Dark Fiction, Real Victims with Ray Oliver

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, I'm Alicia Kozak, and this is the Alicia Cosac Podcast.
Thank you so much for being here. On the show,
we talk about real crime, not just entertainment, true crime,
and we sit down with the people who live this
work every single day. And this is all really personal
to me. I'm a survivor of the first chat abduction
by an online predator. I was kidnapped and held captive,
but against the odds, I was rescued, and for more

(00:24):
than twenty years, I've been presenting, sharing my story, raising awareness,
and working on legislation such as Alicia's Low my namesake.
I've devoted my second chance at life to helping to
keep others safe. But I also grew up being an
advocate in this world, which brings me to this next
story and to a large focused of what our podcast
is about today. When I was in high school, not
long after I was rescued, I got my first job

(00:45):
as a page at my local library. And that's exactly
what it felt like, just one little page, trying to
shelve these giant books into teeny, diny little spaces. On
my breaks or when I could sneak a quiet moment,
I would sit on the floor between the acts of
books and read the true crime paperbacks.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Now you might think that.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
That would be triggering given what happened to me, but
really they felt familiar, not comforting exactly, but closer to
my reality than anything else that was around me. I'd
already started my advocacy work at fourteen, and reading those
books felt like I was studying something I had already survived.
If you remember those old paperbacks, they always had a
little insert of black and white crime scene photos. You

(01:24):
could tell that these cases were really awful, but the
printing flattened everything and made the violence feel distant and unreal.
Years later, when I was nineteen, I was given the
honor of being deputized, which meant I could attend the
International Homicide Investigators Association conference and I could sit in
on all the trainings, even the ones that were closed
to anybody who was not law enforcement. Now, going back

(01:46):
to when I was in the library as a kid,
one of the cases I had read about as a
teenager was the case of John Edward Robinson. He is
often called the first known internet serial killer, and he
used the Internet to find his victims. He murdered multiple women,
and he stored several of their bodies and barrels. It
is a horrendous case. At that conference, I watched investigators

(02:07):
walk through the real case file of that story. They
showed the actual color crime scene photos from the Robinson investigation,
and at that moment, I had this intense moment of
deja vu. I recognize some of the images from that
old paperback I'd read, but now I was also seeing
them as they really were, in full color, with every
detail and injury, and those horrific, heartbreaking bodies in those barrels.

(02:30):
It hit me how much those books had softened the reality.
On the page, it was simple, it was black and white.
In real life, it was blood and grief and families
and human beings. Now fast forward to today, we have
a whole ecosystem of true crime entertainment, BookTalk thrillers with
graphic scenes, and even dark romance books that blend kidnapping
and abuse into some sort of love story. Some of

(02:51):
those stories they're gripping, and they're kind and sexy, and
I understand why people read them. I love a good
thriller too. In fact, one of my favorite books of
all time is Intensity by Dean Kots. It's really dark,
but it's also been strangely inspired to me. And we
even have books now that come with detailed trigger warnings
so people can decide what they are ready to read.
And my guest today he lives right at the center.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Of that world.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
He is a big book fluencer, if you will, a
serious reader of thriller and dark fiction and romance and fantasy,
and someone who thinks very deeply about what we put
on the page and how we talk about it. His
name is Ray Oliver, and he is a special agent
with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Computer Crimes Unit.
He cares a lot about trigger warnings, about the way
we describe islands, and about the line between entertainment and exploitation.

(03:38):
So today we're going to talk about that line, the
difference between those black and white paperback photos and the
full color reality, how it feels to consume dark content
for fun when real people have lived those stories, and
what responsibility creators and readers have when we step into
that space. So let's get into it. Ray, thank you
so much for joining me here today. So first off,

(03:59):
in one sent can you tell me what it is
that you do I.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Track down and identify online predators that seek to exploit children?

Speaker 2 (04:07):
What does that actually mean? Some people may hear that
and not really understand what that is.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
What does your job actually entail? What do you do
in your job?

Speaker 3 (04:18):
So every state has a lead law enforcement agency that
is the lead law enforcement agency for Internet crimes against children.
In North Carolina is the North Calina State Verb Investigations
Computer Crimes Unit. So any tips that come from the
National Center from as and exploit children, all of them
come to our unit. There are twenty of us that
triage all of them. So we see all the tips

(04:40):
that come in and we try to identify where those
people logged in from and then we will send them
out to local affiliates, local law enforcement and our states
or we got with them ourselves.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
So basically, you have lots of downtime and you get
to relax in your job and put your feed up
and yeah, very.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Lots of time. There's lots of times.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, Now, how did you get into this? Did you
decide that you wanted to do this when you were younger?
Did you try to just get thrown into it and
this was your assignment?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
How did this happen?

Speaker 3 (05:17):
I unfortunately had some run INDs with law enforcement. They
were weren't the best. And when I was in college,
I got pulled over my officer who was no longer
officer at that agency, and I figured, you know what,
I want to be a police officer to make sure
what happened to me didn't happen to anybody else. I
was a computer science well information systems major, switched to
criminal justice with the minor inferential systems and my goal was,

(05:41):
you know what, I'm going to go and I'm going
to do computer crowns with FBI and like track down
cyber criminals all across the world. Because I was into computers,
I was into being in law enforcement, and that's what
I was going to do. And so I went to
school at Virginia Comonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. After graduation,
I talked with the FBI recruiter and they're like, yeah,

(06:02):
but you can't stay in Richmond. You go where we
tell you to go. And I was like, that doesn't
work for me. I paid my way through school and
I was working in it. The job that I was working,
they offered me the director's spot. So I did that
for ten years. My wife and I moved to North Carolina,
and when we moved to North Carolina, I was like, well,
you know, I paid for that criminal justice degree. So
I'm applied for law enforcement jobs and with tip five

(06:24):
T jobs. So I started my career in law enforcement.
Got back to me. First started my career at the
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Police Apartment. I quickly
moved to investigations. I became the unofficial IT guy for
the entire department. When I moved to investigations, the guy,
one of the guys who left who spot I took,
he was doing IKAK and he was like, hey, look,
I know you want to do computer stuff. We need

(06:44):
somebody to do IKA. That's how I started with IKA.
And when it came to IQAQ stuff people a lot
of other anencies, was like, I can't do this. I
can't look at the content. I'm so glad that you
were doing it. I can't do it. And I was like, well,
somebody's got to do it, might as well be me.
And then I got really close with the guys that
I work with. So I've been in all force for

(07:04):
fifteen years going on sixteen. So our hold on a second, Hey,
you no, go go. Can you go back in there please?

Speaker 2 (07:15):
She's like, I want to be.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
I know she does. Can you go back on there please?

Speaker 1 (07:20):
I would interview her what is it like to have
a dad that is so busy all the time?

Speaker 3 (07:25):
I know? Oh no, hey, can you go that briekle? Okay,
thank you? No you can't drink some of more water? No, okay, here,
drink some of the water and then you can all right. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
When did you get into internet crimes against children when
you first heard that term? What did you think you
would be doing? Did you really get what the job was?
Did you know what how the depths?

Speaker 3 (07:55):
You would go, yeah, yes, know. So I am more
of a computer forensic agent, So I do like a
lot of our forensics, Like forensics is my thing. Technology
all that. I love interviewing, but I love like grabbing
the phone figuring out who did what, figuring out where
the things are, or in the computer, figuring out where

(08:16):
the things are and getting all that evidence and breaking
computers down and processing them and all that. My very
first training was an EYECAC training, and they were pretty
blunt about all the stuff that we're going to see,
and so I kind of knew going in, but even
going in, once you get in it, you can't describe
it until you see it, right, So I always tell

(08:37):
people to take whatever you think that we see and
it's worse, but somebody's going to do it.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
And I'm so glad that you're there to do it,
because there's just so much of this out there and
it's gotten so much worse. You started this career fifteen
years ago, and just how technology has changed since then.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
I was kidnapped back in two thousand and two.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
I was the first in case of a child to
be kidnaped by an online predator, and technology back then
was so different.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
I remember this memory came to me earlier today.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Actually, I was thinking about how I wanted to start
a campaign where I was going to be like.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Tom, Do you remember Tom? On my Space? And he
would be on everybody's page.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
So I wanted to try to be on everybody's page
like Tom, at least for people who were younger, and
then have information about internet safety to help keep kids safe.
Like that is back when I started this, and how
different technology was with HTML and glittery things and Google
not quite existing yet in all of that, and now

(09:44):
we live in a world where when we say internet safety,
people understand what it is, but not quite like you
and I do, because we understand how bad it can
go and how easily it can get there, especially with
the technology today and the direction that it is going.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yes, yes, I haven't known eleven years.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
You've been watching technology. I mean technology has changed in
the last two years so much with artificial intelligence, and we.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Are just keep going and keep going.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Why go back in that, dude, We're going to be
talking about your kids soon and how busy and chaotic
your life is with all of this, because it's not
that you're just doing this all the time every single
day of your life.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
You are also very much a full time, very involved dad.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, no, that's pretty much my life. I've been on
a search warrant. I would get a FaceTime call from
my son because the summer, asking if he can watch something,
or if he could play something, or if he could
download something. I remember one where people just started cracking
up on the search war is because he facetimed me
and he was like, Hey, can I play Fortnite with

(11:02):
such and such? And I was like, well, did you
brush your teeth? And he was like no, and I'm like,
can you go brush your teeth? Oh? Yeah, it's and
that's that's the internet too. He's got access to me
all the time, and for him, he's like, well, he's
like I just call right.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
And you're always on call as as a special agent,
and then you're also even more on call as a dad,
and it knows what You're trying to get this interview
set up. You're like, well, I can't today because I
have to go to a dance recital and then I
have to do this, and then I have to do that,
and then my wife's going to pick up this, And
it was you were just juggling all of these things

(11:40):
which parents do all the time, but with the added
stress of the particular work that you do that it
has to complicate things.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah, that day I went from a search warrant to
a dance recital. On my way home, I got a
text for my wife who was like, pick me up
an ic coffee.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
So there's days that are not so good and then
there's days that are great. So I want to know
what was that first win for you, Like what was
that first high five moment?

