Yeardley:  Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. Hey, how are you guys? Ah, I’m so glad you’re here. We have a great episode for you today. Now, I’ll warn you, it’s a sex crimes case where the suspect is online and trying to entice underage girls to meet up with him and have sex with him. So, in order to catch this guy in the act, our guest, Detective Jamie, is going to have to impersonate her teenager victims on Snapchat. You might remember that our own detective Dave actually gave us a similar case in Season 4, which we called Friend Request. It is such a good episode. You should go back and listen to it if you haven’t heard it for a while.

 I find these cases where the tables get turned on these predators, so satisfying. I love it when law enforcement essentially goes undercover to beat these scumbags at their own game and show them that they’re not as cool as they think they are, nor as charming, clever, or attractive or anything. And somehow, it’s a reckoning they always seem dumbfounded by.

 I’ve often thought investigating sex crimes and child abuse must be one of the most devastating caseloads you can have in law enforcement. The detectives who work those cases see the worst crimes being perpetrated against the youngest victims. They can never unsee those images. So, a case like this, while still incredibly serious, was a little different and quite welcome and made for a lively conversation with all of us, egging Jamie on for the win. I have a hunch, you’ll be doing the same. Here is Duped.

Yeardley:  Hi, there. I’m Yeardley.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  I’m Dave.

Paul:  And I’m Paul.

Yeardley:  And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan:  Dave and I are identical twins and retired detectives from small town USA.

Paul:  And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch The Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan:  Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder. Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul:  Names, places, and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan:  And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through.

Unison:  Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan:  Good morning, everyone.

Yeardley:  Good morning. It’s morning where we are.

Dan:  Wife.

Yeardley:  We have what?

Dan:  Wife.

Yeardley:  Still wife, yes. Going strong.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  We have Detective Dave

Dave:  Second. Number two. [Yeardley laughs]

Yeardley:  And wait for it. We have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul:  Hey, hey. I’m third.

Yeardley:  Does it matter that I never get introduced? I could be the fourth. I’m always last.

Dan:  You’re the leader of the band.

Yeardley:  [laughs]I’m just the cat wrangler. And Small Town Fam, we are so excited to welcome a new guest to the podcast, Detective Jamie.

Jamie:  Hi. Happy to be here.

Yeardley:  So happy to have you, Jamie. Thank you so much for giving up one of your very precious days off. I know in law enforcement, since Dan and I have been together for 10 years, there’s not really a day off because you’re always on call, you have the bat phone, but for the moment, we’re grateful that you’re spending that time right here with us.

Jamie:  Yeah, I’m so excited to be here. I’ve been listening since day one.

Yeardley:  Ah,fantastic.

Dan:  Ah-ha. We didn’t lose you with one of Dave’s cases? That’s crazy.

Jamie:  You never lost me.

Dave:  I think our listeners should know that Jamie is a detective and sat next to me for a period of time as my partner for what was it about a month and a half, two months?

Jamie:  Yeah, just a little bit of time.

Dave:  And now she’s partners with Terry, who’s been on our podcast before.

Yeardley:  Oh, we love Terry. He gave us our seventh episode in Season 11 called Red Flag. It’s an excellent episode.

Dave:  Yeah. And Jamie works the same caseload that I did. Sex crimes, child abuse, sexual assault, and pretty quick rise to being a detective, which is kind of– It’s rare for people to become a detective within a few years of being hired. And Jamie was able to do that and hit the ground running. And I remember one of the first cases she and I worked was a social media online case and it’s interesting, I think that might be what she has for us today.

Jamie:  It is.

Yeardley:  Fantastic. All right, Jamie, so I’m just going to hand it over to you. Please tell us how this case came to you.

Jamie:  Yeah. So, it happened a couple years prior to me becoming a detective. So back in 2017, a concerned mom named Samantha, she called the police regarding some inappropriate sexual messages she found on her 16-year-old daughter Mia’s cell phone from a 23-year-old guy named Ethan.

 So, Samantha learned that Mia had actually met up with Ethan and some sexual contact occurred between them at Ethan’s house.

Yeardley:  How did Mia and Ethan actually meet? How does Ethan target Mia?

Jamie:  The way they all do, just direct message on Instagram asking for their Snapchat. They immediately move to Snapchat, which is the bane of my existence.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  Right, right. Okay.

Dave:  And every parent’s existence.

Jamie:  Yes, yes.

Yeardley:  Oh, yeah. All my friends who are parents, they hate Snapchat because unlike iMessage, the content of the text messages is designed to be temporary. So, it automatically evaporates after, I don’t know, a few seconds.

Jamie:  Yeah. So, when they met up at Ethan’s house, there was some sexual contact that occurred. Mia expressed being uncomfortable with some of the touching, and so they stopped, it didn’t go further, so they didn’t actually have intercourse or anything. Once Samantha found out, she immediately called the police and the case got assigned to Detective Matt, which is Dave’s old partner.

Dave:  Yes. He’s retired. God bless him.

