go through.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Guys, it is by far not the first time a
teen boy or girl has been targeted in sex stortion.
For instance, in a case I recently investigated. I mean,
a superstar kid much like Timothy, is online chatting with
(25:39):
a beautiful girl his age and the girl gets the
boy to send a nude photo. Well, it turns out
the girl as not a young girl his age at all.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Listen.
Speaker 14 (25:51):
Over the course of a short conversation, Samuel Ogashi, pretending
to be this young woman, persuaded Jordan to send a
sectionally explicit image of himself. Once Samuel Ogashi had that
sexually explicit image in his hand, he then turned to
extort Jordan de May for money, threatening to reveal the
(26:14):
image to Jordan's family and friends if he did not comply.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
This kid, Jordan de Maay high school superstar, and you
are hearing the US attorney Mark taught and speaking.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Listen.
Speaker 14 (26:25):
Jordan de Maay paid what he had, which was three
hundred dollars, but Samuel Gashi continued his threats, demanding more
from Jordan. A few hours later, Jordan told Samuel Ogashi
that he was now taking his life, and Samuel Ogashi,
responding through the Instagram persona of Danny Roberts, told him
(26:50):
do that fast, or I'll make you do it.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Jordan de Maay, who committed suicide after sixtortion. His father
spent to me and depth, listen.
Speaker 15 (27:02):
If things happen, you know, it's not the end of
the world either. You know, Jordan's story is so tragic,
and this is something that probably would have been laughing
about in ten or fifteen years after he's graduated college
and gotten married and had kids and bought his first
home and you got a career job and did all
the things. You'd look back and kind of like that
was stupid, right, But in that moment, you can't. They're
(27:24):
not old enough to understand that. They're not developed enough
to understand.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Betsy Hotman takes Sumpter PDS findings to the FBI and
Homeland Security. A federal investigation is immediately opened, and detectives
find that the cash app account Timothy sent money to
belongs to a woman in Los Angeles County. A suspect
has yet to be identified, but Timothy's family is encouraged
by how seriously the FEDS are taking their son's case.
(27:48):
Both Betsy Hotman and Jamie Barnett have criticized Sumter pd
for closing their investigation, but the parents' focus lies on
finding justice for Timothy.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Joining me, is Timothy's mom? Howkman?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So getting fed up with no answers from the local PD,
you take your case to the FBI and they take
it on.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Is that correct?
Speaker 6 (28:11):
Yes, Miam.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
I called the national Hotline for Missing and Exploited Children
myself after I found out from Captain Lloyd Timothy was
sex started because it took them so long to.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
Even do anything.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Joining me right now is special guest, former detective cyber Crimes, detective,
child crime expert, and president of b Sure Cyber Training.
You can find them at Besureconsulting dot com. Rich with
Stocky Rich. Thank you so much for being with us.
Explain to me what you should do to protect your
(29:08):
child and how we can crack this case and determine
who started Timothy.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
Nancy, It's unbelievable everything that I'm hearing today, because you
know why, it's typical every week I get calls from
parents and law enforcement all over the country. I teach
about three hundred thousand children. I teach about four thousand
cops and police departments are ten years behind cybercrime investigations.
(29:36):
So what happens is when I go talk to kids
in schools, I tell them when no one is allowed
to make you feel bad about yourself online, no one
is allowed to make you do something you know you
shouldn't be doing. If you're sitting here watching me and
suffering in silence because this is happening to you, I
can make your pain stop. Because when it comes to
social networking and gaming online, Nancy, no one online is anonymous.
(30:00):
No one. Now, these Yahoo boys who are out doing this,
we can track them, but they have no fear because
they know US law enforcement. Local law enforcement doesn't have
the training to take to track this stuff. And I
will tell you over the three hundred thousand students that
I have worked with across the country this year alone, Nancy,
(30:23):
I had thirty five students come to me after the
presentation telling me this is happening to me. I had
to start twenty eight criminal investigations through the Internet Crimes
against Children Task Force across the country.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Rich I'm trying to think of ways to help parents,
and Betsy is speaking out today.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
If you had to give.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Parents one piece of advice to protect their children from
six stortion schemes like this one, what would you tell them?
Speaker 7 (30:52):
There are actually three things Nancy. The first one is
you need to be monitoring your kid's devices.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
If we're talking about Snapchat, which is what Betcy Howton's
tell about today, those images disappear immediately.
Speaker 7 (31:03):
They don't actually Snapchat has them for thirty days.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
But how is a parent supposed to know that? You say, parent,
you look.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
At the phone, but on the phone it disappears. No
parent knows to call Snapchat has says, hey, what has
my son been looking at in the last two days.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
That's not gonna happen. Give me something I can hold
on to.
Speaker 7 (31:25):
Parents need to keep their children's phones out of their devices,
out of their rooms at night. That's number one. And
then what happens. Parents don't know about Snapchat and they
need to be checking their my eyes only in Snapchat.
