Retired Cop Snags Predators Posing As Teen

69-Year-Old Grandpa Has Made 20 Arrests By Chatting Online As 13-Year-Old Girl

(AP)  No one will ever confuse Jim Murray with a teenager. His tall frame, broad shoulders and clipped gray hair give him away for the grandfather he is.

But the 69-year-old retired police chief of this small Missouri town cuts a credible figure as a 13-year-old girl surfing the Web, looking for friends. He knows all the instant-messaging shorthand, the emoticons.

Murray's retirement job from a rural home office has netted 20 arrests since he started in 2002. His latest catch was the biggest: four felony enticement charges against a town mayor, who after his arrest called Murray up and begged him to make the case go away.

The 19 other defendants have included a Missouri furniture company executive, an Arkansas professor and a Tulsa, Oklahoma school security guard. Ten of those men have been convicted and sent to prison. One was deported. The other cases are still pending.

The defendants ranged in age from 24 to 62, with an average age of 39.4 years, and mainly come from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, Diamond police said.

Internet child safety experts say police officers like Murray are heroes who do good work at the cost of wading through the muck of online pedophile fantasies.

"He's a trailblazer. 2002 was very early for smaller police departments to start doing this," said Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a children's Internet safety group.

Murray, who taught elementary school for 27 years before switching to police work, is more humble.

"This is really about the kids," he said.

The first thing he hands a reporter at the start of an interview is a neat packet of newspaper stories about Kacie Woody, a 13-year-old girl in neighboring Arkansas who was abducted, raped and killed by a man she met online. It is not a case Murray worked on. Instead, he said, it is "a motivator."

Murray said he manages to shake the online conversations out of his head after a while, but they can still make him angry.

"There'll be times when you just want to reach through the screen and choke them or slap them," he said. "To think they could talk that way to a girl."

The latest defendant is Allen Kauffman, 63, who resigned as mayor of Collins and pastor of Temple Lot Church after he was arrested Jan. 11 at home in his small town about 110 miles southeast of Kansas City.

Kauffman declined Wednesday to discuss the specifics of his case, including how he plans to plea and his lawyer did not return a phone message.

Kauffman did not propose an actual meeting in any of the exchanges listed in the charging documents.

But according to court documents, prosecutors say Murray was logged into a Yahoo! chat room as a 13-year-old girl named "cindyndiamond" using the screen name "Cin" when he was first contacted Nov. 15 by "duke dukead," who prosecutors allege was Kauffman.

Duke contacted Cindy again the next day and said he was 55 years old. The exchange included:

Cin: i like to french kiss ... senior boy taught me.

duke dukeadk: but it depends on where you want to be kissed at lol.

In at least five instant-message sessions through mid-December, Duke allegedly went on to tell Cindy he wanted to have sex with her, asked for nude photos of her and suggested Cindy have sex with another girl in front of a Webcam so that Duke could watch.

Murray has arrested other men arriving for trysts they believed they were setting up with the detective's teenage persona.

Murray was chief of police in the farm town of Diamond from 1995 to 2000. He got a personal computer after retiring and discovered chat rooms and was angered when he was offered pictures of young girls.

He contacted experts in the field of Internet sting operation and got training from the National White Collar Crime Center on basic computer data recovery.

Now, Murray patrols the Web from a cramped home office divided between his police computer and a personal computer ringed with photos of his six grandchildren and three adult kids.

Murray remains a detective on reserve status with the Diamond police but he donates his investigation time. He says he only spends about 30 minutes a week on average in chats but several hours more going over hard drives of arrested suspects looking for contacts with other potential victims.

"Several people have stopped me at Wal-Mart and the filling station and said they appreciate what we're doing on the Internet stuff. And that's a good feeling."

[flalady41]

Way to go Grandpa! Keep up the good work, God Bless You!

[germanmom]

Good work, Jim! Thanks for being an extra pair of eyes and ears!

[Krazcarl]

Excellent work most of us are pulling for ya. Thanks again.

Much THANKS and God Bless for such personal concern to rid net of the slimey s--m bags. A GREATEFUL GREAT
GRAND FATHER.