Jamie:  Yeah. So, Detective Matt got the case. He ended up interviewing Ethan, who acknowledged it and said he had never done this before. He was so scared he would never do this again. He’s so sorry. The case got sent over to the DA’s office, and they didn’t file charges. So, the case just kind of goes away.

Yeardley:  Why didn’t they file charges?

Dave:  There can be a variety of reasons why a DA might not file charges, it could come down to witness and victim cooperation. It could come down to the details of the actual contact online about what a reasonable person, the suspect would know about the victim’s age, there’s all kinds of considerations, but there’s times where the DA can just say, “Well, maybe this is a one off, and we’ll put this in the wine cellar and let it age, but for now, we’re not going to move on it.”

Paul:  Tell me like in your state how are the various sexual acts charged criminally? Do you have different statutes for rape, sodomy, like that, like in California?

Dave:  Yes, we do. So, we have sodomy, rape, sexual abuse, which is the touching, nonpenetrative-type contact. And then we have unlawful sexual penetration. And then we have statutes that break off into kind of the side stuff like online sexual corruption, which is using an online tool to meet a child for the purpose of. And so, we have been pretty responsive about that stuff and have pretty robust laws and really harsh sentences. If you land in one of those categories, you’re going away for years, not days.

Paul:  And so with Ethan, it sounds like this unwanted touching or sexual touching in California, it sounded like it would be what we would call sexual battery.

Dave:  That would have been sexual abuse three, which is a misdemeanor. You probably get probation and maybe have to take a class. It’s a minimal charge at that point, and it’s because of the victim’s age, she’s 16. If she was under 14, that would have been 75 months in prison.

Paul:  Oh, wow, okay.

Yeardley:  So I guess, just to be clear Jamie, Samantha and Mia were hoping the case would be charged, that Ethan would be charged and perhaps go to trial, but the DA decided not to file.

Jamie:  Right. I think Samantha wanted it probably more. She’s the one that called police. But Mia was under the impression that they were in a relationship. She liked him, although, she didn’t want things to go further than the sexual touching.

Yeardley:  Right. Got it. Okay. So, we have a no file, and the case gets put in the wine cellar as Dave says.

Jamie:  Right. And he promised to never do it again.

Yeardley:  Ethan did.

Jamie:  Hmm-mm. So, now we’re going to fast forward a couple years. I’ve been a detective for now for about a year and a half. When Detective Matt approaches me, he’s now been promoted to sergeant. So, he calls me and he’s like, “Hey, I have this mother named Samantha calling and I’m no longer a detective, so will you contact her and see what she needs and what she wants to report?” So, Samantha’s daughter Mia is now 19, but she’s got another daughter, Liz, who is now 16.

Yeardley:  So Liz is Mia’s sister?

Jamie:  Yes, her younger sister. So, I call Samantha and she kind of fills me in on the backstory of Mia’s case a couple years prior. Well, Samantha told me that Liz received a message on Instagram from a guy, and she immediately knew who he was, and it was Ethan, and Ethan’s now 25, so they’ve aged a couple years. He’s now 25, he’s now messaging Liz on Instagram, asking for her Snapchat because he wants to talk to her. So, they fill me in on all of this and I’m like, “Oh, this is great.” Detective Dave taught me all about taking over Snapchat accounts and assuming their presence. And I was like, “I’m all over this, right?” [Yeardly laughs]

 So Liz did not have a Snapchat account. They were fairly conservative family, and mom was protective, so she didn’t have a Snapchat account. So, they approved of me creating a brand-new Snapchat account for Liz to message with Ethan. So that’s what I did. I started messaging with Ethan and things were on the right track. It was going well. He told me that like, you know, “We could hang out and cuddle, and maybe if I was lucky enough, he would make me his girl.” And I was so thrilled.

Dave:  You look smitten.

[laughter]

Jamie:  Yeah, I was smitten. I was like, “Oh, this is what Detective Dave felt like.” So now, you know, we’re taking things slow. It’s nice and slow. I’ve told him multiple times, I’m 16. Age does not matter to him. He asked if I wanted to lose my virginity. He kept asking for pictures of my face. He wanted me to Snapchat picture of my face. And I was trying to avoid it as much as possible. And I think I sent him one with like a heavy Snapchat filter on it.

Yeardley:  Sorry, can I ask you a question? If Ethan contacted Liz over Instagram, did she not have pictures of herself on her account?

Jamie:  She did. She was blonde like I was. I tried to do like maybe like half my face with a Snapchat filter on, so at least like he knew that he was talking to a person, not a cop in uniform behind their desk, you know, like it was something to give him that he would recognize this was a real person he was talking to.

Yeardley:  Right. Okay. And there were enough characteristics with the blonde hair and you look really young, and obviously he bought it, that’s the point.

Jamie:  Right. I mean, yeah, this was like about five years ago, so I was a little bit younger, but it looks good enough to me. So, it started getting really weird. So, behind his bed, hanging up on his wall as like a headboard was a thin blue line flag. And so, he starts sending me pictures of it asking like if I want to hang out. I was like, “I don’t understand, like I’m confused, why does he have a thin blue line flag above his bed? And why is he sending it to me?”