This is a private cloud based service that Snapchat has
called My Eyes Only, and most of our children are
(31:47):
hiding their most horrible pictures of themselves and others in
it now. Number one, Nancy. Number one is that parents
need to have the access code to their kid's device
and spot check that that's something you can hold on to.
And if at any time a child changes their device
(32:07):
because they're hiding something, you know something wrong. So imagine
in this case, if the parent knew the access code
to the phone, we could have unlocked that phone and
trace that within hours of where it came from. And
that's what I trained my law enforcement osters to do.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Well, here's the thing, though, Betsy, you knew the code,
and you had actually found long before a naked photo
of a woman. Any No, we're not having this, and
you talked to him, You reprimanded him, you counseled him
about it. You took the phone away for a period
of months, and you gave it back. You knew his code,
(32:47):
you didn't know he had changed his code. That would
be like twenty four to seven monitoring on your child
to find out if they sneak off to the closet
and in three minutes changed their code to their phone.
Speaker 6 (32:58):
Exactly.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
I mean I got on Snapchat myself because my fourteen
year old niece at that point was like.
Speaker 6 (33:07):
Auntie, get on Snapchat.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
It's got a lot of filters and we can snap
back and forth and whatnot.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
I never imagined.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
Sending anything because as an adult, I knew when you
send us stuff on the internet, it never quote unquote.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
Truly goes away.
Speaker 5 (33:31):
So Timothy was on Snapchat because that's what kids these
days do.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
That's what they all do, Betsy, all of the preteens
and teens and a lot of adults are on Snapchat.
Nobody is on Facebook at that age, and many many
other platforms.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Text me yes exactly and joining me. I don't want
to forget about this. Cunningham is with us, and that
is Betsey's family lawyer.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I've got in my hands a big fat lawsuit.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
What is it?
Speaker 13 (34:09):
Joe pre file a lawsuit against Snap for wrongful death
for the damages that Betsy's family has gone through and
suffering this unimaginable loss. And the basis of that lawsuit
is negligence. Is negligence per se. But it's also centers
around Snap putting out a defective product. They've put out
(34:30):
a product, as you mentioned, that has the images disappeared.
Now anyone can imagine what the anticipated use of a
product like that actually will be. And it's welcomed predators
onto their platform and without the proper guardrails in place,
the monitor to make sure that people are of age
(34:50):
or getting on but also to prevent predators from accessing
the website and communicating with children.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
The day after a winning football game, Marcus fifteen spends
the day inside playing video games with his friends. Just
after eleven am, a pretty girl messages Braiden on Instagram.
In the two exchange flirtations messages for about five minutes.
The girl request they moved the chat to Google Hangouts
and sends Braiden lude photos, asking for photos of him.
In return, Braiden is hesitant, but caves and sends several
(35:20):
explicit photos. The girl then reveals herself as a scammer
and threatens to release the photos unless Braden sends them
eighteen hundred dollars. By eleven twenty eight am, Braden took
his own life.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
This boy, just fifteen commits suicide after a sixtortion plot. Guys,
I've got so many files here on my desk of
children committing suicide after sextortion. To Betsy Houtman joining us,
this is Timothy's mom. Did you have any idea how
(35:53):
widespread SI extortion on even preteens? I know you heard
me talking about to Todd, who was just twelve, sex
stortion plots on our preteens and teens.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Did you have any idea how rampant it is?
Speaker 12 (36:10):
No?
Speaker 6 (36:10):
Ma'am, I definitely didn't. One of the only reasons I
ever heard of sextortion was.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
A few short months after Timothy passed when South Carolina
and stated Gavin's Law where our representative Guffy his son
back in I believe August of twenty twenty two took
his life because of it too. And South Carolina now
(36:39):
it's an aggravated felony.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
If in fact a minor hurts.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
Themselves or commits suicide because of sextortion.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Well, you're absolutely right. Take a listen to South Carolina Rep.
Brandon Guffey.
Speaker 16 (36:51):
Gavin was being blackmailed. That was all the information that
I knew was that he was being black now, but
what happened was Gavin was he got caught up in sextortion,
and this is a major crime. They took looks like
Hunter Biden headlines and put pictures of Gavin and put
my name and his name on the headlines, and we're
(37:15):
threatening to release it. And it was pictures to this
girl that he was talking to online.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
That boy is dead because of sextortion. Betsy, I've got
to ask you something. Do you feel Timothy's presence with
you always?
Speaker 6 (37:36):
When he first gotten allowing Sancy.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
He bought me a horror like a stuffy stuffed heart
from the dollar tree. And now I'll find leaves that
are shaped in hearts on my doorset or when I'm
cleaning the pool, one will drop in front of me.
Speaker 6 (37:56):
I'll find hearts randomly on sidewalks. I know that my
son's with us.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Betsy, what is your message? Your message to other parents
out there today?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Have those tough conversations, Be open to those tough conversations,
and just remember that the Internet isn't something that we
had back then. And unfortunately I was naive enough to
not think that predators. Well I knew that there were
(38:33):
predators out there, I didn't think that there were predators
so bold that.