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Like coming out of the house knowing that there were
kids in the house that were going through some sort
of abuse and they will not be abused. The very
first time that it happened with me, my very first
I guess child rescue. It ended up being the suspect.
He still lived at home, and we were there for
the Sea Sam and for the suspect that was doing

(12:28):
Sea Sam. But when we got into the house there
were kids that just were being neglected. The Sea Sam
took us there. We were able to, like we call CPS,
like those kids got taken away, there are put in
a better home. And that has happened multiple times. This
is one of those crimes where there is no demographics.
I know, we always see people and we see the

(12:51):
press releases and we see them on TV and we're like, oh,
they look like it. And when I tell people is
so yeah, and bad lighting with a suspect that said
or haven says you know, child text crimes or child
predator or something like that, It's like, yes, they always
obec but it's everywhere. It could be anyone. It could
be a teacher, it could be a police officer, it
could be a priest. It's those that have stuck with me.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
So you had your first child rescue. You went into
this house. You werecalled there for a cyber tip from
the National Center from since white children that had to
do with child sextual beust material, so the acronym for sexam.
And it turned out that these children were actually being neglected.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yes, very severely neglected. The house should have been condemned.
What we had to have on tihbeck suits and respirators
just to go in the house and their kids sleeping
in that they were able to be taken out of
that situation.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
I think it's really important to note too.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
So you said that they can have any careers, be anybody,
but what people also kind of take out of that
and remove from it altogether is that they can also
be the absolute like war, the worst people too, not
people with just good careers and good families. And you're

(14:09):
holding it up, but also the person that you would
think would be the predator, that you'd be like, oh yeah,
that makes sense, that this really does run that entire spectrum.
We like to say that it could be absolutely anybody.
It could be your coach, it could be this, and
that is all true. But with that anybody, it truly
is anybody at all. The warrants that I've had an

(14:31):
opportunity to be a part of and have heard about.
Sometimes these houses are so disgusting that it's unbelievable and disturbing.
The stories that I've heard, we're not talking about like
a little clutter here or there, or like little dest bunnies.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
We're talking about like filth and.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Their disease just about Like you said, the palm should
have been condemned.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, I think the the TV show Hoarders times one hundred,
because you know your TV. Even these shows are for entertainment.
A lot of times they're not gonna put like the
very worst there's it could be too bad for TV.
And that's what we walk into a lot of times.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Now you love your job, right, you love it? You
love it, You love it, you love the team you
work with. Everybody is amazing. And I've met so many
of the NCSBI world. If there was any other job
that you could do, Like, what's your dream job?

Speaker 2 (15:28):
What would you be doing?

Speaker 1 (15:29):
And it can't be this, don't don't cough out on me,
no pun intended.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Oh it can't be this. Can it be adjacent to this?
My dream job? It was? Is what I plan on doing?
And retire is doing computer forensics for a for one
of the companies that make our digital forensics schools. It's
working for them. A lot of what they do is
help develop software and procedures and protocols to help facilitate

(15:58):
with digital investigator.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
But a lot of that comes back that guy, I
totally see you as like the guy in the chair.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
I am the guy in the chair in the shair. Yes,
I am definitely the guy in the chair. And the
guy in the chair I'm all lit so yeah, yeah,
but I also get out of the chair.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
You're not just in the chair. You remove yourself from
the chair and you go out into the field.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yes, yes, yes, I do.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
And the forensic work it's not just ones and zeros.
What are you looking at? What is a typical forensic examination?
What are you looking for?

Speaker 3 (16:32):
And with this position, we are looking for any evidence
of creation of shallows, quotation, download, duplications, sending, selling, finding
where they're hiding it. And what people like don't think
about is so we're actually seeing the content, right, So
we have to see the content. We have to describe

(16:52):
the content. As phones get bigger and laptops get bigger
and storage gets cheaper, we're being inundated with tons and
tons and tons of content. It's just never ending, and
we're seeing kind of like the worst things that you
can see happening to a child from age zero to seventeen.

(17:17):
And it takes a while too. That's the other thing.
Since we help local LA enforcement, there are a lot
of agencies that don't have the capacity to do the forensics.
So not only am I out doing search ones, I
am out and since we're an assisting agency, I'm out
doing search ones, I'm out helping with interviews. I just
received a police department say hey, they were on a
search warrant. They came across some computers and then they

(17:38):
took all the stuff and they're like, hey, can you
process them? Like yeah, So then they drop off like
ten computers. And then the next day another department is like, hey,
we've got you know, some phones, we see them, we
know they're se SAM monitor like can you go can
you process them? And can you go through it? I'm
like yeah, awesome. And then there's eight fron We're getting

(17:59):
all this data that we have to go through and
categorize and get ready for court, and it's and.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
The computers aren't tidy. It's not like everything's in a nice,
neat folder and it's labeled see Sam criminal activity.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
It's that you have to oh it is okay somebody, So.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
I'm sorry to tell a story. So I've had a
lot of wins getting people who have access to kids
who may have not necessarily offended on the kid, but
have told me that it was getting harder and harder
for them not to stopping them. Yeah, there was one
guy that we were interviewing him. It was like, hey, look,
you know they're going through your your computer now, like

(18:42):
what are we going to find? And the thing that
I always find I didn't understand it until I got
into this unit is they're always like ninety percent of
the time they're really an't talking to me. And I
thought about it, It's like, who are they going to
talk to about this? They can't talk to their family
about this, they can't talk to their friends about this.
They're in chat rooms and things like that. They can
talk to those people, but like they don't really have an.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Outlet, and it's like an obsession for them.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, and then when they're caught, it's like that weight
is off their shoulders and now they can have someone
to talk to about it, and I always tell him like,
this is your chance to explain, to get your side
the story out and explain it. And nine times out
of tend and they will explain. And this guy, he said,
he was like, you're gonna laugh, And I was like why.
He was like, because they're in a folder called incriminating Picks.

(19:28):
And I was like what and he was like yeah,
and so I check that out. It's like, hey, and
the guy who was doing the friends at the time,
he was like, yep, that's where it is. Thanks. So yeah,
a lot of times they're very organized. Yeah, yeah, there
was that that was funny because it was like, okay,
incriminating picks and we had to laugh about it. He

(19:50):
laughed about it. But when I was going, when I
processed his device after he was arrested, and then after
they're arrested, that doesn't end. So it's like, you know,
you do all this work to figure out to identify them,
then you go out and you execute search warrant, you
do the interview, you arrest them, but then you have
all this evidence since you have the process. Because we
have to make sure there's no love of victims, we

(20:11):
have to make sure to figure out try to figure
ot where they're getting it from, if they have any
cloud accounts or anything that they can access afterwards. One
of the things I noticed in his computers is so
he was he he had another folder called women I'd
like to f He had folders and pictures of friends

(20:31):
from college. He was in his late fifties, so he
had friends from college that he were still friends on Facebook,
and he had pictures of their children. So he would
have the original picture and he would crop out the
mom to be their children in like bikinis and their
children on family vacations. Because technically that's not illegal, but

(20:52):
he was using it for his own purposes. Oh yeah, yeah,
he so. And you know what he told me, It
was fourteen technically they're women. I was like, oh, okay,
well tell.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Me about that, right, You're not going to argue with them.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
It's like you're not trying to get them to be quiet,
You're trying to get them to tell you more.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yeah. Yeah, So that was his whole you know thing,
like we all have social media and a lot of
times we have friends that we have had from college.
It's like, but you don't know those if you haven't
talked to them in like ten years. Maybe go through
and clean up some of that stuff, or just don't
put your kids out there because you never know what
they're people are using it for, especially now with like AI. Yeah,

(21:35):
but no, I love talking to like I liked, I
love the forensics, but I love the interviews because it's
fascinating to talk to these people because of the things
that they just rationalize and some of them, like I've
had I've had people tell me that it was great
talk to me, like I know I'm going to jail,
but like you're really cool. It's great talking to you, Like, yeah,
it's nice to me.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Have you ever had them thank you?

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yes? Yeah. Because we're assisting agency, we help all the
agencies across all the law enforcement agencies across nof North
Carolina with IKAK investigations. The problem with IKAK is a
lot of agencies don't have a lot of people do it,
so it's usually like one or two and that's where
our agency comes in. So if you've got an agency
with one or two investigators, we've got fifteen to help you.

(22:20):
We're that force multiplier. It's like, hey, I know you've
only got one person doing it. I have me and
I have a team, but the supervisors like, well, how
do we know which ones to go after? And I'm like,
you don't, because one thing that you think might be
nothing can turn out to be something, and one thing
that you think could be something could turn out to be.

(22:41):
Like a kid posting their own videos. They're not like,
it's not them anyone telling them the post. They're just
kids being kids, experimenting and doing things and not understanding
that you put something out there, it's out there forever,
and that becomes an educational piece with the parents and
the kids and things like that.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Dangerous Nonetheless, Yes.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yes, different, Yes, there was one where I had an
agency that I was helping out and I put in
an address and I am driving to that address and
I'm coming up on it and it's like turn left
into the parking lot, and I like park a lot.
And we get there and it's a church. I look
up the church and it's a pastor from the church.
And he when we interviewed him, he actually ended up

(23:19):
telling us he told me he was like thank you.
He was like, it's something I'm struggling with. No, I
should probably get help. I knew I should see how
I was trying to deal with it on my own
because of this, that, and the other. He was doing
everything his power to make sure that he was never
alone with any kids because he knew that that was
a trigger for him. And he thanked me for catching him.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Which is powerful.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Sometimes I get pulled over off and I've gotten pulled
over very few times, but I've gotten pulled over, and
one thing that I will.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Say is thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
I didn't realize this, and I do genuinely mean it,
but also I'm like, Hi, look at me.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
I'm very repentant. I'm so sorry. Please don't be mean
to me.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Do you think some of them are like that where
say thank you and now they think that you'll be
lighter on them because of that.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
No, they're all they're really they know what they're facing
a lot of times, and like a lot of times,
the tummy it's like, yeah, I know I'm messed up
and my life's over. He was like, but I want
to say thank you because it was getting harder for
me to not do more.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
So there's a lot of them who just really don't
want to offend and are getting to a point where
they're not going to be able to stop themselves because
of the material that they're conceiving.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
It's like if you if you are a fan of
basketball and you collect basketball cars, you watch basketball games,
you play picked up, at some point, you're gonna want
to play basketball. It's like with everything, at some point
you're gonna want to do it, which is why we
go after these folks aggressively.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
And that's a win.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Those are huge wins, and it does sound like you
you've had a lot of wins. And then of course
there are those cases where you get the cyber tip
and then it seems like it's for one photo and
you go and investigate it it turns out that it
is a web of webs or that they have hidden

(25:07):
cameras and they've been collecting c sam elsewhere, and that
it really spirals. I like that you had said that
you really don't know the severity of the case yet
often based on that tip and how it's going to
turn out. But then you also don't know how many
resources to put towards it, and that.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Has to make it kind of difficult too, right, Yes.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yes, yeah, that's the that's the part of especially KAI investigations.
That every law enforcement agency deals with. So there is
a lot of turnover and burnout. But then on the
flip side, there are a lot of us that are like,
this is our mission, this is our calling, We're here
for the long haul. But there are a lot of
people that they get it and they start seeing the

(25:55):
content and having to deal with it and it's just
so mentally draining that they have to.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Get out, and that's okay, okay, m yes.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
And I would say there's more turnover because of that
than there are of us that are like, I'm here.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
What's impossible work?

