by Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent

One of the truly sad things people in our business encounter as we chase around to uncover the misdeeds of con artists is human collateral damage.  They tend to leave a lot of once innocent women in their wake.

Smart women, mind you.  Caring women. Women who almost universally feel incredibly foolish and used once the slippery criminal has gone off in search of new victims.

Matthew Cox used women, too.  Single mothers.  Young women disappointed in some way with their circumstances in life and looking for money, excitement, romance.  He saw them coming, did Matthew.  He'd romance each of them in remarkably similar ways, encourage them to slide into illegal behavior and, once he had them, use them as part of his scams.  Then he'd leave.

And we would meet them -- in prison, where they faced huge fines,years without their children, without their freedom, without the innocence that made them marks in the first place.
Hardcore conmen will use almost anyone to get what they want.. but it often seems to be women who pay the biggest price.

"Thief of Hearts" aired Dateline Sunday, 8 p.m. Read a post on the story from producer Shane Bishop, below. Click here for the transcript and video of the report, as well as links to Cox's art and an excerpt of his unpublished book.

by Shane Bishop, Dateline producer

Mortgage Fraud.

Those words in the lead sentence of a story assignment starts a pit forming in the stomach of any television producer. Visual, shall we say, it ain't. You'll have no dramatic video caught by surveillance cameras to work with; no exciting car chases; no crime scenes littered with fingerprints or revealing clues.

"What pictures are we going to cover this with?" my colleagues and I joked. "This is a great story," one added. "For a newspaper."

But oh, how wrong we were. The tale of accused mortgage fraud mastermind Matthew Cox would surprise us all in many ways.

First, Cox was not some boring banker-type in a gray flannel suit, but a hip, young daredevil who wore expensive clothes, drove flashy cars, and loved to skydive. He was also an accomplished visual artist with a flair for the dramatic. He painted sprawling art deco murals in several of the apartments where he lived. Our camera crews were stunned when they entered Cox's former living spaces still adorned by floor-to-ceiling panoramas painted by the wanted man.

Cox also wrote a 300-page manuscript called "The Associates," in which a character who bore an uncanny resemblance to the author, except for the fact  that in the book every woman wanted him. Cox's manuscript was a veritable 'how to' on fraud. It laid out plans and schemes that Cox would later copy in real life. (And it wouldn't be a bad beach read, either, although Cox desperately needs to learn to use a spellchecker. What publisher is going to take seriously any writer who uses the phrase, "cereal killer?")

In addition, Matthew Cox was a gifted forger and silver-tongued liar who talked his way out of police custody at least once. Authorities say he routinely juggled 30 or 40 false identities, somehow keeping them all straight at a moment's notice.

Cox seems to possess what is politely termed the "artistic temperament." Wikipedia defines this behavior as "..often characterized by being highly passionate about subjects of importance to the possessor of this behavior, extremely dedicated to certain goals, often hyper-aware of the presence of others, and at other times seemingly oblivious to the presence of others."

Ask the women that Matthew Cox lured into his schemes. Ask Rebecca Hauck. One minute she was his other half, his sidekick, the Bonnie to his Clyde; the next, Cox would slip out the door while she soaked in the tub. He was gone forever. And weeks later, another woman's eyes would light up as he told her that she was now his indispensable other half.

In our research, we learned that Cox was a severely dyslexic child, and was often told by teachers that he'd never amount to anything. Many we interviewed told us that all the fraud was simply a game to Matthew Cox. As an adult, Cox was now attacking the mortgage world as he attacked his canvas, his keyboard, and his life: as if he had something to prove.
 .
Within weeks, Matthew Cox is expected to strike a plea bargain with federal prosecutors and be sentenced to what perhaps will be at least a decade in federal prison. Bureau of Prisons records will reflect that his crime was simply "mortgage fraud." But it's tough to label an artist of Matthew Cox's caliber.

If you're like most Americans, you know all too well how pervasive credit card fraud is. You might have been a victim yourself. A few years ago, I got a call from my bank asking if I had charged $24,000 dollars at a store in New Zealand? I most certainly had not, but I had bought my son something on a Web site that apparently was not secure and thieves were able to obtain and use my number.

In a groundbreaking investigation a year in the making, we'll take you into the thieves' markets on the Internet, where your stolen credit card numbers and identity information could be for sale at this very moment. Very seldom are we able to infiltrate a criminal syndicate the way we do in the case of our investigation into identity theft and credit card fraud.