Speaker 6 (38:39):
Would want to hurt a thirteen year old.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And there are, Betsy.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Somehow, some way, we're going to find who did this
to Timothy. Somehow, some way, they're going to be brought
to justice. And I want to say thank you for
speaking out tonight. I know I am speaking to my
(39:07):
twins tonight about this. I've done it before, I'm doing
it again, and I beg all the parents to spread
Betsy's message. If we can just save one child from
six stortion. It's all worth it, Betsy, Thank you, godspeed friend.
(39:28):
We remember police Officer American Hero Jamal Mitchell, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
thirty six. He was trying to assist what he thought
was a wounded victim when he was shot multiple times.
Officer Mitchell survived by fiance Tory, their children Cohen, Jalen,
(39:50):
Caden and Mason. American Hero police Officer Jamal Mitchell. Thank
you to our guests for being with us. Thank you
for joining us tonight and every night, but especially thank
you to Betsy sharing her son Timothy's story. You know
(40:12):
how hard that was for her to talk in her
effort to help just one child. Nancy Gray signing off,
good night friend,
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Heartbreak. There's no other way
to say it, heartbreak. A beautiful little boy, just thirteen,
commit suicide in the front yard Mommy and daddy inside
(00:22):
after a horrible online sex stortion scheme.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
What is that? Now we all know what it is tonight?
What happened?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Joining us special guest, his mom, Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace.
This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Assumpter, South Carolina homeowner leaving for work think someone is
sleeping or passed out in the yard. He tells his
wife to lock the doors check on the children. As
he looks into what's going on and calls nine to
one one officers discover the person in the yard is dead,
killed by a gunshot to the ahead.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh gosh, when I hear it stated like that, all
I can think about are my own children.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
This boy.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Oh if I could just explain how he was just
totally scrubbed in sunshine, so sweet, so smart, good grades,
everything the boy every parent would want to have. How
does this happen? I really want to thank you for
being with us tonight because this whole six stortion scheme
(01:34):
that is targeting our youth our little children is vast.
As a matter of fact, I understand, and new lawsuit
has been filed naming six hundred other cases joining me
and all start pedal what happened that morning inside the
(01:57):
family home.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Listen Timothy Barnett helping out around the house and is
taken to making his mom's cup of coffee every morning.
At six point fifteen, Betsy Hopman is surprised that Timothy
isn't already in the kitchen and pours her own coffee,
kissing her husband goodbye as he leaves for work. Moments later,
Jeffrey Hoptman calls his wife, telling her to lock the
doors and check on the children because someone's passed out
(02:19):
in their front yard. As he calls nine to one one,
Betsy Hopman goes from room to room, locating five of
six children.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Timothy is missing with me right now, Timothy's mom, Betsy Hoptman,
Miss Hoptman, thank you for being with us, Thanks for
having me inty, Betsy, I almost didn't want to even
play that sound, because you know, we have routines we
go through every morning. My daughter gets up super early.
(02:48):
I can hear her turning on the bath water. My
son sleeps late. I have to go wake him up
every morning and he jumps up and gives me a
big hug, and that is the normal routine. I'm just
thinking on what I just heard that every morning.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Is this true?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Your boy would come and make you a cup of coffee.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Most mornings, guess, ma'am. Every morning, almost every morning, he
would get up. He'd be the first one up, and
I'd walk into the kitchen and he'd be having my
tea kettle on for the French.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Press, Miss Hartman.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Before I go into the facts of this case, I've
just got to tell you we are so sorry about
your loss, about losing your baby.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I am so sorry. I appreciate that again with me
an all star pedal.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
You know a lot of people haven't even heard the
word sextortion before and joining me in a few moments
is an expert in online safety to Tanya Jordan from
Bark But Betsy, tell me what happened that morning.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
Sure, it was a morning like every other morning.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
My husband and I got up with the alarm.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
He went about his day, walk up the front door.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
A few minutes later, I get a phone call saying,
lock the doors and check.
Speaker 6 (04:21):
On my kids. So I go about the kids rooms
check on them.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
They're all there except for Timothy. And I was like, okay,
well that's not abnormal. So I checked the bathroom to
see if he was in the bathroom.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
He wasn't.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Checked the kitchen, where like I said, he normally got
up and turned on the kettle for my French press,
and he wasn't there.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
So I walked up to the garage to see if
he was at our drink fridge.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Again, he wasn't there, and panic set in and I
realized when my husband told me to lock the doors,
something must have happened.
Speaker 6 (04:58):
So I called my husband back and I said, what's
going on. He's like someone's.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
Sleeping in her front yard and I said, I can't
find Timothy. And he walked me through the house again
and he's like, is he in the bathroom?
Speaker 6 (05:13):
Is he in the pantry?
Speaker 7 (05:14):
Is he in the kitchen?
Speaker 5 (05:15):
I was like no, And at that point I realized
I woke up into every mother's nightmare.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Miss Houtman, it's so hard to hear what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's so hard to hear it knowing what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I don't know how you have this strength to tell
this story.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
How do you keep going?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
How do you have this strength to tell other parents
about what happened tonight?