Speaker 1 (26:15):
And I've said a couple of times on this podcast
that you, as an investigator are also a victim of
these people because you have to see this terrible content
and be exposed to it as well. I know you
talked about how you have wins. Is there one that
is less of a win that you really wish.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Had turned out differently? And can you tell me that story?

Speaker 3 (26:40):
So I had a parent come through and they suspected
that their partner were looking at CESAM. He kind of
explained it away with the wife found at the time
was kind of erotica but not illegal. So she saw
that and up on this computer. He was like, oh no, no,

(27:01):
he was like, I was, you know, wastching porn and
that popped up then, so she kind of didn't pay
attention to that. A year later, she found these random
hard drives in their closet, like hidden. She confronted them
with it and he was like, oh, that's just you know,
some video editing stuff. So she was like, okay, that's fine.
Then she noticed that the hard drives ended up in
a safe so secret. Yeah, I didn't think anything of it.

(27:25):
Cut to ten years later. They ended up getting you know,
the forced and they're dealing with custody things, and then
she finds this hard drive, but she doesn't know what
to do with it. She sends it to a company
and this company holds it for a year. Finally the
force attorney was like, you need to get that back,
and then they send it to another digital forriendsic company,
who sent it to another digital friendsic company, and then

(27:48):
they end up finding some chat dispetation on it. We
couldn't even look at that drive. I have descriptions from people,
but I can't legally put that drive. It's changed so
many hands and like the way the court system works
and our dist attorneys is like, we can't even look
at we can't look at it because we can't say

(28:08):
that it's his because oh no, everything you know went
with it not enough to link it to him. But
then the problem with all these third party companies that
aren't necessarily in law enforcement or have to deal with
legal process, none of that stuff was documented. So all
we have we have a documented drive that didn't work,

(28:29):
and then all of a sudden, some files off of
documented off off of a drive. We can't really say
that it came off of that drive because they never
documented anything.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's also people looking at potentially these criminal files.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Yeah, so the drive ended up having to be destroyed
and because there was not enough.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
To say that it was his, so this person got
away with it.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yes, a couple of things that I want to point
out because I feel like listeners may think, how could
she let this happen? How could she ignore this? How
could she let it be explained away? That's easy. You
want to believe the person that you're with, You trust them,
you love them.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
People are so good at lying. This is what these
sorts of people do.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
They are so easily able and so effectively able to
manipulate you into believing whatever they want you to think.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
It feel so horrible.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
For her and then for her to find it and
to hand it in, which is so great. At the
same time, I'm thinking about this person who may have
gotten away with this.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
However, if it was somebody.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Who didn't do this, and it's a very serious crime,
so you want it to be taken seriously too, if
you are somebody who is accused of something like this.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
That's one of the things I explained to her because
she was beating herself up, all right, and when I
was telling her, is you did everything that you needed
to do right and that she needed to do yes,
because she was like, I should have said something early.
I shouldn't have believed him. One of the things that
I always have seen is when you a lot of
times when it's those people that don't fit that creepy

(30:09):
dude in the van, the white van. It's just a
regular looking person. It's just a regular person. You don't
think that, and like families never want to believe it.
It's like, I'll believe it when I see it. They're
always like, oh, this is a mistake, because no one
wants to believe that someone is gonna, you know, pray
on our children and to.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Accuse them of that somebody that you love.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
And everyone is it, yes, and everyone is scared of
being accused of them. In a jury's mind or in
people's mind, if there is any doubt, people are like, oh, like,
whoa what happened? If that was me? The common thing
was like was always watching pornography in this popula, and
you've got people like, well, I watch pornography and it's like, oh, well,

(30:51):
you know what if I you know, it's something popped
up for me and they went through my devices because
there have been unfortunately there have been since is where unseens.
This is why I always say you need iac investigators.
They are unseasoned investigators. They're investigating other crimes. Have saw something,
thought that it was something and turns out not to

(31:12):
be and it turns out that person was not a child.
There's people that do things on the internet to pretend
to be younger. In adult pornography, there's a whole like
teen right, but those teens are either eighteen, nineteen twenty.
There's been people who've come across them like that and
then got arrested and comes out in court it's like that.
There was one where it came out in court and

(31:33):
they had the model come and she was like twenty
five the time that that was taken, but she just
looks really young. The same decoys that we used that
look really young. Sometimes you have that.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
That's why it's so important that these cases are handled
so carefully and delicately as well. And when we have
like the vigilantes stepping in and doing these things.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Not digging into that.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Too much, but it definitely causes so many issues because
you would handle a case differently even than these third
party digital forensics people.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yes, the vigilants drive me crazy. Yes, yes, uh yes, sorry, sorry,
my wife's watching There's a there's a there's a show
on Netflix. Now. I guess they're not vigilantes because they

(32:29):
work with law enforcement. They do undercover chats. In the
first season, they're not working with local law enforcement, but
then the all the season afterwards, apparently they're working with
local law enforcement or they scary when they don't. Yeah,
because and the problem is they will do things and
then they send it to us and then they're like, oh, well,
nothing's been nothing's happening, or you guys aren't doing anything,

(32:51):
and it's like, well, I can't use anything that you said,
and a lot of the stuff that you did was illegal,
Like I can't prove from what you're telling.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Me it's certainly not regulated.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
Yes, So it's just she's upstairs right now watching it.
She sends me messages she's like I can't believe these people.
Or she'll ask me. She' like what happens with this?
And I'm like, well, they can't do that. She's saying
a cinema dramatized, Yes, a dramatized version of an investigation.

(33:23):
You're not seeing everything, and.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
They can't show you everything because that would be allowed
to be on television.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
And it's like she's like, oh, well, like man, this
is so fast, And I was like, well, that probably
took a lot longer than you know, forty minutes for commercials.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
I think about that a lot.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Actually, The fact that all these TV shows I think
about like spu at the t sound and hey, it's solved,
And that's not how real life works at all.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
The fact that there is a.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Thorough investigation up to that point, that you have to
plan these operations.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
It's not like you're just on call like nine.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
One one and somebody's like, hey, there's see Sam, go
get the guy, and you like get in a car
and you go over and you knock on the door
and you arrest them and you go you were bad,
and they go, I did it.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
And then you throw them in jail or they go
to court for a little bit and there's like a
little trial and they like that. That's just not how
it works.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
One of the things that I was even surprised to
find out is that the people who are charged are
then also released just back into the world. Like you
had said before, you need to make sure that they
don't have access to like a cloud or a device
where they can can get back to this content, that
they can continue to access it because they are out

(34:33):
in the world.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
That it's not that they're just thrown behind.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Bars right away. Yes, you are taking them off the street,
but not quite yet.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yes. And that's where like legislators come in and getting
this out and things like this so people can see
and find out, you know, the challenges because in our state,
luckily with our department, so our agency talks with the legislators.
We've had a couple of awesome things happened. AI generated
child expotation. We can now charge on that. Previously you couldn't.

(35:04):
There are still some parameters, but we can charge. We
can charge on that child sex dolls, we can now
charge on that. Those are now illeal in our state
for what you were just saying. As of December of
last year, there was a statute created so that if
it's a violent felony, and this was made for domestic violence,
if it's a violent felony, they don't get bond right away,

(35:25):
they have no.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Bond, thank goodness. And it's huge.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
If it's first degree, which is production, if it's second
degree which is like downloading and duplication or sinding, or
even if it's third degree, which is possession, all of
those are condemed violent felonies. So now when they're going
to jail, they're not getting out immediately because they're getting
no bond. There's a period, there is a period with
which they don't get bond, and there can't be bond

(35:51):
set until their first court appearance.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Because these people get out on bond off and they
get right back to it, like on the way home
from getting bond, they're like back to it right away.
From some of the stories that I've heard, yes, they
don't necessarily learn from it.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yes, we have had instances where we get another tip
and it's like that house looks familiar and it's like,
oh no, we were just out on that guy. He's
actually on pre trial release and still doing the same things.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
That is horrifying and again something that people don't realize.
So one of the things with this podcast is I
try to push this. Yes, it's a true crime podcast,
we are under that category, but what we're talking about
is true, but it is real crime. I know that
you are an avid reader, which we will get into,

(36:44):
and you enjoy a lot of true crime. But for
the people who binge watch this or who are taking
in this content, like you're a wife upstairs who's watching
this show, what would you.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Want those people to know about the work that you do.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Most important thing is just to remember that you were
watching something as for entertainment. You're not seeing the full process, right,
So you're not seeing all the time that went into it.
I like to harp on like how much goes into
an investigation? These cases take months. Now, there are there

(37:23):
are ones where it's like, hey, this is priority one,
like we gotta go. We think there's a child in
danger right now, and we all spin up and we
all go The majority of them are ones it's like, hey,
we don't know who this is. You guys got to
figure it out. Our agency receives fifty five thousand reports
of online expectations, like from the National Center. That doesn't

(37:45):
even that doesn't even count the ones that aren't being
reported to. We got fifty five thousand of them. So
are the head of our unit and tips come in
on the week every Sunday he takes. However, many tips
came in that week and it splits it between all
of us. Then we go through and we view the content,

(38:05):
make sure it's one illegal because sometimes you know, some
of these AI platforms for a lot of agencies or
companies are like, we don't want to expose our reviewers
to this content because it's traumatizing. So we've got AI
solutions that will do it force. And sometimes AI gets
it wrong and we can set off and like, hey,
hey that is clearly an adult. They've got tattoos like me,

(38:25):
they just look young. Hey that's not a new child.
They're wearing tan. So we close those out. But the
ones where it's like, okay, this is Chad e'sportation. Let's
see where we go. Okay, it was uploaded from this
IPA address. Who owns this ip address? We have to
send legal process to say it's Verizon sending legal process
of Verizon. Verizon is getting that not just getting that

(38:46):
process from North Carolina, they're getting that process from every state.
We have two hundred and fifty law enforcement partners across
North Carolina. So it's not like, you know, we send
out the subpoena and it's back tomorrow. It could be months, right,
it could be three months before I find out how
that tip comes back to this house. And then it's like, okay,
that's just the person who owns the internet. Let's and

(39:07):
on top of that, we're doing search ONTs to the
providers to get more information about these accounts. So it
takes it takes a while, and then you get all
your ducks in a row and then you go out.
A typical day for me, it's like I can be
doing one or three things. I'll either be true your
ADJU tips, I'll be processing devices, I'll be gearing up
for search warrant. I'll be executing a search.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Warrant, and that whole time this person is continuing to
do that and they are free.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Yeah, and sometimes they get multiple tips. You watch the
true crime and then at some point they're like, oh,
law enforcements didn't do anything. Or you watch the true
crime and then they're like, it took this investigation was
gone on for six months and they don't give any
context as to why it took that long, and people
were you know, they get mad. That's just what you
have to realize. There's a lot that goes into these investigations.