We'll also show you who is involved in this multi-billion dollar fraud and we'll track the identity thieves all the way from the United States, through Europe and into West Africa. It was challenging, risky, but rewarding.

There are also a few light moments. As part of our investigation, we actually form an online electronics company and a delivery service so we can follow the trail of merchandise purchased with stolen credit and debit cards. We find that a number of items ordered are going to the same address and the man who lives there is re-shipping the items overseas, not knowing he's part of a criminal enterprise. In order to learn more about the operation, we invite him to the "offices" of "CH Delivery" to pick up some of the packages. It's actually an old warehouse-like building we've rigged with hidden cameras and microphones.

When the man comes in, I greet him and we start chatting. I ask him how he got into this business and he tells me it all started in an Internet chat room when he met  an attractive woman named Wendy who ultimately has become his business partner. He then leans over to me and gives me a warning about chatting online and what can happen if you get caught soliciting teenage girls for sex.

"Like you watch Dateline? A lot of these guys want to have sex with a 13-year-old and they show up and get caught."

He's talking about our "To Catch A Predator" investigations, but he has no idea who he's really talking to. Now, I'm not wearing a disguise-- just regular clothes a delivery company employee might wear: a fleece and a ball cap. He goes on to describe several scenes from our shows. Apparently he's a big fan.

As you'll see, he's about to find out that we're investigating a predator of a different sort and I am about to ask him to help us.

'To Catch an I.D. Thief' aired Dateline Tuesday, March 27, 8 p.m. on NBC. Click here for more on the investigation, including Web-exclusive videos, and video to the entire episode. Here are tips on protecting your identity.

Editor's note: Thank you for your responses, below. Please don't post anything you don't want published -- and again, don't forward us your spam, although tips are appreciated. We apologize if we can't publish all your comments, although we are reading them and appreciate the positive response. See you next week.

What did you think of Mike Taibbi's report? Share your thoughts here.

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline correspondent

What do you get when you mix Mentos and diet coke?

What do you get when you eat a live praying mantis?

What do you get when you put on a rabbit suit and stage a bunch of fist fights?

The answer's the same for all of them. What you get is an explosion of e-lebrity. In other words, you become famous....on the Internet.

Chances are, if you have access to a computer, you recognize one or all of these. Maybe you were the first to click on one of them. More likely, someone told you about it, or sent it to you.

Keith Richman runs the Web site Break.com, a sort of online machine for creating e-lebrities.

Keith Richman: You're gonna go to lunch and you're gonna tell people, "Have you seen that clip on the Internet?"  The guys on the radio are gonna talk and tell their listeners, "You gotta log on to break.com and check it out."

But whether you're looking at break.com, which specializes in catchy, outrageous, and memorable video clips....or YouTube, which carries a much wider assortment of material, the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of some videos just can't be explained....or denied.

Video of a German boy waiting impatiently for his computer to boot up was seen 9 million times in one month.

One minister's daughter wanted her friends to go to church with her. They said okay, but on one odd condition – that she eat a live praying mantis. She didn't just eat it. She ate it on camera. And it got on the Internet and then, a couple of million clicks later, she was famous...not as Joanna Respold, which is her name, and not as Joanna the minister's daughter. Or Joanna the amateur actress... but as "bug girl."

Mankiewicz: How was the bug?

Joanna Respold:  It was little bitter, kind of like eating a tree, so the thorax was runny and then the rest of it was crunchy.  I wouldn't recommend it, although it is an excellent source of protein. 

We interviewed bug girl at a Hollywood party for e-lebrities, thrown by break.com and featuring perhaps the most famous e-lebrity ever—a Website designer who achieved fame sitting right in front of a keyboard.

Gary Brolsma: I just submitted it for the heck of it. And I didn't think it was gonna take off.

Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa" dance is one of the most-downloaded clips ever.

It didn't make him rich, which is pretty much the rule, not the exception.  Generally, viral videos fall into a couple of categories—the biggest of which includes videos like the ones you've just seen, that inadvertently became popular.

But there's also a group of videos that were made specifically to attract Internet attention, like a guy miming to the song "Torn."

Another guy does a thing called "the evolution of dance."

What all of these have in common with the inadvertent group is that e-lebrities can't afford to quit their day jobs.

Some of them did get a free trip when HBO flew Gary, the "evolution of dance" guy, and the Mentos boys to Vegas for live appearances at their comedy festival. It was a chance to turn e-lebrity into celebrity.