Speaker 5 (05:47):
The only reason I can even have that is because
God allows me to have a voice that allows education
for other parents so that they're not sitting in my seat.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
You get a call, there's somebody in the front yard.
Lock the door, go check on the children. You find
everybody but Timmy, Then what do you do?
Speaker 6 (06:07):
Like I said, I walked through the house.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
Making sure that he wasn't in his normal spot in
the morning, because, like I said.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
He normally woke up before everybody else.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
He wasn't, And at that point I knew, but my
husband told me not to come outside.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
But the cops were.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
There and a few minutes later, and it felt like eternity.
My husband walked in the front door, and he still
hasn't told me to this day what happened and who
he found in the front yard. But as soon as
I saw his face, you can hear me yell on
(06:54):
our ring doorbell, Cameron, because at that point my heart broke.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Did you learn your baby? Your little boy?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And I know you have I think three boys, but
I refer to both of my twins they're sixteen now
as my baby's When.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Did you learn you're sweet? Timothy?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
This tastes like dirt in my mouth. Had committed suicide.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
About six thirty six forty five in the morning on
April sixth of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
How did you process not just losing your child, but
learning your child committed suicide.
Speaker 6 (07:41):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
I didn't want to believe it. It didn't make sense
to me because he was such a normal kid. He
was the kid that was the life of the party
and the one that always tried to make people happy.
He's the one who would come in and cut on
(08:04):
and make sure that mom was okay. And again, it
just it truly didn't make sense to me because we
had plans. He had asked me to take him to
Tennessee to Gatlinburg.
Speaker 6 (08:23):
For his birthday, and I was like, yeah, we can
plan a trip.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
You and me like because I like to make memories
instead of do gifts, And I was like, yeah, we
can most certainly do that, and we were planning it.
So it didn't make sense at all until I found.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Out what happened.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Guys, what do we know did happen? Why is this
beautiful boy who I keep saying it over and over.
There were no prior mental instabilities, there were no depressions.
He had never ever threatened suicide ever, never even intimated
(09:12):
anything about harming himself or anybody else. I'm telling you,
this is the boy every parent wants to have.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So why is this beautiful boy dead? What more do
we know? Listen?
Speaker 8 (09:28):
Betsy Helptman meets her husband at the front door, hysterically
explaining she can't find Timothy. With tears in his eyes.
Jeffrey Helpman shakes his head at his wife and she screams.
The body in the front yardist Timothy dead of a
self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Security cameras show
Timothy sitting in the family car in the driveway for
two hours the night before, frantically scrolling on a cell phone. Sumter,
(09:50):
South Carolina pde collect Timothy's phone in his school chromebook,
bowing to find out what drove the team to suicide.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And again, isn't it true, Betsy, that Timothy? I have
a nephew, Timothy, and I call him Timmy, even though
he's grown now. So I've now started calling your son
Timmy because I've read so much about him. Isn't it
true that your son Timothy had never gone through bouts
of depression, had never lost appetite, was never in prolonged
(10:21):
periods of sadness, to your knowledge, wasn't bullied at school,
none of the red flags.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
We look for.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
No bedwedding, no self mutilation, no slapping or bruising or
pinching himself, nothing to make you think he would ever
have committed suicide.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
There were no extreme signs. I mean, he was a
thirteen year old boy, a thirteen year old boy that
was going through puberty.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
What I classify him as a depressed child? Absolutely not.
But what teenager doesn't have the.
Speaker 9 (11:00):
Normal Yeah, it's my place in life, the normal ups
and downs of going through middle school, entering high school.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
He is just thirteen years old. I understand that that
night he was scrolling. And I've seen my daughter and
my son do this. They scroll and scroll and scroll
on their phones. So I'm like, what are you looking at?
And they typically say TikTok. And I've snuck up on
(11:33):
them so many times to see what it is. And
it's always with my son, some crazy prank. Some boys
are are you know, trying to shoot a basketball from
a car driving by some crazy thing like that. My
daughter's looking at fashion or skin care, but they look
at it all the time. So Timothy was out in
(11:54):
the car the night before, just scrolling, is that right?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
So the security cameras show him sneaking out of his
window about I want to say, two forty five three
o'clock and sitting in my car, and then you can
see him on his phone just scrolling through it. And
(12:21):
unfortunately the cameras aren't the greatest to see. We weren't
able to see what he was scrolling through or what
he was doing.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
On his phone, but just that he was on his
phone scrolling.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
And then at about five o'clock, five fifteen, he goes
off camera, and he comes back for a short few minutes,
and then he goes back off for the final time.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So you had no idea he was outside in the
car scrolling. And you know, there's something very comforting about
just sitting in the family car. I know when we
were drive home from school a lot of times in
the afternoon, we would sit in the car in the
driveway and listen to music and talk. It's just something
(13:08):
you know, your cocoon like in the car, and I'm
imagining him sitting in the car where nobody can see
what he's doing. He knows you're asleep inside, and he's scrolling.