(39:55):
It's not as simple as it's made to see.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Not a couple of clicks.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
It's not as simple as it's made to see on TV.
There is no enhance like that doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Tools are getting better, but we are We're definitely not
there yet. I love a lot of what North Carolina
is doing. As you know, I live in North Carolina.
I'm not that far from you. I'm over here in Raleigh,
and it warms my heart to know that our.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
State is really doing so much.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
And one of the things that I'm hoping to be
working on here very soon is Alicia's Law, so that
we can get the funding and resources over to you
all so that you can do your job even better.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
It'll be awesome. Yeah, can I hop on a soapbox
really quick? Speaking on like legislation and this, for you know,
anyone who sees this, especially legislators, it is so very
important to talk with it for things like this, to
talk to people that are actually doing the work, because
a lot of times what happens with legislation is they're

(40:59):
hot point in iss use and people want to fix
it because you know, their constituents are angry about it
because they saw something, they're angry about it and they
want to fix it, and they don't talk to anybody
about it. Laws get made and they are sometimes not helpful,
but child sets do all law that we have. The
attorneys that wrote it came to speak with us at
a meeting and they were like, yeah, we put this

(41:21):
in there. You guys probably won't see it, like because
who has these, but we you know, there was someone
in the legislator had concerns about it, and we put
it in there. And he was like, have you guys
seen that? And like half of us raised our hands
and he was like.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
What they thought? They just never really seen time.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Yeah, they thought it was so ridiculous that that they
were they can people don't do this, and it's like, yes,
they do. But the one that bothers me the most,
the legislation that bothers me the most because it has
been copy paste for every state that has enacted it.
What I'm seeing is it's not helpful. I mean it's
it's helpful, but it's not in the way that's attended.

(41:56):
We should always tell people because we would always hear. Oh,
was just googling and I came across the shot. I'm like,
you can't do that. That's not how it works. It
is a possibility. Now you have to identify your age.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Great the age of verification.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah, right, so, which is great. However, the pornography company,
which is a multipleay industry, has said, hey, cool, we'll
do it. Like you're big three, like your hub, your
tubes and your hubs. They're like, hey cool, Like we'll
do that. How do you want us to do that?
Legislators like figure it out as written technically, they can
just say are you eighteen? These big companies are making

(42:28):
all this money, don't want to do that. So what
they have done is they just pull out the state.
So it's like you're there's a video and it's like
your state has an active legislation, Cinema have to verify
we're fine doing that. How have they given no guidance
on how they want us to do that? Contacts your
legislator blah blah, blah blah, and what happens from that.
What I've come across is there now these sites that

(42:50):
may have been ten fifteen pages down a Google rabbit hole,
they are now the first things that pop up. So
you've got sites that don't care about children's safety, they
don't care about what's on their site where someone might
type in team. So I've had a case where and
I was able to prove that this person was this
not what he was looking for, and what he clicked

(43:12):
on was not what he got, and he self reported
and like I saw what he clicked on and he
clicked on he so he was searching like amateur thought
it was an eighteen year old and the person looked
like an adult. And then what he got was like
and he clicked on it and saved the Scottish count
was shut down. Forensically, I was able to see that,
and there was he was like very open. It was

(43:33):
like yeah, like he reported himself. He gave up stuff willingly.
Nothing had been reset. He was opened, but he was like,
take all my stuff. He was like, I don't want
there to be any ambiguity. What happened was he saw
this site and he clicked on it, and it was
one of those less reputable sites that he would have
never seen prior to this law band and acted, and
he clicked on the link and the link sent them
to like a site out of the country. And I

(43:54):
was like, do you know what this says? And he
was like, now, I just clicked on and then I
pulled up the Google Trends and it was like that
it was he would have if he would have known
what it says, he wouldn't have clicked on it because
in his mind, I can't get child pornography on the internet.
Like I searched for something that I searched for all
the time. I clicked on something that looked like an

(44:15):
adult and then I was given something that I was
not expected. And that is a possibility. Now now what
I tell people, because a lot of folks are like, well,
you know, you shouldn't say that, because now people are
going to use that an excuse. So here's the difference, right,
so if I tell my offenders, I was like, I'm
a digital friend this guy and then to forensics will
tell me. So if what you're saying is true, there

(44:38):
shouldn't be There shouldn't be a lot of child exportation
on your your device. You might have like one, you know,
because you got put in, you got pulled on that
that out of the country site and they started seeing
you pop up. So you might have like one, two,
three things in your cash files that you don't but
you never necessarily saw because it was cash. But your
cash should not be all child expectations, your search history

(44:58):
should not be all childix with as long as we're
doing our jobs and we're doing the forendics and actually
verifying things, you can tell the difference. And it's few
and far between, but it's it is a possibility now.
And also which I thought about this now when you
said the case that sticks with me, I do have
one now. I don't know why I didn't think of
it before, but I tell parents about this all the time.

(45:21):
It was from a cybertip from a Google tip came
back to this address. We started looking into the address.
While it can be anyone, historically, it's going to be
a man. We thought we were looking at the dad.
We get out there, we do a lot of work
to verify what was going on. As we were at
the house and we're going through the dad's devices and
we weren't seeing what we should be seeing. So then

(45:42):
we start talking to them about it and they were like, oh, well,
can we see those dates? And we're looking at the
dates and the wife was like, well, those are the
dates for my steps on this year, like every date
that you're showing me. When we went and we looked
back on the calendar, persteps was there every other week.
So then it became okay, so long as you go
talk to steps On, no search one for where he's at.
We go out to talk to him. Now, when I

(46:02):
went to talk to him, this is after these laws
got enacted. And what he it, this messed him up.
He he was thirteen and he was looking at like
twelve thirteen year olds his age group. Well, he thought,

(46:24):
because he's a child in his mind, he knew pornography
was legal. And he saw the turn he ended up
on like out of the Country site and in the
Outer Country chatting room and they were saying child porny
chaper so he thought what he told me was, I
thought these were kids my age that were willingly being
paid to like adult actors, because in his mind, as

(46:47):
a child, he heard the term child.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
He thought it was that it was child phrenography, which
is four children.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yes, yeah, And he clicked on the link and he
got He was not prepared for what he got, and
it freaked him out. He's in therapy now because it's
not what he was looking for, and he saw some
he saw like a lot of things that we see
that are like, this is messed up, but he got
there because we're now at a point where you can
access it from like it's it's not on the dark

(47:14):
web anymore. But it's things like that where it's like,
if you're not talking with the people that are doing
it enough, like these oversights will happen.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
But you can't just guess, yeah, okay, just think, okay,
this is what I think is happening, this is what
makes sense.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
You have to talk to people who are.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Doing the work, and the work changes all the time.
I have people who will talk to me and they'll
start talking about the Internet like it's a long ago
of the Internet, and it's like, Nope, that's not how
this works anymore.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Our kids have they're dealing with things that we couldn't
even imagine.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
I know, I have the so many kids come up
to me after presentations and they tell me these heartbreaking stories,
and I'm like thinking in my head, how are you
in school right now? Like oh, I have to go
take a test. And it's like, oh, my goodness, what
you are dealing with, what you're experiencing, what you were
seeing when the kids come up to me. Of course,
I just want to make it very clear that I
have a system in place to get them the help.
I don't just say okay, well, go go back to class.

(48:11):
Not ever the stories that I hear. People just don't
understand what kids are facing in this world that they
live in, and that it used to be that there
was this kind of kid friendly world and you had
to go search, you had to look for literally like
the magazine or the channel that you weren't supposed to watch,
or go into that area of the video store and

(48:33):
like peak at the covers to see something. And now
kids just live in the same world that we live in,
and it's this hyper sexualized world where they are being
sexualized constantly. And they are the content and the future consumers.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yes, and a lot of times they don't even realize
that they're being exploited. Right, So a eighteen year old
that is making like adult content when it's in high school,
if they see someone who just graduated, let's say they
graduate high school last year, they had like graduated high
school like last month, and they're eighteen now, right, they're
still looking at them as peers. So when they see

(49:11):
these kids on social media, these high school students, they
see their peers doing things like, oh, that's fine, it's okay,
they're doing it. Their brains aren't developed. They're not realizing
the consequences of putting that stuff out there and then
it'll be out there forever, and that it can lead
to dangerous consequences. That's a thousand times worse than exactly.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
I swear this will light up in a moment.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
But I recently started pilate as I absolutely love it,
and I was talking to these think you, I really
love it. And I was talking to the young girl
behind the counter, who I think she may have been
sixteen or seventeen. I don't quite think she was yet eighteen,
But we started talking because this.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Is what I tend to talk about with.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
People sometimes, and she started to tell me about how
one of her classmates w on to become one of
the top earning only fans girls. I don't want to
call them adult stars because they're not stars. They call
themselves mattress actresses, which is kind of horrifying. But one
of the things she said that's happening with this is that, yes,

(50:17):
that girl is eighteen and she's on only fans. Her
friends she's like still in school or she just graduated.
Her friends are sixteen, seventeen and younger, so they're not
in her content, but they're on her social media. So
we have to remember that that's happening in schools too
and in the social circles. Is that this is seen

(50:38):
as this kind of celebrity. Now it is seen as
this beautiful, successful, rich person, and that is being pushed
to children over and over and over again. And then
you have the adults, the young adults, the very young adults,
the newly adults, the eighteen year olds who are now
falling into it, who are bringing in those younger students