Dave:  And for our listeners, what Jamie’s referring to is the thin blue line flag. Typically, what you see is the black and white version of the American flag with a thin blue line running through the middle of it horizontally. And the thin blue line flag is basically, it’s a police solidarity flag that now has seemed to have been hijacked by a lot of people who don’t like the police, and they call it a racist symbol, which my brothers and sisters in blue, I worked with people of all different races. That is not the case. It is not a racist symbol in our eyes.

Jamie:  Mm-hmm. Yes. So, one morning after we talked, I had a Facebook friend request from Ethan on my personal Facebook page.

Yeardley:  Oh, shit.

Jamie:  And now I’m concerned. I was like, “Well, this didn’t work out.”

Dave:  He might be on to me.

[laughter] 

Jamie:  I know. Maybe it was just coincidence, we had like 30 mutual friends because we kind of grew up in the same general area. We didn’t go to school together. I had no idea who he was, but we had a lot of mutual friends, so I’m hoping that it was just like Facebook putting me on his people you might know list. And he does that shotgun approach where he just friend requests all girls. So, I was really hoping and praying. I was like, “It’s fine.” It’s fine, right? It was not fine.

[laughter]

 So, the day after that– The day after, I get my friend request from Ethan, he sends me a message, and it says, “I hope you know that I know you aren’t who you say you are, so I’ve just been lying and fucking with you. So better luck next time trying to catch me doing something illegal, even though I don’t do anything illegal.”

Yeardley:  Wow.

Paul:  Now the gauntlet’s been thrown down.

Dave:  Yeah, that seems like a challenge.

Paul:  Yeah. [Yeardley laughs]

Jamie:  So I’m reading this. I’m like, well, that sucks.

Dave:  No, no, no, no. Jamie, I want to know your actual reaction when you read that.

Jamie:  I was like, “What the fuck?”

[laughter]

 “What just happened? Like, what did I do? What did I do wrong? Did I use my personal phone at some point in this conversation? Does he have my IP address?” I don’t know how he figured this out. I was actually kind of scared, like how did he know it was me?

Yeardley:  I would be scared. Yeah, it’s creepy.

Paul:  It’s creepy. But I’d be like, “Okay, game on, dude. You know, you just got my full attention.”

Jamie:  Oh, I am vested now. Okay. Like, it didn’t work out this time. He told me, good luck. I’m like, I don’t need luck. I will do it myself.

Dave:  Cops love a project and Ethan has made himself a project.

Jamie:  Oh, for sure. Detective Dave always told me “You just have to be patient. It won’t take long. They’ll come back.” All right, I’ll just go do my other work, there’s plenty of it. He’ll just sit right there and marinate.

Yeardley:  Just wait him out. So, Jamie, Dave mentioned earlier that Ethan, including the thin blue line flag in his photos, might have been his way of signaling that he suspected you were a cop, what do you think? Do you think that’s the case?

Jamie:  Yeah, I’m looking back on, I think that’s how he was trying to maybe tell me that he knows.

Yeardley:  That’s so creepy. If you’ve now been found out by Ethan, what happens to Liz’s case? Does this investigation now grind to a halt, or do you have to pass it off to someone else?

Jamie:  No, it just kind of disappeared. He never actually committed a crime with Liz. All he did was message her, ask her if she had a Snapchat, and then they immediately called me because they knew who he was and probably what he was going to do. He never actually committed a crime with Liz.

[Break 1]

Yeardley:  Okay, so Ethan gets away again because you can’t charge him because he didn’t actually commit a crime with Liz. But you, Jamie, know what he’s capable of after what happened with Liz’s sister Mia, which is unsettling to say the least. I mean, now you have a predator on the loose. How long is it before you hear from Ethan again?

Jamie:  All right, so it didn’t take very long, as you can imagine. It was two months, two months go by, and one of our school resource officers comes into the office and says, “Hey, I just had three teenage girls in my office. They’re talking about receiving these sexually explicit messages from a guy named Ethan.”

Yeardley:  What do you know?

Jamie:  He’s now 26. So, yeah, it didn’t take long. Now I’ve got three girls he’s talking to. So, Ethan is sending them messages like he will pay them for sex. Age did not matter to him. He’d pick them up from school, he’d pose as their dad to sign them out of school, and he’s sending them explicit pictures of his penis and sending explicit descriptions of what he wants to do to these teenage girls.

Yeardley:  So, he’s escalated because if before, it was rather more covert in these messages, he’s now just, “Fuck it. I’m going to show it all. This is what I want.”

Jamie:  So he is escalating. He’s doing it more often, now there’s three girls, which means there’s probably 500, but there’s three that I have in front of me. One was 15 and two were 16. So, I’m like, Ethan, he’s mine, [Yeardley laughs] like, I have him now. So, I met with the three girls at school the next day. I looked through their messages. You know, they’re reminding him of their age. They’re like, I’m 16, that’s a big age difference. And Ethan told her, clearly, I like girls younger than me, but I do have an age limit, and you’re right around that limit, so I don’t think you’re too young. You’re not naive. You know what you’re doing, so you should be of age.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Jamie:  So this is his thought process. He is a good 10 years older than them and he does not care.