Had he ever done that before? To your knowledge?
Speaker 5 (13:22):
He did it once before from my understanding, But that's
not an abnormal thing, because, much like you, Nancy, when
I go on.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
A trip anywhere, even if it was to the grocery store.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
Or to go get gas, I sit in the car
for a few minutes and collect my thoughts because it's
that almost soundproof space where I can block everything and
anybody out. And Tim was a lot like mom where
(13:58):
he needed that clue, that sound proof space to process
his own thoughts.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Why is a thirteen year
old little boy dead?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Why did a thirteen year old who had never threatened suicide,
never had mental instability or problems, no prolonged depressions, nothing,
Why did.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
He commit suicide?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And what was he scrolling ceaselessly the night before, sitting
in the family car. What was so secretive he did
not want his parents to hear about. Joining me is
a very special guest who I've got to say is
one of the bravest ladies.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I know, speaking out so.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Other parents can learn from Timothy's death. But right now
I want to go to Titanya Jordan joining US online
safety expert, chief Parent officer of Bark Technology. It's an
online safety company that helps keep children, kids teens safe.
(15:19):
And I've got to tell you, my children know, the
whole family knows that.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I have Bark.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Bark is kind of an online program you download on
your phone and your children's phones and you sink them
and they're like a safety net that catches problems at
curse words of bullying. I don't really know how they
do it, but I will give you this brief anecdote.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
My son is the goalie.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
He's been a goalie forever in soccer, and when he
was about in the seventh or eighth grade, he made
this incredible save and he was really horizontal, went horizontal
to stop the goal and he did stop it, but
his arm went through the net and he got a
big bruise from the net and he took a picture
of it and he sent it to some of his
(16:11):
friends and went, look what I got saving a goal.
He was proud of the bruies. Well, Bark caught the
bruise and alerted me about self harm. That's how sensitive
it is. So that's what bark is Titania Snapchat. A
lot of parents think if you go on to your
(16:34):
child's scrolling history their Internet use, then you know what
they've been doing. That is not true. All of this
happened on Snapchat. Just very briefly explain what is snapchat.
What's a snap.
Speaker 10 (16:51):
Snapchat is an app that was launched to send disappearing
photos and children do not need the ability to send
to appearing photos. It has now expanded to offer location sharing,
which is problematic. It's become rife with drug dealers and
now sextortion scams guys.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Very often, I'll be sitting with the twins and one
of them will start laughing.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I'm like, what what is it? And they go, it's
a funny snap from so and so. I'm like, let
me see it, and they go, it's already disappeared. Mom,
I can't show it to you.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
To Betsy Hoptman, this is Timothy's mom, Betsy, when did
you find out about this horrible sixtortion scheme against Timothy
on Snapchat?
Speaker 5 (17:39):
So? I found out Timothy passed away on April sixth,
and I found out from the Captain of investigations here
in Summer on October fourth.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Joining me now is Ashley Jones, investigative reporter and anchor
WIS News South Carolina. Ashley, thank you for being with us.
I want to go back to the day that Timothy
was killed.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Tell me what you know.
Speaker 11 (18:08):
So from what I know as far as what Sumter
PD said in an incident report, on the morning of
April sixth, Timothy's father found his body laying outside in
the front yard and from there they called the Sumter
Police Department, who came out and began an investigation.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
However, there was some I believe.
Speaker 11 (18:29):
Discrepancies as far as Sumter Police Department actually doing the investigation.
There was something about they couldn't get into Timothy's phone
to figure out what may have happened. There was a
lot of back and forth.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Oh, Ashley, you know, it's amazing that you said that,
because you guys have already lived through this in South
Carolina with the Alex Murdoch trial.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Remember what all we had to get go through.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
They had to bring in the Secret Service to unlock
a phone in order to place Alex Murdock at the
dog kennels where his wife.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And some were murdered at the time of the murder.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Remember that I sat through that Secret Service guy testimony
and it was very, very intricate about unlocking the phone. Okay,
so what is Timothy looking at for two hours and
then commit suicide in the front yard?
Speaker 12 (19:24):
Listen, just before his death, Timothy changed the passcode to
his phone, so detectives focus on the task of unlocking it.
Betsy Hoptman tells detective Kelsey Wade that Timothy mainly communicated
over Snapchat, and Wade issues a subpoena for the teen's account.
Eleven weeks go by with no answers, despite Hoptomen calling
(19:45):
twice a week. Wade finally informs Hoptman investigators are submitting
a second Snapchat subpoena along with a subpoena for Timothy's
cash app activity.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Joining me in addition to Timothy's mom, Betsy is the
family lawyer Joe Cunningham, high profile lawyer in that jurisdiction.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Joe, thank you for being with us.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
They have to send a second subpoena to Snapchat.