It lost a little in the translation. Usually, you just have to be happy with your achievement, even if it's just consuming a live insect to get your friends to go to church.

Mankiewicz: You ate a bug for Christ.

Respold: Yeah, I ate a bug for Christ, exactly. 

Break.com's Richman says that money is rarely the reason people post videos.

Richman: If we put up a video, it'll be seen usually about 400,000 times that day, and maybe 800,000 to a million in that week.  And a lot of people are just gunning for that promotion.  They're not interested in payment they might receive from us.

That would include people like Floyd Lloyd.

His on-camera challenge to real celebrities turned him into an e-lebrity.

Mankiewicz: You don't seem to really be trying to provoke anybody.

Floyd Lloyd: No—I'm just having fun. 

And most of his celebrities seem to get that, and they play along.

Remember, I said "most" celebrities.

Sometimes the only people to turn a viral video into a commercial success have nothing to do with the actual video.

A slightly disturbing clip of a kid screaming on Christmas morning is real. And after it aired again and again on the Internet. Someone thought to make it into a TV commercial.

The truth is that it's impossible to predict what will catch fire in cyberspace, and what won't. Some of these videos are about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Which got us thinking.

We bought a canvas and some paint, and went to work. Then we posted it on YouTube. We called it "paint drying."

[YouTube:sD294pg3jlY]

Then we waited.

24 hours later, we were still waiting. We had only 10 hits. Not too good. Then again, it is video of paint drying. So we changed the title, from "paint drying"  to "my triple-x project".

And that made no difference. No one saw it. Well, we got 27 views, but on the Internet, that's like no one. If these are viral videos, ours was positively bacterial. So instead of being an Internet video star, I'll settle for being a supporting player.

by Joel Grover, KNBC reporter

In my 18 years as an investigative reporter, I've realized there are few issues more important to consumers than the safety and cleanliness of the food they eat. People assume that food in a restaurant or supermarket has been properly handled,  but they never know for sure. It's our job as journalists to find out.

So I knew I might be on the trail of a big story, when I was tipped off about filthy conditions at Los Angeles' huge 7th Street Wholesale Produce Market. This is the place where thousands of restaurants and stores in California and some in  neighboring states buy  produce. The story began when I got a phonecall from a whistleblower who worked inside the market, telling me in great detail about how food there was getting contaminated before it even got to restaurants. Even worse, the source told me that he had repeatedly complained to the Los Angeles County Health Department about this, but inspectors had done little to force the market to correct serious health code violations. To me, this wasn't just a story about food safety. It was a story about government failing to do it's job to protect us. And it was a story that hadn't been told before. With so many food poisoning outbreaks in the news lately, we've seen a lot of stories about dirty conditions in restaurants and in the fields, but no one has taken a close look at wholesale produce markets, which are the midpoint in the "farm to fork" food chain.

It seemed apparent that the best way to get evidence of these dirty problems was with hidden cameras.  So, we wired two members of our investigative team with tiny hidden cameras, and sent them to the market. After their first day there, they came back to the office telling us of disgusting problems: rats munching on produce,  water that smelled like sewage dripping onto boxes of fruit, and workers urinating all around boxes of produce.   We wanted to make sure the conditions we saw weren't just a fluke. So we returned to the market every week for nearly four months. We saw the same filthy problems, and kept discovering new ones.

Doing hidden-camera stories is much trickier than you might realize. For example, getting shots of rats on tape isn't easy. Rats generally avoid the daylight, and they run like lightning.  It took a bit of careful planning to get shots of those fleet-footed rats. Much easier was getting shots of the human folly at the market: nearly every day, we saw workers urinating right out in the open (a major health code violation in a food facility).  But it was toward the end of our investigation that we unexpectedly got the "smoking gun" undercover video, that told the story of health inspectors not doing their job.

We had requested an interview with the Los Angeles County Health Department, telling them we wanted to discuss conditions at the 7th Street Market.  But they seemed to be stalling in getting back to us about doing an interview.  My gut instinct told me they were up to something (I've covered the L.A. County Health Department for years).   Since they obviously didn't realize we'd been undercover at the market for months, I suspected they were quickly trying to clean it up, prior to doing an interview with me.  So I sent our undercover team back to the market one more time, to see if anything was up. Sure enough, they noticed health inspectors walking around, warning produce vendors that NBC was doing an investigation, and that the market had to be cleaned up before we the media showed up.