[johnstossel]

Way to go, Jim. Keep up the good work!!! I just hope that our justice system puts these people away forever!!!

[complexities]

I cannot thank you enough. As a child abuse survivor who was molested by my own father for over 8 years, I am glad to see it is coming out that these monsters comes from all socio-economic backgrounds, hold all sorts of positions in the business world, and are every bit as devious and damaging as the bad guys hiding in the bushes. They trick these girls, use their innocence against them, and betray their trust, leaving considerable damage that remains with them and affects them (regardless of whether they are consciously aware or not) throughout their entire lives. It filters into all of their own personal relationships, their marriage, and their ability to parent (once trust is broken, where is the line when raising your own daughters?).

I cannot thank you enough for spending the time and energy, not to mention enduring the disgust of these b@stards, in order to help protect the innocent young girls out there. You are not only saving them from the possibility that they may be murdered by these monsters, but you''re saving them from possibly that they are left to remain alive, with a lifetime trying to survive the aftermath. You have no idea just how much I truly thank you.

[michellem99-2009]

I was abused in foster homes years ago. That was precomputer..Some bas*tards use our handicaps to over power us and I am a legally blind person.. Grandpa.thank ye.. them prediters do more harm than good.. They break our trust in adults..the funny uncle/aunt. years ago we would never dare talk about this. We suffered and hope it would go away. Never did..Ye sit at yer computer Grandpa we who have been abused as children and some of us with sp needs love ye and yer mission. Peace of Christ be with ye and yer..

[sgtrds]

Considering the release of today''s story about the man who "cleaned up" DVD''s in Utah, but has been caught paying for *** with young girls, I still say I think this guy is doing it because he enjoys pretending he''s a 13yo girl talking dirty online and this is a legal way to get away with it.

[keithle1]

When you''re a pedophile/hooked on s e x with underage girls, you don''t care or think about the risks. It''s got a hold on you that you can''t shake. Easier for a junkie to get off heroin. The only thing that will stop them from thinking about it & trying to hope up with a 13-year-old girl is castration. Watch that "Predator" show on MSNBC. Endless stream of guys showing up at the house of the girl. Forget about the police. You''d think they would worry about the girl''s parents showing up. One guy takes his clothes off in the house while waiting for the girl.

Teenage girls are guppies in the ocean surrounded by sharks.

[dguyhere]

SgtRDS is correct, I think the cop is a pervert. What normal person goes around pretending to be a 13 y.o. girl? Something stinks in this story.

[Wookiee-1138]

Way to cull the stupid people from the Internets.
Kudos!

[dmotte]

This retired cop is probably a predator who sits their all crossed eyed,playing with himself and suckering some other pervert in on his own perversions.Give me his website and I,ll chat with him from La. and lets see how far he can stretch his authority and have someone arrested.

[Krazcarl]

What''s the matter with you people this retired officer is taking it opon himself to still do his job and rid us of on line predators. If your against it or make fun, your a child predator or lave those leanings very sick you are indeed!!!

[dmotte]

Oh, boo hoo, boo hoo,that retired cop gets his jollys off by having some arrested and by fantasizing what it would be like with a young nymph.

[Krazcarl]

DMOTTE....your a sick lonely troll and not terribly bright as the whole blog can see.

[dmotte]

No crzmeat, I,m definetly not lonely or by any means crazy by I do like reading all of the whiny bull$hit that some of you self-proclaimed do gooders put in this comment section and then I like to post this garbage to see what kind of response I get from some of you so-called, non perverted,self rightous as$holes. Give me a break,most of you have your own hidden perversions.

[Krazcarl]

DMOTTE...I am not without vice but my vices only hurt me not others. I was married to a lady 15 years my jr. at the time thought I was very lucky but it was like schooling a child on the ways of the world[she was 25 you figure it} to want to have romantic relation with a teen is mental illness you think they would feel to dirty from the get go,

[sgtrds]

I''m not saying his IS, but these days you never know. Time after time after time these holier then thou crusader types are always the one who are later found out to be chasing little kids themselves.