Speaker 13 (20:12):
Why well, Nancy, what we know is that the first
subpoena that was sent to snap Apparently from Snap's response
was not comprehensive enough or detailed enough to provide a response,
so that required them to send a second one. And
since then this investigation has been handed over to the
federal agencies of the U. S. Attorney's Office, who is
now handling this.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So it's amazing to me that in light of Timothy's death,
you have to basically threaten Snapchat in order to get responses,
and you've got the mom, Betsy Houtman, basically begging to
get answers.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What was my son looking at? Betsy?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
What was going through your mind when you're having to
call twice a week to get answers and still not
getting answers?
Speaker 5 (20:57):
What were they doing to find out why my phone
killed himself? And unfortunately I was told it wasn't Sumpter's police.
Sumpter Police Department's job to find out why he did it,
just said he did it.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
That is amazing to me.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
And I'm going to circle back in a moment, Betsy
about when you took the phone away from him for
a period of months, But right now I want to
focus on why the local police department told you to
just figure it out yourself. Imagine you being in Betsy's position.
You're trying and trying to find out the cause your
(21:38):
boy committed suicide, and he believed the answer is on
his phone. I want you to listen to this.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Five months after Timothy's death, Betsy Hopman gets a notification
on Life three sixty that Timothy completed to drive. Hopeful
that detectives crack his passcode, Hopman calls Detective Wade with
no response and drives down to the police station, refusing
to leave until she speaks with Wade. Hours later, two
unfamiliar detectives informer that Timothy's phone is equivalent to a paperweight.
(22:10):
They're closing the investigation and it isn't their job to
figure out why her son killed himself.
Speaker 12 (22:15):
A month later, Betsy Hoptmann discovers Sumter PD unearthed dozens
of suicide notes addressed to family and friends. They also
found an extensive call and text record with an unsaved
phone number with a New York area code. The text
includes links to a second Snapchat account Timothy used. Messages
(22:35):
on that account revealed Timothy sent a stranger thirty five
dollars a day to prevent them from posting an explicit
photo of him online. One of Timothy's last messages begged
the stranger to stop reading. Quote please, I'm just a child.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Sextortion, That's what's happening. That is why this little boy
belt there was no way out and killed himself. Sextortion.
To Tanya jordan Bart.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Child safety expert, what is sextortion?
Speaker 10 (23:10):
Sextortion is a combination of the words sex and extortion,
and extortion is using threats are forced to coerce someone
into doing something, and so in the case of sextortion,
a child, a person is threatened that they're nude photos
or videos will be released unless they provide valuables, money,
or release more sexual photos or videos too.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Ashley Jones joining us WIS News t in South Carolina, Ashley,
what was the threat on Timothy?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
What was the sextortion?
Speaker 11 (23:40):
Well, so from what we know is that this person,
whomever it was, was basically telling Timothy unless he sent
them thirty five dollars a day via cash app, then
they would post this nude photo of him online.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Oh my stars, Oh my stars.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
To think this boy is gone because some evil person
is extorting a little child. To Joe Cunningham, the family lawyer.
What more do we know about the plot, who was
behind it?
Speaker 13 (24:12):
Well, this is still under investigation by the US Attorney's Office, Nancy. Unfortunately,
what we know is this is not an isolate incidents.
A lot of these originate from the Ivory coast of Africa,
where people pose as young teenage girls and befriend teenage
boys and engage in a flirtatious manners soliciting nude pictures,
(24:38):
only to later on comeback, screenshot the list of their
friends and family members and extort them for money, otherwise
they'll release these particular pictures. This has become very common.
I want to thank you for shining a light onto
this because here's a statistic that your viewers need to know.
Snapchat did a survey a while back and said that
(25:00):
two thirds of gen Z teens or young adults, either
themselves or people they knew, had been victims of sex
stortion two thirds. So this is Unfortunately, it's non isolated incidant.
This is the worst case scenario though for any family
to have to go through.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Guys, it is by far not the first time a
teen boy or girl has been targeted in sex stortion.
For instance, in a case I recently investigated. I mean,
a superstar kid much like Timothy, is online chatting with
(25:39):
a beautiful girl his age and the girl gets the
boy to send a nude photo. Well, it turns out
the girl as not a young girl his age at all.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Listen.
Speaker 14 (25:51):
Over the course of a short conversation, Samuel Ogashi, pretending
to be this young woman, persuaded Jordan to send a
sectionally explicit image of himself. Once Samuel Ogashi had that
sexually explicit image in his hand, he then turned to
extort Jordan de May for money, threatening to reveal the
(26:14):
image to Jordan's family and friends if he did not comply.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
This kid, Jordan de Maay high school superstar, and you
are hearing the US attorney Mark taught and speaking.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Listen.
Speaker 14 (26:25):
Jordan de Maay paid what he had, which was three
hundred dollars, but Samuel Gashi continued his threats, demanding more
from Jordan. A few hours later, Jordan told Samuel Ogashi
that he was now taking his life, and Samuel Ogashi,
responding through the Instagram persona of Danny Roberts, told him
(26:50):
do that fast, or I'll make you do it.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Jordan de Maay, who committed suicide after sixtortion. His father
spent to me and depth, listen.