When the story hit the air in Los Angeles (it originally aired in February),  elected officials were outraged at the filth and contamination at the Market. They were even angrier that the Health Dept had allowed these conditions to exist, and that inspectors had tipped off the market's vendors about our investigation. So they ordered the Health Department  to either clean the place up immediately or shut it down. The Department sent in an army of inspectors,  who wrote citations, shut down vendors with rat infested stalls, and forced the market's owner to clean up. Today the 7th Street Market looks cleaner than it has in years.

Throughout my investigative career, I've often noticed that government bureaucrats don't do their job, until a problem is exposed by the media. This investigation is a prime example of how it took media exposure to prompt health officials to do their job, the way they should have been doing it all along.

For information on this investigation, including expanded video clips and links, here's a link to the KNBC Web site.  

 

by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent

"My name is Mrs Maryam Ibrahim,...{I am} suffering from long time cancer of the breast...Before my late husband died  {he} deposited the sum of 20 million dollars ..20% of this money will be for your time and effort..."

If you're like me, you've likely received unsolicited e-mails offering you the chance of a lifetime. A financial windfall is out there and all you have to do is take advantage of a rare opportunity. They usually sound a little fishy. The pitch goes something like this --  a government official or someone with influence in an African nation has access to a fund containing millions of dollars. But, for some reason that person needs your help to get the money out of Africa and into another country. Oh, and by the way, you'll need to come up with $14,000 in processing fees and expenses. Once you wire the person this money…the multi-million dollar funds transfer can go through and you'll get a generous cut of the deal, perhaps $2 million dollars.

You might think that most people would simply hit the delete button, but our investigation reveals that perhaps tens of thousands of people each year take the bait and are taken for a ride, some losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Usually these cases go uninvestigated, because federal authorities are busy with more pressing matters like counter-terrorism. We decided to take up the challenge and go after these scammers. As you'll see it's an investigation that takes halfway across the world and let's us turn the tables on the conmen.

Chris Hansen reports on 'To Catch a Con Man,' Dateline Tuesday, March 20, 8 p.m.

Editor's note about the comments: Please don't send us the text of the Nigerian spam e-mails you get (since it is spamming our blogware.) You can also go to our message boards for other/longer posts. For other leads, e-mail Dateline@NBC.com. Comments written on this page are for publication. And don't forget to check out the Web-exclusive videos for this story by clicking here.

All across the country millions of innocent wives are caught in a love triangle, battling for their husband's attention with the players of their favorite sports teams. Now, in a "Dateline" hidden camera challenge, the wives are fighting back by catching their unknowing husbands on videotape while they watch a game. Josh Mankiewicz travels from coast to coast to report in, "Honey, You're on Hidden Camera," on Sunday, March 18, 7 p.m.

by Julie Cohen, Dateline producer

When we joined with a brave group of wives to put hidden cameras in their living rooms and catch their unknowing husbands on tape, we had no idea what we were going to get. Maybe this is just my girl-perspective, but to me the results show what is so annoying and endearing about the American Male.

There was Dallas Cowboys fan Bob Bragalone, who was really sweet to his wife and kids throughout the game, but was NOT going to get off his recliner to take out the trash. And A Green Bay Packers fan Paul Rice (his wife calls him "husband head"), who expects his wife to keep handing him beers and has the bizarre habit of voicing his complaints through a plastic Halloween skull he calls "Skully" (long story, you really need to watch the show on Sunday).

Then there were the Borg brothers, Minnesota Vikings fans who didn't pay much attention to their wives until the women came into the room wearing Vikings shirts (apparently, a big turn-on). And I definitely will never forget New York Giants fan Jerry Vecchia. He's soooo superstitious, that when the Giants are on a roll, he won't let his wife Sue get off the couch, because it could change their luck.

Check out our video blog, to hear more about how we found the wives to do this, and what happened when we told the husbands what we'd been up to.

(Photo: Julie, left and Josh, right)

Click here to watch video of the show. Does any of this sound familiar? Are you or your husband sports-obsessed? Share your photos and videos here.

by Ellen Sherman, Dateline producer

From the start, the murder of Mary Lynn Witherspoon was a story that I couldn't forget. The crime involved a gracious and beautiful woman, Mary Lynn Witherspoon, a French teacher known for her gentleness and generosity. Moreover, this brutal murder had taken place in the area known as South of Broad street.