(51:01):
along with them and their younger friends.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
You bring up only fans, right, so only fans and
I know this just from work, but like it's it's
not searchable, right, you don't search on only fans. Generally,
the way that only fans models make money is through
their other social media's they push I guess was it

(51:25):
non spicy content on their social media then they you know,
promote their only fans. These kids are actually seeing that
I've gotten over the last three years, I've gotten multiple
cases like this and it opened my eyes where person's
reaching out to them on Snapchat. It's like they talked
to them. It's like I'll pay you for videos and
I'll send you Venemil, I'll send you Instagram. There's been

(51:47):
multiple times where parents have contact with us or contacted
they another law enforced managers for another state if they
go talk to them. And it turns out parent was
alerted because child got Amazon packages and they don't have
any money. And he actually had a case like that
in North Carolina and he was sending this to thirty
years in federal prison and it came from a single
cyber tip of one image. It turns out that he

(52:10):
was one contacting girls. He was one of the guys.
I was like, I'll give you twenty dollars for every
image that you send me in your underwear or with
no clothes. Ont they send the image, cool kick out
the twenty dollars. He was making upwards of like thirty
thousand a month, so for him to spend ten thousand
a year to pay these kids no problem for him.
Then you've got the ones that are like some kids

(52:31):
are like, I'm not comfortable with that, and then they
flip and they're like, awesome. You probably shouldn't be comfortable
with that. It's really weird for you to send some
person on the internet that you'd never met before, like,
I'm proud of you. You know what, I'll give you
ten dollars for every picture you send of me and
your bikini because they're selling those as well.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
And kid thinking, oh, that's not that's bad, that's fad.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
That's not bad. My parents post my bikini for like
that and I'll make money from it. It's okay to
make money for me because I see these OnlyFans models
doing all this stuff on Instagram and they're not that
much older than me. And that dude. It turned out
that he was selling people all across the state. He
was coaching people on how to offend, he was arrested.

(53:13):
Going through the messages, we found out that there was
another offender who was like, I have access to my sister,
like how do I go about this? And he was
giving advice. We went out, got him, scooped him up,
and you were speaking about people doing it. The guy
that was on pretour release, he was purchasing from this dude.
So it's how we found out, oh, he was on

(53:35):
pre our release. That dude did thirty years in federal
criticism and there are multiple investigations across the United States
based on him, and there's been multiple arrests just based
on this one random test. It's like, you never know
where this stuff is gonna take.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
It, No, you don't.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Gosh, thanks thank you for investigating that so thoroughly and
not turning away from any of it. That's it's it's
bone chilling the fact that I know this is getting
more and more popular as almost this like multi level
marketing of offending, where there's the top person and then

(54:13):
they will train other people to go out and get
them content into abuse and to provide it for them.
It is horrifying. There is really like just no depths
that these people won't sink to, which makes me wonder,
do you think that evil is winning.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
I don't think that it's winning, because I just think
we see it more and we see like I've seen it,
but now you get to see it more. You've seen it,
but like other people get to see it more because
it's it's out there. You've got folks like you that
are talking about it now. It's a thing right where
a lot of departments are whenever they have ICAT cases,

(54:51):
they're posting them on social media. Nice.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
I get frustrated about that sometimes because I've been speaking
for twenty plus years and people are now just catching up,
and I'm like, I have been here saying this for
so long, and now you care because there's this high
profile case or there's this, or there's this, or maybe
you'll get.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Followers because you're talking about it.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
They genuinely people do care, but they aren't listening to
the truth, and they're mixing it and can with conspiracy
theories and getting lost in it. And it's it's very
frustrating that you can tell from the tone of my
voice it's very difficult. So I like that you had
pointed out, like you've seen it. I've seen it, But
I do think that from previous years, there is more

(55:33):
now because as technology grows and there's just more of
fenders and that it's easier to do it. We are
also seeing it more because it's being caught more. It's
just you're learning about it, and that's great. I'm so
glad that people are talking about it and they are
learning about it. But what really matters is the conversations
that we're having. And that's another reason why this podcast
is so important, because, like you said, talk to the

(55:55):
people who are in the middle of it, and that's
what I'm doing and what I want to get out
there so that people don't fall into all these conspiracy
theories and get lost along the way of trying to
make a difference. Now, you and I we've met before.
I spoke at a conference a couple of years ago here,

(56:19):
I think it was like at.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Lake June, Laska. Yes, it's very very cute.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
You told me that there's something that I said in
that presentation that has stuck with you.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Can you tell me more about that?

Speaker 3 (56:32):
Right? So, and that's part of the whole you know
how I said, If not me, then a lot of
times people are like you can't do this for your
entire career, is like, well I can, because if I
don't do it, who's going to do it? You need
some people that has that expertise. You need some people
to stay in and do it. And if I don't
do it, then who's going to do it? And what
you said that stuck with me. It has stuck with me,

(56:53):
and I've had multiple cases where I'm like, I'm glad
we did this. Is when you were talking about your
expert the day that you were rescued, you made a
statement you felt that that at that day he was
getting attached to you, and that if law enforcement hadn't
come that day, you you wouldn't be here. You made
the statements like well, like what if they stopped to

(57:13):
get coffee? What if they were like, hey, you know,
you know we're gonna we'll push this on tomorrow. That
has haunted me for a while because there's always those
times where it's like.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
You know, what if are you stopping for coffee? Because
now I'm concerned. I want you to get your coffee.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
No, no, like.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Nope, can't stop for coffee.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
I have a giant thing of coffee that I keep
with me. One of the biggest instances of that that
are and this was a win. This is a win
for the state. Last year we received fifty five thousand
cyber tips, right cyber tips like in our state. Now
we're doing a lot more proactive things, but we're so
inundated with reactive like cyber tips and all these tips

(57:55):
that are coming in that we have to investigate. There's
a child behind every tip, I meaning with a just FBI, Army,
CID and US. And they're like, we want to do
this thing. We want to do it like within a month,
and we're like, not enough time, okay, so how should
we do it. It's like, go to South Carolina, see
how they do it, because they do it all the time.
So they went to South Carolina and then they came back.

(58:15):
We're like, we're not doing this in the month. We're
pushing out to eight months from now. We're gonna get
all our ducks in row. And we got making seventeen
arrests from it, which was like the largest that we've
had in the state. Because of that and because of
the success of that, there's been a lot more proactive
things on this state and in our agency. We decided,
you know, what we're gonna do a peer to peer,
which is a you know, peer pre member like napster,

(58:37):
and so people downloading stations. Yeah, LimeWire, these are the
people who have never gotten caught from one of those
cyber tips because they're not on these platforms, they're not
searching for it on these platforms. So one of our agents,
he was like, the beginning of the year, we're gonna
take all of the open peer peer investigations. So we
have downloads, active downloads for people, and we're gonna put

(58:58):
them all together. We're gonna put teams together and all
across the state just for this two week period, we're
gonna kick all of these. We ended up doing one
and we ended up saving four children. There was a
husband wife combo offending on their own children. We would
have never gotten it. We put together this thing. We
ended up there were tons of arrest but the ones

(59:19):
that stuck out the most was those four kids that
were four and one on the way that were rescued
from that. Yeah, and we would have never like he
would have never popped on a ruse the way he
was doing it, he would have never popped on anybody's radar.
And except for those peer to peer callers that were

(59:39):
out there. So whenever, whenever anyone asked me to do something,
we always do it. I am lucky that my so,
my wife's my best friend. She knows what I do,
and she's super supportive of what I do. And even
like on the days where three times when we have
stuff planned and something will pop off and I'm like, yo,

(59:59):
I gotta.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Go, She's like, yeah, no, no, can't say those kids today,
We're going to dinner, we playing and like, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
It's like, so one of the guys I used to
work with in my old department, he's now working with us,
and his wife asked my wife and she was like,
I mean, it's like, you can't get mad because he's
saving kids, Like, you can't get mad that. It's like,
it's fine right now if I had to go out,
if I was doing something else, the miss her birthday
for some random like burglary. But if it's saving the kids,

(01:00:29):
she's like, you know, awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
It's part of being a law enforcement family is that
you are always on call and the work that you
do is saving lives, and it's critically important.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
It works out for me because it's hard to be mad.
When you come home, you're like, save four kids today,
It's awesome. So like usually she's like, good job, good job. Yeah,
but I have a lot of coping mechanisms, so like
I yeah, So I think I can see some normal,

(01:01:03):
I can see some I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I like that I'm not normal.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
I don't know if you are usual for the world
that you work in, but I can see that you
are surrounded by a bunch of books and figurines, and
that I have an inkling that those might be a
coping mechanism for you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
I know that you are pretty.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Big on book talk and when yes, I was told
about you to do this interview by opera ranger by Will.
He was like, oh, he's really big in book talk,
and I was like, oh, I need to know everything
about that. Tell me everything about that. How is that
a coping mechanism for you? What is book talk to you?
Has this fit into your work?

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
All of it?

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
So I've got thirty thousand followers on book on tittok,
but I most make mostly book content, and then eighteen
on Instagram and that's less than a year. So I've
only been doing this for I have been a year
yet I've always had a lot of coping met Like
I used to work out, I used to play video games.
Also as far as content, this is I know this

(01:02:09):
is off on hand, but I remember a member Will
mentioned it when he was talking about the tools that
we use and how they have these built in safeguards
that where the screen like so you can you can
make the content black and white because your your brain
views black and white things different. You can set up
timers where it's like hey, look away, stand up and
you know, move for fifteen minutes and stuff like that.

(01:02:30):
Are our department because I told you, like our agency
values mental health. They have a whole team of agents,
is a whole secondary duty is on call for mental
health for our entire agency.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
No way, Oh that's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
And we have a psychologist that like leads up. One
of the things that they also did is they part
like we have an app. It's like a wellness checking app,
and in the app there is a whole section for ICA.
They have the app for all the regular agents. We
have like this whole section where those check ins, all
these coping skills, all these things that we can do
to help ourselves. And we talk about like that stigma

(01:03:08):
of like costan Ah, that's fine, I'm not doing it.
If I need it is there and there's a study
that was done so it's about Tetris. It was originally
used for survivors of sexual assault and to be able
to talk about traumatizing things. It's like you would talk
about it and then directly after they would have them
play Tetris. From what the study says is because you're
reliving that trauma and then immediately you make your brain

(01:03:31):
go into puzzle solving mode. You don't get that secondary
trauma because you have the trauma of the reliving which
you just went through, and then you're playing Tetris, so
your brain focuses on Tetris, and which you remember is
the Tetris you don't remember. You don't relive all that
does my process it as a NYCAT conference and one
of the bakers of the tool, I was in their

(01:03:52):
training and they're like, yeah, we put that, We've got
to plug in where it's in the tool, like we
have Tetris in the tool for that reason and it works.
So like there are things that I have seen that
I can't get out of my head. Every once in
a while will pop back up the content that you see,
some content that I viewed that it's just no one
should see.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
And I've seen When does it pop up in your head?