Speaker 15 (27:02):
If things happen, you know, it's not the end of
the world either. You know, Jordan's story is so tragic,
and this is something that probably would have been laughing
about in ten or fifteen years after he's graduated college
and gotten married and had kids and bought his first
home and you got a career job and did all
the things. You'd look back and kind of like that
was stupid, right, But in that moment, you can't. They're
(27:24):
not old enough to understand that. They're not developed enough
to understand.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Betsy Hotman takes Sumpter PDS findings to the FBI and
Homeland Security. A federal investigation is immediately opened, and detectives
find that the cash app account Timothy sent money to
belongs to a woman in Los Angeles County. A suspect
has yet to be identified, but Timothy's family is encouraged
by how seriously the FEDS are taking their son's case.
(27:48):
Both Betsy Hotman and Jamie Barnett have criticized Sumter pd
for closing their investigation, but the parents' focus lies on
finding justice for Timothy.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Joining me, is Timothy's mom? Howkman?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So getting fed up with no answers from the local PD,
you take your case to the FBI and they take
it on.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Is that correct?
Speaker 6 (28:11):
Yes, Miam.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
I called the national Hotline for Missing and Exploited Children
myself after I found out from Captain Lloyd Timothy was
sex started because it took them so long to.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
Even do anything.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Joining me right now is special guest, former detective cyber Crimes, detective,
child crime expert, and president of b Sure Cyber Training.
You can find them at Besureconsulting dot com. Rich with
Stocky Rich. Thank you so much for being with us.
Explain to me what you should do to protect your
(29:08):
child and how we can crack this case and determine
who started Timothy.
Speaker 7 (29:16):
Nancy, It's unbelievable everything that I'm hearing today, because you
know why, it's typical every week I get calls from
parents and law enforcement all over the country. I teach
about three hundred thousand children. I teach about four thousand
cops and police departments are ten years behind cybercrime investigations.
(29:36):
So what happens is when I go talk to kids
in schools, I tell them when no one is allowed
to make you feel bad about yourself online, no one
is allowed to make you do something you know you
shouldn't be doing. If you're sitting here watching me and
suffering in silence because this is happening to you, I
can make your pain stop. Because when it comes to
social networking and gaming online, Nancy, no one online is anonymous.
(30:00):
No one. Now, these Yahoo boys who are out doing this,
we can track them, but they have no fear because
they know US law enforcement. Local law enforcement doesn't have
the training to take to track this stuff. And I
will tell you over the three hundred thousand students that
I have worked with across the country this year alone, Nancy,
(30:23):
I had thirty five students come to me after the
presentation telling me this is happening to me. I had
to start twenty eight criminal investigations through the Internet Crimes
against Children Task Force across the country.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Rich I'm trying to think of ways to help parents,
and Betsy is speaking out today.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
If you had to give.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Parents one piece of advice to protect their children from
six stortion schemes like this one, what would you tell them?
Speaker 7 (30:52):
There are actually three things Nancy. The first one is
you need to be monitoring your kid's devices.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
If we're talking about Snapchat, which is what Betcy Howton's
tell about today, those images disappear immediately.
Speaker 7 (31:03):
They don't actually Snapchat has them for thirty days.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
But how is a parent supposed to know that? You say, parent,
you look.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
At the phone, but on the phone it disappears. No
parent knows to call Snapchat has says, hey, what has
my son been looking at in the last two days.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
That's not gonna happen. Give me something I can hold
on to.
Speaker 7 (31:25):
Parents need to keep their children's phones out of their devices,
out of their rooms at night. That's number one. And
then what happens. Parents don't know about Snapchat and they
need to be checking their my eyes only in Snapchat.
This is a private cloud based service that Snapchat has
called My Eyes Only, and most of our children are
(31:47):
hiding their most horrible pictures of themselves and others in
it now. Number one, Nancy. Number one is that parents
need to have the access code to their kid's device
and spot check that that's something you can hold on to.
And if at any time a child changes their device
(32:07):
because they're hiding something, you know something wrong. So imagine
in this case, if the parent knew the access code
to the phone, we could have unlocked that phone and
trace that within hours of where it came from. And
that's what I trained my law enforcement osters to do.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Well, here's the thing, though, Betsy, you knew the code,
and you had actually found long before a naked photo
of a woman. Any No, we're not having this, and
you talked to him, You reprimanded him, you counseled him
about it. You took the phone away for a period
of months, and you gave it back. You knew his code,
(32:47):
you didn't know he had changed his code. That would
be like twenty four to seven monitoring on your child
to find out if they sneak off to the closet
and in three minutes changed their code to their phone.
Speaker 6 (32:58):
Exactly.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
I mean I got on Snapchat myself because my fourteen
year old niece at that point was like.
Speaker 6 (33:07):
Auntie, get on Snapchat.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
It's got a lot of filters and we can snap
back and forth and whatnot.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
I never imagined.