Mary Lynn Witherspoon

The first time I visited Charleston I understood. Charleston is a jewel of a city with hundreds of architecturally stunning homes, many dating from the 1800s. It is a slow, genteel place where horse drawn carriages continually crisscross the cobblestone streets of the exclusive South Of Broad street neighborhood. Every yard is neat and orderly, every house seems a show place. It is such an unlikely scene for a grisly murder. 

And the victim herself seemed like the last person that would have inspired murderous feelings in anyone. She had been not only beauty pageant-beautiful, but a long-time presence in Charleston society. In many stories, the family speaks highly of their murdered loved one. But in this story, there wasn't anyone who didn't speak about Mary Lynn in glowing terms. Friends, fellow teachers, her principal, even former boyfriends all painted the picture of a woman who could have spent her days lunching and shopping but instead chose to teach and share her love of French with children. (Click here to watch Mary Lynn's daughter and a family friend talk about her.)

When I investigated the story further what struck me was how inevitable and yet avoidable this lovely teacher's murder seemed to be. She was stalked by someone she had known all his life. It was not hard to understand that when this person dogged her footsteps for nearly two decades, Mary Lynn tried to be gracious and wouldn't press charges. I wondered how I would have reacted if someone I had known all my life had done the same thing. I could sense for a moment how torn she must have been.

And then there was the fact that although Mary Lynn had insisted on being contacted when her stalker was released from a short stint in jail, that contact had been tragically mishandled. Instead of telling her that her stalker was being freed, the system had informed her that he had been "transferred."  It seemed there had been a hellish kind of bureaucratic mishap, what the Sheriff's Department called a "clerical glitch." I continually marveled that her family ever found a way to live with that.

Both her daughter Jane and her sister Jackie are amazing women. I know Jane stood by her aunt as Jackie tried to deal with her grief by getting a change in the stalking laws. That couldn't have been easy for either of them, but the good news was that a law was passed and unlike most legislation, it had taken relatively little time. Among other things, it provided for more stringent monitoring of stalkers and it improved the notification system for their victims. It's now known Mary Lynn's Law. I know that her family takes some small comfort in the fact that Mary Lynn's tragic death caused some positive change.

 

by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent

This "To Catch A Predator" special takes a look back at our earlier investigations as well as a look forward at some critical areas involving online predators we've yet to explore.

More important, it's told in a unique way. Producer Lynn Keller interviewed me, Del and Frag from the online watchdog group Perverted-Justice, some of the law enforcement officers who ran parallel investigations to arrest the men we confronted, and a prosecutor.

The story is told in essentially our own words. It will take you behind the scenes, going back to our very first investigation in Long Island, New York. You'll see how the investigations developed and became more sophisticated. There are moments that are startling, disturbing and in a few instances even humorous. We'll answer some of the questions you've raised here on the blog.

You may know that I recently wrote a book called "To Catch A Predator" in an effort to explore several important aspects of this subject that we've not had time to flesh out on television. One of those areas is that of collateral damage--  what happens to the wives and children of the men who are arrested. You'll meet Darlene Calvin who appears in the book and you'll hear the inspirational story of how she put her life back together after her husband's arrest. You'll also hear the unique prospective of Bob Shilling, a Seattle Police detective who investigates sex crimes against children, who himself was the victim of sexual abuse as a child.

Take a look at the program. I think you'll find it interesting and insightful.

by Sara James, Dateline correspondent

Sometimes you do a story and think, "This should be a movie."  Sometimes you meet a person and think, "She's a genuine hero."  This is that kind of story.  Melinda Elkins is that kind of person.
 
But here's the interesting thing about such people in real life.  They don't wear "hero" on their sleeve.  When I first met Melinda -- if I hadn't known her extraordinary tale of audacity and courage in the face of overwhelming, potentially life-destroying adversity -- what would have struck me first was simply how much fun she is.  Because Melinda is warm, outgoing,  vivacious.   

But as our talk lengthened, as I heard the details of how her husband Clarence had been incarcerated for years for horrific crimes she didn't believe he'd committed, I saw a steely flash in her bright blue eyes. I glimpsed the grit, the heart, the fire that fueled her, gave her strength perhaps she hadn't even known  she'd possessed.    For me, Melinda was a wonderful reminder that sometimes, with enough hope and determination, you can accomplish the impossible.  Clarence Elkins reminded me that it can also take courage to wait and hope.   And as you'll see, young Brooke is a tremendous example of a person who has borne terrible tragedy and yet greets the world with a bright, dimpled smile and an even brighter heart. 