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
If I'm on like a scene where it's kind of
reminiscent of that, it might pop up for me. It
doesn't pop up like in a normal day life, but
like every once in a while, or if like someone's
talking about it, think about it, it's like that I
can see. We have to take detailed descriptions, Like we
write descriptions so that when a jury hears it, they
don't have to see it, but they can be like
you need to go to jail. There was this whole stigma.

(01:04:33):
I was like, oh, it's just pictures. Like there were
these judges that were like, it's just pictures. But when
you read those descriptions, they're like, oh, you need to
go to jail. We look for the worst of the worst,
and we spell it out. After I learned about this,
like I was going through I had a case, I
was categorizing things, I was writing things up, and like
riftly afterwards, I started doing like textures. Now. Previously, if

(01:04:55):
a DA called me and was like, hey, can you
tell me about like these five. The way my brain
works is if you ask me about it, then it
pops up. I'm like, oh, yeah, it was this. It
was wild, like I can describe it. The ones that
I started doing tetris on, like I had a DA call.
This is when I figured out it worked. I had
a DA call me and he was like, can you
remind me that she was in there? I'm about to

(01:05:16):
go to the chorus one refresher and I was like,
I'm about to look at my notes because I really
don't remember. And I was like, oh, that works. That works,
So I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Do all the time I've heard of that I'm going
to have to look into that. It makes me feel
like it's almost that you had Like I put things
in boxes like compartmentalize amazingly well, and sometimes that's not
the healthiest thing.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
This is not there, like I have to like I
would have to have to like read it, and I'm like,
oh okay, but I still can't see it. So like
I was like, speaking of readers, so there are some readers.
I found this out as I be So I became
a reader like within the last year, and it came
from my wife being like, I'm reading this book and
I need somebody to talk to about it, So I
want you to read this book that's see. Then yeah,

(01:06:01):
I read said book and it was about dragons, and
then I was like, this is amazing. So then all
my coping of like video games and things like that,
it was like, Okay, let's read books, and it turned
into like making content about books. There are some readers
who like when I read, I see everything.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
I'm so jealous.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
I know so like my wife can't. She's you know,
and I didn't realize that no one saw everything. She
asked me. She was like, if I tell you to
describe an apple, can you see the apple. I was like, yeah,
I can see that. I can see the apple.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
You can see that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
I know I can see the apple.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
It always frustrates me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
I'm always very jealous of people who can do that
because I will try to even do like a meditation
to cope and calm down, and it'll be like imagine
a beach and I'm like, I don't see anything, this
is nothing, No, so.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
Like I see it. So the problem with that is
when I'm when I was previously, when I was reading descriptions,
I could see it. Oh, Now when I'm reading descriptions.
I can't. I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
It because of the tetris, Like I.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
Can see the words because in my brain it's not
that like the description is off, so I can't see it.
I can't remember it. I just did one for a
DA last week. We were on the phone and she
was like, do you remember. I was like, hold on,
let me look, and I was like, oh, yeah, like
I'm reading description. I was like, yeah, this was way
out of pocket. But I still couldn't see it because

(01:07:22):
you know, I yell. I yell a lot, like whenever
I come across something that is just out there, like
apparently I didn't realize I did this. It's like I'll
be Triogen and Tepanosi something like out of pocket, and
then I move it really quick because I don't need
to see the whole thing. I just know that this
is illegal. I need to yes, like out of pocket.
And the other day there wasn't a lot of people

(01:07:45):
in the office and I was working. I was like,
and then somebody yelled out of pocket and I was like, oh,
maybe I'm too loud. Yeah, but yeah, I got into
the reading because of my wife. I started making content
to kind of like just as a release of you know,
it's like, oh, I do all this stuff, and this
is a creative outlet. This is another creative outlet.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Bes it's like a real escape.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
So many people read for an escape, especially because you
can see it. So you get to travel to all
of these worlds and see all of these characters, and
it's the movie in your brains.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
It's a real escape.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
And then you get to take that creativity and turn
it into a video so that other people can experience it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
What was that first book? Do you remember the title?

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
It was Fourth Wing?

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
Ah, that's very very popular.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
After that, you went off on your own and picked
up books or did you continue to read.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
With your wife?

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
She actually read Fourth Wing. So I read Fourth Wing,
and then I read the second book, iron Flame, so
that we'd be ready for the third book, Onestoring, to
come out last January. So then last January, like we
read it and I was like, these are amazing, And
I was like these these are not the books that
I read in middle school, in high.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Schools they were assigned to read.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Yeah, all right, So I was like, oh, what else
is out there? Yeah? I hop on social media and
I'm like books because previously it was like, oh, I
only know books from school or like the cover. I
was a vacation reader. It's like, oh, we're gonna be
a vacation me grab a book. So while we're at
the beach, that cover looks cool. Grab it. There was
a book called Dundron Crawler Call, and like my wife

(01:09:19):
was going to be out of town. It was like
one week my wife was going to be gone. The
next week I was gonna be gone. Then after that,
my wife is gonna be gone. Next week. I was
going to be gone when we're out of town. Like
there's no kids, we can like relax. I'm sitting there
and I just like started reading it and I was
like I could not put this thing down. There are
At the time, there were seven books, and I read
all seven in a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
It's a series.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Yeah, they just get I was thinking, maybe I'll give
it a go, but that's a commitment.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Well yes, so I tell people now, like, so I
read those with my eyeballs. But eight came out in
May of this year, and as a reread, I was
in a book club where we were going through each
book and like I listened to them and that's a
book that you need to listen to because the narrator
does a phenomenal job.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
So there was that and I was like, okay, what
else is out there? So then I started listening and
stuff and I started My wife was reading more, so
then I would read. She was like, you should check
out Akatar like a corri of Thrones and Roses, and
I was like, So then I read that and I
was like, this is awesome. Before that, I was getting
book recommendations off of my normal TikTok account. I was like,

(01:10:25):
I want an account where I and just get books.
So then I created an account and then like I
was just me knowing how algorithms work and things. I
was like, all right, so my first video is going
to be book related. It'll be like me doing like
I just got a new Kindle. So I did a
and I made like a screen save for it put
that out there. So then the algorithm was just sending

(01:10:46):
me book stuff and I did like another video and
then as a joke, I did like this. You know,
have you ever seen the movie easy A? I have, yeah,
so like that whole like with the I got up
Pocket for the Sunshine. So I did that with like
a book and that thing just like blew up, and
people were like super invested in me reading the first book.

(01:11:08):
And then I read the first book, and then the
video about the first book, and then people got super
invested in that. So then I read the second book,
which I was reading anyway because the first I finished
the first book on the plane and I was so
mad because I didn't have the second book, and I
was like, how am I finished the first book thirty
minutes into this like four hour flight, and I was like,
I don't know what I'm gonna do with the rest
of this time. There was like this journey of me

(01:11:28):
finishing the book, and then it just spiraled into me
making content about me reading those books I started reading.
My wife was read all the Freedom and Fandom books,
which is like a pop points filler, and I was like,
I'm gonna read those. I read The Housemaid and I
was like, this is amazing because my wife was like,
you got to read it before we watched the movie.
And that went into like I want to read everything
that she's ever written, to the point where her marketing

(01:11:50):
person reached out to me and was like, Hey, do
you want this new book? And I was like absolutely,
like these publishing houses are like, hey, we will send
you pr packages. We'll send you you know, books, you know,
if you want to talk with if we think you're likely,
you send it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
You're a book fluencer.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
Yeah, so I yes, I ended up and that's where
we're at now. And I'm coming up on my one
year at the end of July.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
So how incredible. I love your videos.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
There's some really funny ones on there that I'm going
to play the audio here. Do you feel that you've
created your own sort of world. Do you feel like
there's almost like a couple of different rays. Is there
the IKAC ray and then the family guy ray and
then the book guy ray?

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Or is it all combined it's.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
All the same ray? Right? My day is crazy, Like
I will be one minute I'll be at a search war,
the next minute, I'll be at a dancer recital. There
have been times where I was on a search war,
I pulled into my driveway and I got a text
message from my wife and she was like, our son's
sides hurt. And we thought it was a pendance first,
so I'm like hopping in like a hop hour. It's

(01:12:58):
still in full on search moar. You like best all
that stuff, grab him, hop in the car. I go
to this hospital with everything, best gun badge. There was
a guy who was like, Uh, you can't come in
here with that. And one of the officers was like,
his jurisdiction is the state. He can do whatever he wants.
And I was like, okay, thank you, I'm going in.

(01:13:19):
I'm going this way. Goodness, it's all melded into one
because that's the only way that I could cope when
you had Will's episode, like you talked about he talked
about like people doing things to help the team. So
the beginning of twenty twenty five my New Year's resolution,
I was like, We've got a team's message just for
our entire unit. And I was like, we deal with
all this content that is ridiculous and traumatizing. And I

(01:13:42):
was like, so look, every Monday, I'm going to send
a dad joke love it to the entire team. So like,
and then I started out and I did like every
single Monday, to the point where when I went on vacation,
I got messages being like, are you taking your phone
because we need our joke, and I was like, no,
I'm not taking my phone, but I have them scheduled

(01:14:04):
because you can schedule messages and teams. Was on it
for a year and then like for the the whole
first two months of the year, people were like, you
missed your joke, so like I had to do it
again for them, and I was like, okay, I'm not
doing I can't do it. I can't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
It's your new job. This is now your job description.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
On top of that, that coincided where when our cyber
tip schedules came out, so like we would get our
tips that day, so people were also like it was like, yeah,
it's fine, but like we got our joke and like
everyone loved it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Sticking to the humor, do you remember one of your
favorite dad jokes?

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
This one came from my son. It was why don't
farts go to school because they getting expelled?

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
I love dad jokes, but that one's really bad.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
One's a real stinker.