Speaker 5 (33:19):
Sending anything because as an adult, I knew when you
send us stuff on the internet, it never quote unquote.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
Truly goes away.
Speaker 5 (33:31):
So Timothy was on Snapchat because that's what kids these
days do.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
That's what they all do, Betsy, all of the preteens
and teens and a lot of adults are on Snapchat.
Nobody is on Facebook at that age, and many many
other platforms.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Text me yes exactly and joining me. I don't want
to forget about this. Cunningham is with us, and that
is Betsey's family lawyer.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I've got in my hands a big fat lawsuit.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
What is it?
Speaker 13 (34:09):
Joe pre file a lawsuit against Snap for wrongful death
for the damages that Betsy's family has gone through and
suffering this unimaginable loss. And the basis of that lawsuit
is negligence. Is negligence per se. But it's also centers
around Snap putting out a defective product. They've put out
(34:30):
a product, as you mentioned, that has the images disappeared.
Now anyone can imagine what the anticipated use of a
product like that actually will be. And it's welcomed predators
onto their platform and without the proper guardrails in place,
the monitor to make sure that people are of age
(34:50):
or getting on but also to prevent predators from accessing
the website and communicating with children.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
The day after a winning football game, Marcus fifteen spends
the day inside playing video games with his friends. Just
after eleven am, a pretty girl messages Braiden on Instagram.
In the two exchange flirtations messages for about five minutes.
The girl request they moved the chat to Google Hangouts
and sends Braiden lude photos, asking for photos of him.
In return, Braiden is hesitant, but caves and sends several
(35:20):
explicit photos. The girl then reveals herself as a scammer
and threatens to release the photos unless Braden sends them
eighteen hundred dollars. By eleven twenty eight am, Braden took
his own life.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
This boy, just fifteen commits suicide after a sixtortion plot. Guys,
I've got so many files here on my desk of
children committing suicide after sextortion. To Betsy Houtman joining us,
this is Timothy's mom. Did you have any idea how
(35:53):
widespread SI extortion on even preteens? I know you heard
me talking about to Todd, who was just twelve, sex
stortion plots on our preteens and teens.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Did you have any idea how rampant it is?
Speaker 12 (36:10):
No?
Speaker 6 (36:10):
Ma'am, I definitely didn't. One of the only reasons I
ever heard of sextortion was.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
A few short months after Timothy passed when South Carolina
and stated Gavin's Law where our representative Guffy his son
back in I believe August of twenty twenty two took
his life because of it too. And South Carolina now
(36:39):
it's an aggravated felony.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
If in fact a minor hurts.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
Themselves or commits suicide because of sextortion.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Well, you're absolutely right. Take a listen to South Carolina Rep.
Brandon Guffey.
Speaker 16 (36:51):
Gavin was being blackmailed. That was all the information that
I knew was that he was being black now, but
what happened was Gavin was he got caught up in sextortion,
and this is a major crime. They took looks like
Hunter Biden headlines and put pictures of Gavin and put
my name and his name on the headlines, and we're
(37:15):
threatening to release it. And it was pictures to this
girl that he was talking to online.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
That boy is dead because of sextortion. Betsy, I've got
to ask you something. Do you feel Timothy's presence with
you always?
Speaker 6 (37:36):
When he first gotten allowing Sancy.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
He bought me a horror like a stuffy stuffed heart
from the dollar tree. And now I'll find leaves that
are shaped in hearts on my doorset or when I'm
cleaning the pool, one will drop in front of me.
Speaker 6 (37:56):
I'll find hearts randomly on sidewalks. I know that my
son's with us.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Betsy, what is your message? Your message to other parents
out there today?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Have those tough conversations, Be open to those tough conversations,
and just remember that the Internet isn't something that we
had back then. And unfortunately I was naive enough to
not think that predators. Well I knew that there were
(38:33):
predators out there, I didn't think that there were predators
so bold that.
Speaker 6 (38:39):
Would want to hurt a thirteen year old.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And there are, Betsy.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Somehow, some way, we're going to find who did this
to Timothy. Somehow, some way, they're going to be brought
to justice. And I want to say thank you for
speaking out tonight. I know I am speaking to my
(39:07):
twins tonight about this. I've done it before, I'm doing
it again, and I beg all the parents to spread
Betsy's message. If we can just save one child from
six stortion. It's all worth it, Betsy, Thank you, godspeed friend.
(39:28):
We remember police Officer American Hero Jamal Mitchell, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
thirty six. He was trying to assist what he thought
was a wounded victim when he was shot multiple times.
Officer Mitchell survived by fiance Tory, their children Cohen, Jalen,
(39:50):
Caden and Mason. American Hero police Officer Jamal Mitchell. Thank
you to our guests for being with us. Thank you
for joining us tonight and every night, but especially thank
you to Betsy sharing her son Timothy's story. You know
(40:12):
how hard that was for her to talk in her
effort to help just one child. Nancy Gray signing off,
good night friend,
Host
Nancy Grace
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