I am wishing the best for everyone in this story, all of whom have demonstrated grace, character, courage -- and most of all, love.

by Bob Gilmartin, Dateline producer

While much of our story focuses on the work of Melinda Elkins, who in a word is incredible, two other things struck me about working on this story.  

One was meeting Clarence Elkins, the other was the frustration I would experience dealing with the prosecutor's office and the Barberton police department in getting public information released to me.

First Clarence, and first impressions. Clarence appeared to me to be an extremely gentle, polite, kind person -- not the kind of person who would ever commit the violent crimes he was charged with.  If he was angry -- and who wouldn't be after spending seven years in jail for a wrongful conviction - -it didn't show.   He said he was angry, but he said it without showing any outward signs of  emotional rage.

How he has kept his composure and gentility amazes me considering the fact that he was in the Ohio state prison system for so long surrounded by violent inmates.  How he could survive that environment  without becoming bitter and angry is a mystery to me.  I think his answer would be a profound belief in his wife, his innocence, and in religion. His constant companion, he says, was his Bible.  

In the end, however, there was something quite sad about this man who lost his freedom for so long, and then once he gets out of jail,  his marriage. While the rest of us turned our clocks forward one hour last night, all Clarence wants to do is rewind the clock nine years as if all of this never happened.  

His simple desire now is to be with his sons who are all grown up. He missed so much as his young boys became young men.  But now he has something to look forward to.  One of his sons will be a father soon and Clarence will become a grandfather.   

On another note, it will be interesting to see how his civil lawsuit against prosecutors and police turns out, and what revelations might come out in court. Prosecutors and police will be forced to disclose in open court  how they reached the decision to charge him, and despite an erosion in the facts of their case, refused to drop charges against him for years keeping him in jail.  The prosecutors office said in a statment that even after facts changed in the case that because of the seriousness of the charges, it did not recommend the release of Clarence Elkins until a thorough investigation was completed.  Clarence's attorney, Jana Deloach, will be handling the case in federal court.

Melinda Elkins would be the first to tell you how frustrating her experience was with the prosecutor's office and the justice system. I would have to say I had my own frustrations in reporting the story, but obviously nothing quite as serious as hers.

Dateline had filed a public records request to get access to the items in the court record, such as evidence, audio and videotapes and crime scene photos that had been made public during the course of Clarence Elkins' prosecution.

All of these items had been released previously either through a public records request by other media or by court order. Much of the material had also already been reported and shown both in the print and broadcast media.  We were not asking for anything that had not already been in the public domain.

The response from the prosecutor's office was that because of the ongoing investigation of the Earl Mann case, "revealing details at this time might also jeopardize our ability to gain a conviction."  However, the details we were asking for had already been made public, so now, in effect these public records were now not public. In all my years of reporting, I have never seen public records be made "un-public."

Through our own persistence we were able to get access to many of these records, documents and tapes without the assistance of prosecutors.  We think Dateline's viewers are better served by knowing what has already been disclosed in open court and including it in our report.

Question: But aren't you giving criminals ideas?
Answer: All these demonstrations are being done in an effort to make you safer  and smarter if you cross paths with a criminal. Wild Bill is not showing you everything he knows... and he's not giving criminals any new ideas. Where do you think Wild Bill got some of these ideas in the first place?

Stone Phillips: One question people may have is whether some of these scenarios that we've seen tonight are just so over-the-top that it's not really a legitimate test of how witnesses would react?
Bill Stanton: Well, to answer your question, no it wasn't over-the-top. Crimes comes in all shapes and sizes and they happen in front of a lot of people in broad daylight. Crime doesn't punch a clock.  The bad guy will take it if he or she sees an opportunity.

Phillips: Time and again we saw witnesses observe you doing something behaving suspiciously and they did nothing. If we see something, what should we do?
Stanton: Be a conduit. Observe. Take a description. Take a license plate. Get on the phone to 911 and take action that way.

Phillips: Okay, what about protecting our property?  What about our cars, what can we do?
Stanton: Layers – the same in the winter time holds true for security. Have a wheel lock.  Put a car alarm. Park in a well lit area with high pedestrian traffic.  Hopefully the bad guy will pass that by and take an easier mark.   