Paul:  I just want to point out the brazenness. Ethan has already had contact by law enforcement several years before he was found out. And then he goes right back into the same victim pool, the same family, and now somehow determines that law enforcement is focusing in on him, and he just kind of laughs at it. And then two months later, he is now being very explicit in terms of his messaging, doing the same thing. This really speaks to me in terms offender characteristics with Ethan, you know, you see this level of compulsion, but you also see that he has a confidence in his abilities to be able to commit this crime, even though he’s already drawn law enforcement’s attention.

Dave:  I agree. And you said the word compulsion, and that’s what I was thinking while you were speaking, is that they can’t help themselves. They have to be on the hunt all the time. And that’s why I used to get frustrated. Like, Jamie, early in my career, I’d be like, “Damn it. Probably onto me.” And you just realize, I’m going to see that guy’s name here in a few months, maybe a few years, but that name will land on my desk again, and I’m going to own him. And Ethan’s driven by his compulsion, but he’s a little bit reckless as well, that it sounds like once he realizes that, “Well, I dipped into this other family, and last time, they called the police, and probably they did this time when the other daughter got contacted.” So, he has a suspicion that the police might be involved with Liz and Mia, but with these others, there’s no connection, and he can just kind of go 100%, 100 miles an hour at it.

Jamie:  Yeah. So, very cocky, very arrogant individual. He literally told one of the girls because they started saving his Snapchat messages, where he can see that they’re saving it, and he would get mad at them, and Ethan would tell them, “Hey, you need to delete these messages. You’re not allowed to save them.” And one message, he wrote that he was not one to go to jail, and there would be no evidence.

Paul:  And remind me, Snapchat is the platform that does not preserve data at the server level.

Dave:  Correct. There’s been some evolution with Snapchat, but the feature we’re talking about here, the core feature of the app, used to be that you could send a picture to someone, and once the recipient opened it, that picture is only available for a short amount of time, like 10 seconds or less. Afterward, the picture is automatically deleted, and it’s not recoverable. Now, recipients are able to take screenshots of the photo, and it will save it on their phone, but the sender of the photo gets a receipt telling them that someone took a screenshot. So that’s how Ethan would know these girls were saving his photos.

Paul:  Okay.

Jamie:  So the girls then showed me Ethan’s Instagram account. And I’m going through his Instagram, and now my stomach kind of drops because I’m starting to recognize some people in his photos. He is a family member to a police officer at my department. And now I’m concerned, did a police officer at my agency give me away somehow? Like, did he ask? Maybe unintentionally or subconsciously was like, “Oh, yeah, that looks like Detective Jamie.”

Dave:  And it just speaks to a small town. The relationships in small towns, people know everybody. And this isn’t such a small town that you know everyone, but, you know, five, six, seven degrees of separation, you can probably get back to anybody in our city.

Paul:  You know, one of the things that popped into my mind is I’ve looked at enough agencies, smaller agencies, and as I research these agencies, I see photos of detectives when they get promoted, you know, out of patrol, in the newspaper, on the websites. And if I’m somebody like Ethan, and I go, “Well, I’m in a small town. They’ve only got so many investigators. I’m going to compile photos of all the investigators from all the various online sources so I know who’s actually out there.” So, there’s ways that, these guys can get intel as to who’s potentially going to be investigating them.

Yeardley:  That’s a really good point. Okay, so Ethan has told these teenage girls, I’ll never get caught. I’m not going to jail. And, Jamie, you recognize that Ethan is related to a police officer at your agency, now what?

Jamie:  Now it’s go time, all right? [Yeardley laughs] My case is great. Okay, I have so much evidence. I have so many crimes right now before I’ve even done anything. So, I had the two 16-year-olds, they were great, they have crimes committed against them. But I wanted the 15-year-old because it would make it a felony.

Yeardley:  There’s a mandatory sentence, and in your state, you serve every day of it.

Dave:  Well, not with that charge, but it lands Ethan in felony territory just because the girl is 15 and not 16. So, Jamie’s just picked up the bigger hammer.

Yeardley:  Yeah, got it.

Jamie:  So, Abby, she’s the 15-year-old. Both Abby and her parents were completely on board with anything that I wanted to do with her Snapchat account or anything like that. And so, I have learned from past mistakes that creating my own Snapchat account, where Ethan had never talked to Liz on Snapchat before, she had no history on there, maybe that was not the best way to go. So, Abby has already been talking to Ethan. She’s already sent him photos. He’s seen her face. They have saved history in their Snapchat messages. He knows that she’s 15. I don’t think he would be suspecting if I then take over her account that’s already been created and she’s been using. So, I send Abby back to class.

 I was like, “Hey, will you send Ethan a message saying, hey, you’ve been talking about meeting up. Like, do you want to meet up? My mom’s going to be at work tonight. What time do you get off work?” So, I send her back to class. I’m like, “If he messages you, let me know ASAP. But, like, if he doesn’t message you and then you get out of school, then I’m going to take over your account.” And so, we just went that way. So, Ethan had not Snapchatted her back, talking about getting together. And so, once Abby got out of school, I took over her account, I signed in, I changed the password, and I took over. So, I’m just going about my day, waiting for Ethan to message me back. He’s now got a 15-year-old girl ready and willing to meet up with him, ball is in his court.

