Dateline NBC

To Catch a Predator - Bowling Green, KY (15x68)

Air date: Dec 28, 2007

It's our twelfth "To Catch A Predator" investigation and this time we're set up in a 6,000- square foot home in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It's a town of about 50,000 people an hour north of Nashville, Tennessee. Each one of these investigations has its own rhythm and Kentucky is no different. Within hours I am struck by the fact that fewer men are showing up at our hidden camera house than in past investigations. Looking back I think this at least partially because the Kentucky Attorney General's office and the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation, along with local law enforcement, have been actively pursuing online predators in the past year. Before Dateline's investigation in Bowling Green, the Attorney General's office with the help of the online watchdog group Perverted Justice had conducted two previous sting operations without us, making 20 arrests. One of them was a 59-year old criminal justice instructor at an Ohio college who used to be an elementary school teacher. He had been chatting online about having sex with a decoy posing as a13-year-old girl before showing up to meet her at the undercover house. Even after this earlier high-profile case, though, we still saw men in our investigation eager to meet a young teen home alone for sex. As you will see, seven men show up over three and a half days and all seven are arrested after I talk to them and they leave the house. You'll see in Kentucky that we employ the same online decoy, Casey, who we used in New Jersey. She is just as effective in this latest investigation as she was before talking to the men in person. You'll see the grooming process in real time. Also in Kentucky we see a range of men show up, from a factory worker to a man who says he's a police detective and carries a gun. Watch the heart-pounding moments when, as he leaves our hidden camera house, he refuses to follow orders from the arresting officers.