Phillips: And what about our homes?
Stanton: Same thing with the home. But make sure you lock that second story window.  Everybody locks their front door, keeps their first floor windows shut. Bad guys have ladders today.

Phillips: One of the most disturbing things we saw tonight  was is how easy it is for someone to lure our children away. What's your best tip for parents?
Stanton: Common sense will rule the day. Role-play with your child.  Do different scenarios.  The advice we were given by our grandparents back when we were kids still holds true today.  Don't listen to strangers. And literally take them through that -- walk them through and do "what if" scenarios.  "If someone came up to, would you do this?" And explain to it to them. Be prepared, not paranoid.

Write below to send him your question or comment.

This was Tuesday's live blog. These posts were meant to coincide with the broadcast.

by Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent

8:03 p.m.
Usually when two potential predators arrive at close to the same time, I try to move quickly through the first interview so that we are ready for the second. But here in Flagler Beach, you're about to see something I've not done before. Two men show up so close to each other I have no choice but to conduct the interviews at the same time. Watch as I introduce the two men to each other and see if you can figure out which one has seen our previous Dateline investigations.

8:15 p.m.
This being our 10th investigation, we figure that some of the men, perhaps even the majority of them here have seen our previous shows and maybe anxious about actually walking into a house. So we are prepared when the men set up a second meeting location across the street at the beach. The police are under the boardwalk and hidden cameras are set up in and around a beached sailboat. In a moment you'll see how it all works out.

8:34 p.m.
Sometimes Perverted-Justice decoys talk online with potential predators for weeks about a sexual liaison -- and still the man never shows up. You're about to meet a guy who we thought was going to do just that: 41-year-old Todd Spikes engaged in an explicit online chat with a decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl. His intent seems pretty clear as much of his chat is unfit to print or put on TV. It's Sunday night and we worked very late the night before.  The whole team is beat. I ask Frag of Perverted Justice if he thinks Spikes is going to show up. Frag says Spikes hasn't communicated with the decoy for hours. We decide he's probably a no-show and break down for the night. Man, were we wrong.

8:51 p.m.
Minutes after we arrive at the hotel, the decoy gets a call. It's Spikes and he's in Flagler beach after what we figure is more than a 5-hour drive from his home in northern Florida. It turns our Spikes is a cop from a small town in southern Alabama. In spite of having three cell phones in his car, he uses a pay phone to call. There's no way to get everybody in position back in the house and it turns out that may have been a good thing. The police pull him over. Wait until you see what he had stashed in his car: 800 rounds of ammo, an assault rifle, three bullet proof vests and camera equipment. He also had a pistol in his pocket. In a moment you'll see what he has to say for himself. 

8:55 p.m.
You've heard a lot from these men in their own words--- next week, I'll let you know what I was thinking while all this was happening in my own words.  We'll answer some of your e-mails and blog posts, and we'll tell you who's been convicted and how long they'll be behind bars. 

Click here to read a transcript of the show and to watch the show online.
 

by Chris Hansen, Dateline Correspondent

As our "To Catch a Predator" investigation in Flagler Beach, Florida continues, you're going to see something we don't experience very often. It's hard to imagine, but we had an active duty member of law enforcement arrive at our hidden camera house after an extremely graphic online chat with a decoy posing as a 13-year-old girl for nearly a month.

We didn't know it at the time but 41-year-old Todd Spikes was a police officer for the Florala, Alabama Police Department.

He drove more than 300 miles from his home in northern Florida to meet the girl he thought he was chatting with. For awhile we weren't sure he was going to actually show up. He didn't call or send an online message for hours.  Then he called the decoy to say he was in town. We scrambled into position just in time to see Flagler Beach police arrest him. As if it's not scary enough that a lawman would engage in this sort of behavior, wait until you see what police found in his car. There was an arsenal including an assault rifle that was loaded and chambered next to the driver's seat of Spikes' SUV.

Before the night was over we'd find out a lot more about Spikes and what he had stashed in his car and hidden in his pocket. Spikes has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer has suggested he had the weapons as part of his job. He's been fired from the Florala P.D.

Part 2 of 'To Catch a Predator' in Flagler Beach, Fla. airs Tuesday, 8 p.m. on NBC. Click here to read a transcript of the show and to watch the show online. 