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
Yes, So again sticking to the humor. But we'll get
back into the IKAC world. One of my favorite things
about law enforcement is the sense of dark humor and
these dark humor stories that I get to hear, and
sometimes they're a little too far and people might be like, oh,
that's that's not funny. But it's how you cope, it's

(01:15:17):
how you get through it. Do you have any of
these stories that come to mind for you that you
could share?

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
My favorite? So I am me right, So I'm sort
of sarcastid. I love talking to people, but sometimes I
can't control my face. When we did one of these
undercovered chat operations, there was a guy aim to meet
up with what he thought was a thirteen year old
girl for sex. The way that we do it is

(01:15:48):
we are chatter's chat. Then we have them stop at
a secondary location to get some sort of token, whether
it be candy, lollipop, something like that, urchase something. They're
always like, oh I was I was coming to make
sure that they were real, or I was coming to
let them know that this is dangerous and I wasn't
going to do anything.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
If the person was saying, but you stopped, got the
gummy bears, we just.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Stopped and got the gummy bears, right, So sometimes we
have it where they come to the house, and then
sometimes we have it so once they stop, they pick
up that purchase, then they're arrested. So we had a
guy he was coming to me what he thought was
a thirteen year old girl. He picks up his purchase.
He gets arrested. The officer said, you know, while I'm
wresting you, and he was like, yeah, because that young
girl tried to get me to do stuff. Then he's

(01:16:31):
putting handcuffs and he's transferred to the police station for
an interview, and he comes in. I'm the interviewer. Yeah,
I give him my spiel first off, because he was transported,
because you were you know, in cancuffs, were transport I'm
gonna read your rights and I would like to talk
to you. You know, this is your chance to tell
your story. Right, we don't know what was said between

(01:16:52):
because at this point we kind of like, we don't
say that they were talking to it an agent. You know,
we don't know we came across these chats for whatever reasons.
Last like oh the parents pus have said something. We
don't know. We don't have all of them. This is
your chance to kind of give your story, to tell
you how he came across this or like how like
what was going on? Just just tell me because generally
they just dig that hole. He was like, oh, yeah,

(01:17:14):
I want to talk to you. So we're in the
middle of the interview. He's talking, he's talking, me talking,
and all of a sudden, like he's starting to talk
about stuff. A detectives opened the door and she was
like sorry, and I was like, man, we were in
a groove. She looked at the suspect and she was like,
your watch, Like, your watch is going nuts. It's his
diabetes monitor, oh, because he had like one of the

(01:17:35):
ones where it was on him and it was connected
to his phone and his watch. He was like, it's
probably just because it's too far away from my phone.
What is it saying? And she was like it's sane critical.
He was like, oh yeah, I probably need some It
means I need I got like some low bludgers. I
probably just need some juice or candy or something. He
gets his juice and we get in my candy bar
and he just continues to talk and I was like, hey,

(01:17:56):
you know, just on the safe side, I'm gonna have
emas come check you out. Was like you need to
go to hospital, like now, and he was like no, now,
I'm not going to hospital. And they're like okay. They
had him sign the against medical Advice for I come
back in and he starts talking and I was like, hey, hey,
bo woa, they's advice that you go to the hospital.

(01:18:17):
You have a fuse medical advice. I'm going to stop
this interview. I can't sit here and talk to you
and have you like passed. He's like, I'm fine. I
was like, I get that, but if something happens to you,
it beyond me. So now what's going to happen is
you know the this officer is going to take you,
put you back in handcuffs and take you down to
see the matter ship where you'll get bond and you'll
have you know, you know, your first appearance. And said
all that, and he was like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

(01:18:39):
What are you talking about? And I was like, well,
I'm in an interview. He was like, you told me
that I can in an interview at any time. And
I was like, I'm sorry what I did and you
could in an interview. He was like, well, why am
I going down to the jail. I was like, because
you're under arrest. He was like, I had no idea
I was under arrest the whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
He didn't know he was under arrest.

Speaker 3 (01:19:02):
I was like I'm sorry. What he was like, nobody
told me I was under arrest. I was like, when
you came in here, you were in handcuffs. He was
like yeah, and I was like, man, I read you
you're rights. I was like, yeah. I asked you what
you said to the officer, and you said, oh, that
officer asked me why I was here. That officer asked
why if I knew why I was being arrested. And
you told me that that young girl tried to give
me do stuff. And he was like yeah, but I

(01:19:23):
had no idea that I was underrest. This is why
you shouldn't talk to the police. And they said that.
My face was like what it could not compute. He
was so upset. I was like, this is this is ridiculous.
Like I keep a notepad on my phone of just
the random things that people say.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
What else you gotten there?

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
We had a suspect when his wife found things on
his phone. So he makes a report to National Center
from my six spot children about this website that he
found it on, and it just didn't sound right. So
we went out and we talked to him and we're like,
can we just go through your phones? Like, yeah, we
get it. We get we get it. You were trying to,
you know, report, but we need to go through your
Oh wait.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
He reported it after she found it on his phone.

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
Yeah, he told her that he found it and he
downloaded it to report it so he would have something
to send in a report.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
That's not suspicious at all.

Speaker 3 (01:20:14):
Which is why we actively could look at his phone.
He was like, yeah, I'm going to the phone and
he's like, there's not gonna be anything on there. I
found that site and it was disturbing, and I, you know,
I downloaded, but then I deleted it. I just wanted
to make you guys aware of it. So I'm looking
at it and I'm past the dates where he where
all this happened, and I'm still seeing see Sam in
his phone and he was like, oh, oh no, that
like remember I told you? Like he was like that

(01:20:35):
must be left over from when I downlized, Like I
downloaded a lot, and like, I just I wanted you
to have all the things so that she could so
you wouldn't you would take me serious. I was like, well,
how long do we have this phone? He was like
a couple of years, and I was like, well, this
is from four years ago. And he was like, oh,
let me tell you what happened. My wife and I
watched All Lawn Order SVU and after we saw an

(01:20:57):
episode on Child Expectation, still started doing research and then
I was downloaded things so that could help you guys out.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
Oh so he's going to use it as as an excuse.
They do come up with some pretty wild excuses or
explanations for what they're doing, and they will talk.

Speaker 3 (01:21:16):
Yes, they never know what we have, but if they're
doing this stuff, like they know that where we're there.
I've had one guy who was like, you know, as
I got it on this was I got it on
an accident. Person, It's like, okay, well you shouldn't have
one hundred images of c Stand on your phone. You
got on an accident. I got on accident. Was it
was in there. I couldn't get it off, so I

(01:21:37):
thought you guys were here. It was like, this happened
a long time ago. I couldn't get it off. I
actually got a new phone because I couldn't get it off,
So I destroyed that phone that tips you got it
was from when my front like my account was hacked
or whatever, and like and I'm sitting there. I was
like oh. I was like, well when was that? And
he was like, oh, that was, you know, a couple
of years ago. So a couple of years ago. Like

(01:21:58):
when when exactly was that? It was like approximate two
years ago. I was like, yeah, I see, that doesn't
explain one of the files that I'm here for or
from last month.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Do you feel like they're trying to gaslate you a lot?

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
Oh yeah, yeah that or they take the out like
a lot of times they take the out of this
was a mistake, which that's fine, but.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
You still had it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
It's a.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Mistake.

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):
When I'm talking to them, I'm like, you know, this
is a mistake. Do you have a problem, And whichever
avenue they're gonna take, they start nodding, So it's like,
you know, I'm just trying to figure out your this
is your chances. You start only you know what's on
your phone? Right, I don't know what's on your phone.
It's not going through it. So if you're telling me
that this was an accident or that like you have
a problem, maybe you have a problem with pornography, and
you're like, we find something all this stuff on your phone.

(01:22:43):
If we're going to find that like, this is your
chance to talk about it, and then like with them nodding,
that's why I know which way they're going to go
with it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
So you learn all these little tails mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
It's easy to say, oh, this is a mistake one
time and you lock them in with okay. So you
downloaded this file. There's a professor that I had at UNC.
He was like, I download the file because I thought
it was cars. Because the file name sometimes they're creative.
The file name was like AUDI twenty twenty whatever. Audi.

(01:23:17):
I thought it was cars. I downloaded it. It wasn't cars.
I deleted it. That's cool. I understand that. So you
downloaded cars thinking that it was cars and you got what. Yeah,
it's like and what did you get? It was like, well,
you know, god shout child exploitation. He used that common term,
and I was like, well, what does that mean to you?

(01:23:37):
This is where you this is where you know it's
someone that's been doing it for a Whenever they say
it's someone under the age consent, it's like, well, no,
it's someone under the age of eighteen. So you received
some damage of someone under the age concent He's like, yes,
I was like, so you received someone under sixteen. It's
like yes, Like what age? It's like, oh, maybe like
thirteen fourteen ish. It's like, oh, so you got that
file on accident, right, I completely understand. I get it.

(01:23:59):
So if you would have known that that was that file,
you wouldn't have doled. Absolutely, no, it's cool. Martchally downloaded
five more times because he would download it deleted, he
would download it again and his mind he was thinking, oh,
it's the same file. They're not going to know that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:13):
I could never know.

Speaker 3 (01:24:14):
Yeah, they're not going to look into it. A lot
of times, I think they're smarter than this. They trip
up over things because they're trying to figure out what
we have and they're trying to make up the lie
on the fly.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
Right, they don't know what you know.

Speaker 3 (01:24:27):
But they know they've been doing it for a while,
and a lot of times what they think we're there
for is something that either they got away with or
that was just one of the things that they were
flagged on and they didn't know they were flagged on
all these other things.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
What they're facing is really serious.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
I mean, their life is about to change forever and
they are about to be the worst of the worst
sorts of offenders. I certain that they are grasping at
any straws that they can. Now, you told me a
story once about I think it was a guy who
he walked into. Was it like a press conference or something?

Speaker 3 (01:25:02):
What was Yeah? Yeah, So it was one of those
operations where we did an undercover chat and so he
was arrested the night before and it was the last
day of the operations. The police chief was talking about
the operation and this particular person chief has like pictures
of them. He puts them up right there for the

(01:25:23):
press conference, and this dude had just been let out
and he was going back to the police department to
figure out what he needed to do, like the next day.
It was something that he needed to do for course.
So he walks in, sees the press conference, seize his face. Oh,
and then like back.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
I like going into the bush.