 So now it’s around 05:00 PM that Ethan finally Snapchats me back. And he’s like, “Oh, are you serious? Like, you really want to hang out?” And I was like, “Yes, I am so serious. I want to meet you so bad.”

[laughter]

Dave:  So bad.

Jamie:  No, I [unintelligible ] it in. I was like, “Yeah, that’s great. Let’s do it.” He wanted to know where he should pick me up, where we should do this, where are we going to hang out? So, seeing as I’m a huge fan of your show, I thought I’d pay some respect to my predecessor, Detective Dave. And I listened to your 2019, I think, a Season 4 Episode Friend Request.

Dave:  Uh-uh.

Yeardley:  Wow. Yeah, that’s a great one.

Jamie:  It came out right around the same time as all of this is happening. So, I’m listening to this. I feel like I should get training hours for listening to this. I’m like, Detective Dave is still teaching me.

Dave:  You should. And in addition, I should get paid for training you.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  We should just tell our listeners or remind them that Friend Request, that episode is about a similar situation where Detective Dave is conducting an online sting and he’s trying to get his suspect to meet up with him. It’s a great episode, and you get to hear Detective Dave texting like a 14-year-old girl, it’s worth it.

Jamie:  Yeah. So, I knew what that entailed, where they met up. And I thought it would be funny to use the exact same location from my location with Ethan. So, this big, like, sports park complex in the middle of town, I was like, you know, Detective Dave has already scoped it out. He’s determined it’s a good location to meet sex offenders and sex predators. I’ll use it for myself.

[laughter]

Yeardley:  And as I recall, it’s out in the open, right?

Dave:  Huge parking lot, athletic fields there. There’s also a building that has several basketball courts in it. It’s very popular in the afternoon. There are cars everywhere. It’s an easy place to get lost in the parking lot. You can really do things anonymously.

Jamie:  But it’s really easy because there’s only maybe two access points into the parking lot. So, it’s easy to just sit on those entrances and see who’s coming in. Even though it’s a really big parking lot now we know where to put people so we can see where they’re coming from. So, I told Ethan that, I’m at my friend’s house. I’m just a short walk away from this park, and once we’re done, I can just walk back to my friend’s house. Ethan told me, “No, we’re not going to be staying at the park. It’s too public. We’re going to be going somewhere private.” And so, everyone knows that you never go to a secondary location, all right, if TV and movies have taught us anything-

[laughter]

Jamie:  -you don’t go to a secondary location.

Yeardley:  Right. Cause you won’t come back.

Jamie:  That’s where you die, yeah. So, I did not like that. I was like, “Yeah, we are going to go to a secondary location, jail,” but he doesn’t know that yet. [Yeardley laughs]

[Break 2]

Jamie:  So, while figuring out all these logistics with Ethan, what time we’re going to meet up, where we’re going to meet up, I am gathering the team. We have no plan because this is happening within like five minutes. I’m like, “Where is everybody?” So, all the fan favorites were there, Detective Kyle, Terry, Justin, all these guys that have been on your show, we’re all headed out there. We’re like, “You guys go to Ethan’s house, maybe see if you can follow his truck to the parking lot. Terry and I are going to go park down the street.” Like, we’re trying to get all in place in this last-minute plan.

Dave:  It’s kind of nice though, because it’s kind of old hat for all of us old detectives. We’ve worked these cases through the sex crimes and child abuse team. So, we kind of know what our role is in these situations, and we’re pretty adaptable. I’ve been on so many of these now that it’s like, I know what to do.

Dan:  You were on the Friend Request one. You were on a couple of them.

Dave:  Yeah. Ones at night that we’re meeting up at 10:30 and you’re doing surveillance of a park, and you see this guy doing counter surveillance– The suspect is doing counter surveillance while we’re doing surveillance on him. These suspects, they cannot help themselves. They bite the bait every time.

Dave: Sex offenders are always on time.

 
Jamie:  It’s so true. They’ve got places to be, things to do.

Yeardley:  So, the team is scattered about just to make sure that you’re safe and try to figure out where Ethan is going to be or where Ethan might take you.

Jamie:  Right. And I asked Ethan, I’m like, “Hey, what car are you going to show up in?” So, we know what we’re looking for. And maybe Ethan is watching the same TV shows we are, because he’s like, “I’m not going to tell you until I get there.”

Dave:  And this is the difficulty with true crime media. At some point, we’re building a guide for criminals to avoid detection.

Yeardley:  Oh, no. Well, I guess that’s the end of the podcast, then. Well, this has been great. Thanks. [laughs]

Jamie:  So, as Detective Terry’s driving me out there, I’m still Snapchatting with Ethan. He’s telling me all these things that he’s going to do to me. So, we didn’t know what Ethan was going to be driving. So, I’m basically going to beat the live bait. I’m going to go sit out there and wait for him to show up and pull up and see what happens. Zero plan, we don’t know what we’re doing. So, Terry and I parked ways down the road. So, I got out and started walking because we didn’t know where Ethan was, what if he’s already in the parking lot? Who knows? So, we park ways away, I get out and I start walking.