Editor's note: Tomorrow, in another hidden camera investigation, Dateline demonstrates how people might react when they see a potential crime being committed. Watch some surprising and jaw-dropping moments that will show you how a criminal can steal your car, your priceless antique... and even your child... right in broad daylight. Read more about 'Wild Bill: Breaking and Entering.'

 

by Josh Mankiewicz, Dateline Correspondent

Barack Obama and John McCain have several things in common. They're both

Paul Joyal, who we interviewed for the "Dateline" report "The Last Days of a Secret Agent" was shot Thursday night as he got out of his car in front of his house in Adelphi, Md.

Investigators in Prince Georges County say a witness claims to have seen two men running away after the shooting. Joyal remains hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the midsection. Authorities have not said whether they've been able to talk to him.

Joyal is a long-time consultant on security and Russian affairs. From 1980 to 1989, he was director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

On last weekend's report, he said of Litvenenko's death: "A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: 'If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you — in the most horrible way possible.'"

The shooting has certainly raised eyebrows, because Maryland police are well aware of Joyal's views regarding the Litvinenko death. But at this point, they have no evidence suggesting this was anything other than an example of the rising crime rate in Washington's Maryland suburbs. Click here to read more from NBC's Pete Williams.

Click here to read a transcript of Sunday's report.

by Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent

The man was attractive, unthreatening. He was clearly impressed by her look (and she knew — or had been told — that she was an uncommonly pretty young woman). He seemed to pick up on something basic about her, something the rest of the sprawling city she'd adopted hadn't yet seemed to notice: she was remarkable, she had possibilities.

Her name was Kristi Johnson.  She had been shopping at L.A.'s trendy Century City mall for a Valentine's gift from her mother ('Buy something nice,' her mother had told her when she called from the Bay Area, 'It will be a present from me.').

Just what the man did or said to get her attention we can't know.  But his offer to her, once he had her under his spell, is as clear as the list of credit card receipts that followed.

And we know, of course, that he had used the same trick before, had used variations of it again and again, on bright and attractive young women who carried around the secret hope that someday the world would notice. The man told Kristi, if past behavior is an accurate guide, that he held a significant position in a Hollywood production company. There was, said the man, a new Bond movie coming up.  And there she was, just walking through the mall, and the moment he saw her he knew she would be the perfect 'Bond girl,' perhaps to appear in the movie, certainly in the billboard campaign. There was big money involved. 

Had she suddenly been 'discovered'?  Wasn't this the perpetual Hollywood fantasy-dream?  Was the man's suggestion merely a come-on, or could she actually believe this was a genuine opportunity?

The man's instructions would have been detailed and specific: she was to wear a plain white shirt (men's style), a black micro-mini skirt, sheer-to-the-waist panty hose, and stiletto heels. There was an address where she was to meet him in a few hours.  It was a house up in the Hollywood Hills, he would have told her, and he might have promised that two actors who have played Bond would be there to meet her.

Was she excited as she stormed the mall, buying the shoes, the skirt, the rest of the Bond girl outfit?  We only know (through the credit card receipts) that she bought those things.  And we know — because a denizen of Laurel Canyon saw her — that she drove up into the Hollywood Hills toward her doom.

The story of Kristi Johnson is so deeply affecting in part because it pokes around in some central American myths, especially the one about being 'discovered.'  Lana Turner at the drug store lunch counter, Kristi Johnson at the Century City shopping center. Only trouble is, as Detective Obenchain of the Santa Monica Police told us, it really is just a myth.  And the man who tells a girl otherwise just might turn out to be someone named Victor Paleologus.

Victor is the other affecting character in the story.  Victor— or whatever other name he offered to a parade of young women over almost two decades of predatory behavior. The 'Bond girl' scam was a favorite. Authorities say he used ropes to assault one of his victims, tried drugging another. 10 years ago, a SWAT team was called to pry him out of a house he'd holed up in.  He called himself Victor Thomas, Brian-from-Disney, John Maroni, etc, etc.

What did he promise Kristi Johnson? What did he do to her?  And what happens in the brain of a man like Victor Paleologus?  He is, we discover, an example of another enduring Hollywood myth. But that one ends badly.  And unhappily, sometimes that myth is true.

Keith Morrison reports on the murder of a young woman living in Hollywood who ends up dead after meeting a conman she thought had "discovered" her. The report includes an interview with Victor Paleologus himself. Airs March 3, Saturday, 8 p.m. on NBC. Click here to see the full "crime files" and evidence on the case.