Speaker 3 (01:25:48):
Yes, that was pre December of last year where they
So now he wouldn't have gotten out that day because
he wouldn't have gotten any bond. This was before that
law went to effects. So he was able to bond
out and he came to the apartment trying to figure
us something out. Dead smack into press conference.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
Wow, I would have liked to have kind of seen
them jumping back into.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
Your love of books.

Speaker 1 (01:26:11):
I know that often when law enforcement watches like a
cop show, like.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
They're like, ah, this is wrong, and they get really.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
Upset from the cops that I've spoken to, And a
lot of books include those same sorts of details and dynamics.
Do you notice that in books if there's police or
investigative details that are just completely wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:26:35):
Yeah. So, like I read a wide variety of books,
everything from thrillers, romance, and fantasy. There was recently one
where there was a detective. It was like a thriller
and a hinged on a murder that happened, and this
detective was there and they were investigating and everything they
were doing. All I could think of the plot was
actually really good, but I could not objectively talk about

(01:26:58):
it or think about it because all I could see
was sitting there. I was like, this would not happen.
Like the whole time I was sitting there talking to
myself was like this not happened. I was like that's impossible.
It's like, oh, that would They couldn't even do that
in a day. It takes more time to get that
evidence back. That's not how you process that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
That's not real.

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):
Yes it doesn't. This is how it works, is not
how any of this works. I can't I can't stand that.
It's the same with TV shows. There'd be things that
people do and I'm like, that's wrong, that's so wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
You said you read a lot of different genres, and
there are lots of different genres out there right now
that sort of dip into this world quite a bit.
There's dark romance. There's called splatter punks, which is sunk yeah,
which is essentially written snuff films like it's graphic and gory,

(01:27:53):
or these books that have these really extreme trigger warnings.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
Do you read those books?

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
And how do you feel about then, given what you
do for work?

Speaker 3 (01:28:04):
So, yes, I read some of those. The things that
I see and the things that that are written, they're
so different. It's easier for me to put that in
a category of like, Okay, this is shame, Yeah it's fiction,
or just like with the horror movie or things like that,
it's like, well, this is just for entertainment. And you

(01:28:26):
know it's nice because my followers, which a lot of
them that know what I do, they'll be worried for me.
They'll be like, make sure you read the trigger warnings
of this book before you read it, and I'm al,
it's like, Oh, that's cute. That's not gonna be I'm
not gonna be triggered by I don't read the trigger warning.
It's not worse than anything like the things that I've seen.
And in this space, in the IKA space is like

(01:28:48):
we have like I said, we have, like our department
also has us go see a therapist twice a year.
I actually have my therapist, my therapy appointment next Monday.
Because of the things that we are constantly exposed to.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
I get that. The other day, I had a friend.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
She was reading some sort of romance book that include
elements of like bondage and sado masochism in a light romantic,
very cute cover sort of way, with like pink handcuffs
on the cover, and I was asking her about it, and.

Speaker 2 (01:29:22):
She actually asked me, oh, I don't think you'll want
to read this.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
I think it could trigger you. And I get that,
but it is different. I tried to explain that just
because something happened or you're exposed to something doesn't mean
that you can't enjoy the fun or the interesting, or
the silly, or the romantic, or the whatever entertaining or

(01:29:47):
the even darkly morbid curiosity side of it. It doesn't
take that away from you. And there are certainly books
that I've read that I've been like, ooh, that's nasty.
But then I'll also go past that trigger warning and
be like, oh, this is really this is really nothing.
You guys have no idea how bad it can get.

Speaker 3 (01:30:08):
Yeah. I also end up talking to a lot of
people in the book space, a lot of people who
read a lot of things. A lot of these books
are ways that people that have been through some of that,
those those ways for them to take back power and
reframe that. And also it helps people read like they
might be in a relationship that they are not realizing

(01:30:30):
that it's abusive or manipulative, and then they read the
book and they can recognize it in the character, and
then they recognize it in their partner and it helps
them to leave. There's an author who talked about that
in an interview that she did recently. And also, in
turn helps me talk to my suspects and helps me

(01:30:51):
talk to survivors and helps me empathize with what they're
going through and helps me be better at my job.

Speaker 2 (01:30:58):
How does it help.

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):
We go through trainings and you know how everyone processes
trauma differently. It's one thing to sit in class for that,
and then you sit in class with that. And then
I talk with a lot of students and a lot
of kids who've gone through some things, and I take
their their experience and put that towards another kid's experience.
And then reading about either a situation that all through

(01:31:21):
has been through themselves and that's what they put in
their book, and it's helping me to understand what one
of my survivors might be going through, or even what
the family of you know, some like these family members
who are finding out that their husband, their dad, their brother,
their sister, their mom has just done one of these

(01:31:42):
heinous crimes and helping them come to grips with it.
So you've got your child victims, and then you have
the fallout from the families. We've got all this evidence
against this person that's in this family that has a family,
and then they're arrested and take away either the spouse
or like the kids, they all always have questions and
they're like, what do we do to move on. One

(01:32:03):
of our jobs is to make sure that person is away.
But then also we don't want to leave the family
members and just a state of disarray, so we do
a lot of talking with them and making sure there
are and they can see what they need to be
not okay with this, but in a better place when
we leave, because we don't want to leave them there
just to pick up the pieces without any sort of

(01:32:23):
resources or any sort of guidance or help or anything
like that. Being able to see all these different realities
and all these different situations and all these different being
exposed to them through the books has helped me to
talk people through and it just helps my brain think
about like, Okay, this is what this person is going through.
I know this helped this person. Let's see if this

(01:32:44):
will help this First.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
Do you feel like it allows you to sort of
observe what these fictional characters are going through from like
a safe space. There aren't really any consequences, it's not real,
and then you can see how it plays out, and
then you can use that as a recur to work
with the survivors and the victims.

Speaker 3 (01:33:03):
They're drawing on an experience that they've had themselves, the authors,
or they do all this research and talk to all
these survivors because they want it to be.

Speaker 2 (01:33:10):
Realistic, right, They want to be authentic.

Speaker 3 (01:33:12):
And to reach as many people as possible. That's kind
of why I said. It was like, Oh, I read
this book and this is nothing like the books that
I remember from when I was like a kid, And
it's like they put more into it, and it feels,
like you said, authentic, and it feels like these worlds
feel lived in. I say that all the time. Is
when you read something and I'm like, these fictional characters
don't seem like fictional characters. It was written so well

(01:33:33):
that they feel like people that I have spent like
a couple of days with.

Speaker 1 (01:33:38):
So I'm going to ask you one last question, and
it's super important.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
Are you ready?

Speaker 1 (01:33:44):
If you could go into any of the universes of
any of these books and stay, what universe would it be?

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
Said? These feel like real, lived worlds. What world would
you want to go in and hang out and stay
and be a character?

Speaker 3 (01:33:59):
Oh? I don't know, And I don't want to stay
in any of them because they're so wild. Oh gosh,
So I would. I would. It's funny right, I guess
are is the book that a lot of people will
get into with Romancy. But there's another series called Crescent
City that kind of takes place for I say present day.

(01:34:21):
It's like an urban fiction, so it's more like there
are elements of here there. It's not like old timey
or whatnot. And there's one where there's a crossover, and
I was telling one like as a work with I
was like, these characters would not make it in that world,
Like I wouldn't make it in that world. So I
would say Crescent City is where I would want to be.

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
Sounds like a cute place.

Speaker 3 (01:34:45):
It was so no, I know it. So when I
when I read it, I described the book like Law
and Order with fairies, because there's a there's an investigative
element in this fantasy store. But as a I was
reading it, I was doing this book and I was like,
this is pretty much like Zootopia with ferries, because you
had all these like oh, you're like werewolves, you had

(01:35:08):
like vampires, you're like witches. It was like all these
in one spot, and uh.

Speaker 2 (01:35:13):
It was like some true blood.

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):
Yeah exactly, yes, yes essentially, yes, yes, yes, actually I
take that back. I yes, the Sikie stock House books.
I read all those. Yeah, I would, I would, Yes,
I would live in that world.

Speaker 2 (01:35:27):
Oh you've live in that world?

Speaker 3 (01:35:29):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
After all that, you're like, Nope, that one.

Speaker 3 (01:35:33):
I forgot about that. I forgot about that series. Part
of the reason I was well one, Like I said,
my wife is my best friend, so she asked me
to do something. I'm gonna do it. When True Blood
came out, Like my wife and I started after the
first episode. I was like, oh, it's a book. So
I read the first book and she read the first book,
and then season one was like book one. But we
liked the season series so much we both like started
reading all the series, so like we ended up finishing

(01:35:56):
the series before the TV show. I forgot about that
one because it's been a lot since I read this
list of.

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
Reread It's a good one that was in it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
That one was an escape for me for a couple
of years, and the show it went completely off the
rails and out of pocket.

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
As you would say, it's out of pocket.

Speaker 1 (01:36:14):
I am so glad that you have have this escape,
and I know the work is so hard and what
you have to see on a daily basis is. I
don't want to say it's indescribable, because unfortunately you have
to describe it in great detail. But I'm so glad
that when somebody says, You're like, if not me, then who,

(01:36:35):
so you do it. Thank you for being the one
who does. And I know that you're a part of
an amazing team. And I'm so glad to hear that
there's such a focus on the mental health. But it
doesn't make the work any easier, It just makes it
maybe easier to cope with in the aftermath. Thank you
just so much for all that you do. I'm so

(01:36:59):
p of you, and for the fact that you have
all these these wins. I mean, that's the answer that
I wish I could get from everybody to help. I
don't really have that many stories that to have that
many negative outcomes, because there's always a win. So keep winning,
keep fighting, and just thank you so much, and thank

(01:37:21):
you for joining me, thanks for.

Speaker 3 (01:37:22):
Having me, thanks for doing the podcast, for everything you
do to put light on our work and this internet
safety and speaking with kids and speaking with high school students,
getting laws made it works really well because of the
civilian partners that fill in the things that we as

(01:37:46):
law enforcement might not be able to do well.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
Thank you, You can't. You can't do it alone. We
all have to fight this together.

Speaker 1 (01:37:53):
This is not a one sighted issue and there's no
simple solution here. Thank you for being a part of
that solution, and I'm honored to be a part of
it with you. And let's just keep fighting and bringing
light to it right.

Speaker 2 (01:38:14):
Thank you so much for tuning in. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
We'll be releasing new episodes every Thursday. Make sure you
check out our YouTube channel and hit us up on
our social media on at Alicia Kozacpod for extra content
around each episode, and please remember to subscribe on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts.

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