 Now, this is not like the movies where we have all of these crazy expensive gadgets. I have a thing in my ear, talking to Terry, no. I am Snapchatting Ethan on my work cell phone. I have my personal cell phone on speakerphone with Terry in my pocket because I don’t have a radio. I don’t have a vest on, like, it’s just me. I do have my gun, but, like, that is it. I am bare and so, I’m basically talking out loud to Terry in my pocket, who’s then telling everybody else the updates, and he’s using the radio to talk to all these other people. So, I’m walking towards this park. I send Ethan a Snapchat, like, showing him that I’m walking in the street. So now he knows I’m on my way. I go sit at a bench, and I’m like, “Hey, I’m near these baseball fields, and I have an umbrella, so you can easily find me.” So, it’s only 05:00 PM but it’s wintertime, it’s dark, it’s starting to rain, it’s cold. The adrenaline is flowing, so I’m kind of like starting to get, like the little shakes that you get with that adrenaline rush.

Paul:  Jamie, at this point you most certainly have some intel on Ethan, his past. We know at least part of his criminal history. Does he have anything indicative of violence? Is he a gun owner? Are there things that are red flags that elevate your risk by being the bait out there?

Jamie:  So, his CHL, his concealed handgun license had expired. He had that luring a minor case with Detective Matt a couple years prior, but nothing other than that. He seemed to come from a decent family. I mean, he had family and law enforcement. They were normal people. So, yeah, nothing to really let me know that like he was a violent person.

Paul:  Okay.

Jamie:  So, Ethan messaged me. Are we just going to start doing stuff like. “You, okay, just as soon as you get in my truck, just start sucking my dick.”

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Jamie:  That’s what he says to me. And I’m like, “lol,” like no introductions, like what? Are you going to say hi first? We’ve never met before. I say we, but like this girl, this 15-year-old girl he thinks he’s meeting, like, they’ve never met. Just as soon as you get in the car like let’s just get at it. So, I’m sitting on this bench when a truck pulls in. This little truck pulls in, and I’m looking at it, and Terry’s letting me know on the phone that, “Hey, this truck pulled in. We don’t know if it’s exactly him,” but then Ethan messaged me saying, “Hey, where are you? I just pulled it in the truck. Is that you on the bench?” And I said, “Yes.”

 So, I stand up, and I start walking towards his truck. I’m thinking, well, the cavalry is just around the corner. They’re going to show up like immediately. They’re going to be like, right there with me. And so, I am walking towards his truck. I walk around to the driver’s side door, and Ethan opens the door, and he just looks at me. And I’m looking at him, and we’re just kind of in this like who are you?

Yeardley:  Like, a standoff.

Jamie:  Yeah. He’s very confused. He’s just staring at me because I’m obviously not 15.

Dave:  You’re not Abby.

[laughter]

Jamie:  Yeah. [laughs]

Yeardley:  Do you think he actually recognized you? Cause my question is, if Ethan has found out who you are and is messaging you on your personal Facebook page back when you were taking over Liz’s account, that means he’s seen photos of you. So, when you approach him in the car, do you think there was like, I know who you are?

Jamie:  I have no idea because he didn’t say anything. I don’t know if he was looking at me like, you’re not 15, or you don’t look like the girl I was talking to, or if Ethan was thinking, I know her, like, I don’t know because he didn’t say anything. So, he just looks at me, and I’m like, “Are you Ethan?” He doesn’t say anything. And I’m like, “Where are my people?” Like, nobody is here. I feel like 20 minutes have gone by that I’ve been standing here staring at Ethan, and he’s a big guy, you know, he’s probably like 6’2”, 220. And I’m like 5’6”. So, it felt like minutes, but I’m sure it was probably less than 10 seconds. And I grab Ethan’s wrist. I’m Detective Jamie. I need you to step out of the car.

 And as soon as he stepped out of the car, finally, Detective James shows up and helps me put him in handcuffs. And luckily, nothing bad happened. He didn’t resist or fight or do anything like that. In that moment when your adrenaline’s going, like, I thought you guys were like 5ft behind me.

[laughter]

Jamie:  which they probably were, but in my mind, it was very slow motion.

Dave:  Yeah. All you can control is what you’re doing. But it’s always like, get up there, go, go, go, go, go. And especially if you have two guys in the car, they’re yelling at each other, get up there, get up there, go, go, go. So, I’m sure that’s what was happening, but it is a little bit of a pucker factor, you’re like, okay, [laughs] this can go sideways, I need people here right now.

Jamie:  Yeah. So, Ethan goes into handcuffs. I’m like, “Hey, Ethan, what are you doing here?” And he tells me he doesn’t really want to make any comments or statements about why he’s here. So, he gets transported back to the police station, and we’re searching through his truck while it’s out there on scene. There’s condoms in the center console, and there is a handgun completely concealed between the center console and his seat. So, once we’re, like, finding all these things, and I’m thinking, “Okay, he’s wanting to pay a teenage girl for sex. He wants to take her to a private, secondary location. He has a gun on him.” Like, I could just think of so many terrible outcomes, you know, like, what if after they’re finished, she’s like, I’m going to go tell, or it doesn’t go the way he wanted it to, like, what happens in that scenario? That’s just terrifying to me.

 So back at the station, I tried to talk to Ethan. I went in the interview room. He told me that he wanted a lawyer because he’s seen too many people get tricked on TV. And, you know, he just doesn’t want to make any statements, so that’s fine. I have a mountain of evidence. I don’t need him to tell me anything. But I told Ethan that I obviously knew who he was and he knew who I was because this is not the first time we’ve talked. So, Ethan tells me that, clearly he did something dumb. Ethan said he’s done a lot of stupid shit. Not saying I do this a lot. That’s not what I’m saying at all. And I’m like, okay. But I wanted him to know that I know that I did in fact, catch him doing something illegal, so, I win.

[laughter]

[Break 3]

Jamie:  So, Ethan obviously went to jail that night. And a media release was issued to the public about his charges. It was shared all over Facebook, like over 1200 times. And as you can imagine, just so many calls from all different ages of women reporting to have been victimized by Ethan. So, while I’m filling these calls, talking to these women in my area that have had interactions with Ethan, I’m also writing warrants for Ethan’s Facebook account. And once we got into his Facebook account, like, this could have gone on forever. At some point, you just kind of have to stop because this could have been endless, like there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of girls that he was talking to, trying to talk to, getting photos from, offering to pay for sex, and it just could have gone on forever. And this went back years. So even when Ethan was back like 17, 18-years-old, he was trying to hit up, like, 12, 13-year-olds on Facebook and trying to hang out with them. And so, while his age may have like moved up a little bit, but like not a lot, but he’s been doing this for years. And so, I don’t know if in his psyche like something broke inside his brain at a young age. I’m not sure what happened.

Yeardley:  Did you ever find victims where he had actually completed the sex acts?

Jamie:  Yes. Yeah. Numerous, numerous. I think there was some 14, 15, 16-year-olds that he actually met up with and had sex with.

Dave:  Going back to Ethan’s messages, and I’m thinking about some of the suspects in my cases. They’re really aggressive, like, this message about jumping in the truck and performing oral sex right away doesn’t surprise me. They’re very direct, and they are there just for the interaction, and then they’re off. I’m wondering how these historical conversations that he had, how quickly it ramped up to him sending dick pics, him saying, we should hang out, him saying, I want to take your virginity. Usually that’s pretty quick. I’m just wondering where Ethan is on that scale.

Jamie:  Yeah. So, I listened to Friend Request this week to think about what you had done in your case and what you guys have talked about. And we talked about the opening lines, so, what is their hook that grabs these girls? So, he would do that shotgun approach, as they all do, just message 100 different girls because maybe 12 will respond, you know, something like that. But his opening line was always something like, “You’re really beautiful.” And the girls would typically say something like, “Oh, thank you. That’s so nice.” And then Ethan would ask if they had a boyfriend. And depending on their answer, it was either, “How does a beautiful girl like you not have a boyfriend? Or, wow, your boyfriend is really lucky.” Like, either way, it would get his foot in the door, and it worked a lot of the times unfortunately.

 And, Dave, I see you smiling because it’s like they all say the same thing. They’re all the same. All of these online sexual predators with teenagers, you could just put them in a little box because they’re not creative. They all just kind of repeat themselves over and over again.

Yeardley:  Gross. So, Ethan isn’t talking. He’s decided to lawyer up. Does Ethan end up going to trial?

Jamie:  No. That would have probably been a huge mistake. There was so much evidence. There were so many victims. Like, additional victims I found that he was actually having sex with. So now the charges are just astronomical. Like, there’s so much evidence. I think my hopes got a little bit too high on this case because it was so exciting investigating this case. And so, I think my hopes were a little bit too high. Maybe Detective Dave set the bar too high for me on sentencing, but this did not go to trial. And all in all, Ethan ended up serving less than two years in prison. He may have been in jail for about a year, and then prison less than two years, like, he’s already out. And it was really disappointing. I was not happy about it. I felt like I did so much work on this case that didn’t really– I mean, it mattered to me, but like in the grand scheme of things.

Dave:  Well, and you’re also stuck with what you can charge. As heavy handed as you want to be, you’re still stuck with the elements of crime. So, if it doesn’t check the box, you can’t get to where people are spending decades in prison because they haven’t committed an offense that exposes them to that. So, Jamie’s just doing what she has to do. I’m going to compile all the facts, get you all the witnesses and victims. District attorney, here’s your package. And please hammer this guy with whatever you can get out of this.

Yeardley:  Jamie, did you ever ask Ethan how he found out you were a cop when you were pretending to be Liz on Snapchat?

Jamie:  So I really wanted pursuant to like any plea negotiations because Ethan wouldn’t give us any statement. I was like, “Hey, he’s not allowed to take this deal until he tells me how he knew it was me.” Like, I felt like that should be part of this plea negotiation, like, tell me how you figured it out.

Yeardley:  So you never really found out for sure how Ethan made you?

Jamie:  No. I’m just wondering if maybe it was just something simple, like, he either recognized me or he was kind of suspicious. Maybe I shouldn’t send pictures of myself with the Snapchat filter. I don’t know. [Yeardley laughs] I learned a lot, though.

Yeardley:  Do you think that Ethan’s name is going to come across your desk again Jamie in the future?

Jamie:  Well, I hope so. I hope so, that would be great. I’ll just never forget the taunt he gave me, like, “Good luck.” [Dan and Dave laughs] “Thank you. That’s so nice of you.”

Dave:  It’s not good when a detective recognizes your name.

Jamie:  No.

Dave:  You hear a name and you’re like, aha, I know him.

Jamie:  I’ll never forget his name. Yeah, so I hope it does. It hasn’t so far. He’s been out for I think over a year. He’s on supervised parole, but his name hasn’t come up again.

Paul:  Jamie, with these other victims, did he have a pattern in terms of where he was meeting them, where he was having sex with them.

Jamie:  Typically there’d be their house or his house or the car. He wasn’t picky. He would pick them up from school. I think he picked one girl up from maybe like near her school and they went and hung out or just went on a drive. Yeah, he wasn’t hiding really at all.

Paul:  Okay. Because you mentioned that as you looked at his past, when he was in his late teens, Ethan was going after younger girls than 15 or 16. As young as 12, I think. I wonder if his preference for the 15, 16-year-olds is more out of practicality. They’re more mobile versus maybe the 12 or 13-year-olds. They’re harder to lure and isolate, would be my guess. And my concern now that he’s out is that potentially he’s not just going to focus in on the mid teenagers, he may be going after some younger children.

Jamie:  Right.

Dave:  I was wondering, I was like, Paul’s wheels are turning.

[laughter]

Paul:  Does it look that obvious?

Dave:  Well, I just– It’s why I love having you on the podcast, that you just offer a perspective Dan and I don’t have.

Paul:  Ethan as a predator. And with Jamie, the interesting thing is usually they’re trying to lure. And Ethan says, “We’ll meet at this park, but we’re going to go to a secondary location.” Well, that’s the isolation step. Now he’s in control. And of course, you never go to that secondary location, just like Jamie said. But in Jamie’s situation, she throws the bait out. Ethan immediately knows, “Okay, I’m going to be able to meet this 15-year-old girl at this sports complex.” But as I’m starting to just think about this predatory act, he’s showing that level of compulsion, that’s not going to change. He’s going to continue. He’s also got now repeated history of being caught. Ethan’s going to modify how he lures, how he isolates his MO, but there’s still that signature component, that fantasy, that compulsion. MOs can be modified in order for the offender to be successful at committing the crime under either the current circumstances or from what they’ve learned in the past. So now, part of what I would be looking at when I’m evaluating Ethan is looking at these patterns and what patterns he demonstrated, how he committed his crimes, where he failed, and then that could be predictive of how he’s going to approach the crimes in the future and who the victims might be.

Dave:  You’ve discussed some of your serial killers that you’ve investigated, Paul, and in some occasions, you’d have these killers that would see something in a media release about kind of the more specific type acts that an offender would commit on a victim and that they would just try it out, “I wonder if this would work for me.” And then it’s just a one off. They didn’t get anything out of it and they return to their usual behavior. That’s fascinating to me, that they’re like, “I wonder if this would be cool for me.”

Paul:  Right. It’s experimentation. What they hear about, what they read about, what they visualize, whether it be within the sexually explicit material or talking to other people, maybe in the prison setting, and they go, “That sounds like something I might really like.” And they will try it and go, “No, I didn’t get out of it what I wanted to.” And then they go back to what their fundamental fantasy is. Like with Ethan, he’s going to reoffend unless he finally commits a crime where he serves substantial amounts of time.

Dave:  Right. This doesn’t go away.

Paul:  He’s an ongoing public safety threat.

Yeardley:  That’s so disturbing. That was an amazing case, Jamie. Thank you so much for bringing that to us. I can speak for myself, but I think I can also speak for our listeners that we’ll never get enough of those kinds of just good old fashioned detective work. You know, the staying the going, the distance to get the guy, really great work. Thank you.

Dave:  Thank you, Jamie. That was great work.

Paul:  Awesome. Jamie, thank you very much for bringing that case to us.

Jamie:  Yeah, thanks for letting me share it.

Dave:  Nice job, rookie.

[laughter]

Jamie:  Had a good teacher.

Dave:  Thank you.

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Gary Scott is our executive producer, and Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott.

 It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from you. Oh, our groovy theme song was composed by John Forrest. Also, if you’d like to support the making of this podcast, hop on over to patreon.com/smalltowndickspodcast. There, for a small subscription fee, you’ll find exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else.

 The transcripts of this podcast are thanks to SpeechDocs, and they can be found on our website, smalltowndicks.com. Thank you SpeechDocs, for this wonderful service. Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 production. Small Town Fam, thanks for listening. Nobody is better than you.

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