When Radar first reported on the "monstrously exploitative" collaboration between angry, twisted Perverted Justice founder Xavier Von Erck and Dateline NBC to rope greasy perverts and destroy their lives on camera, we quoted an unnamed Dateline producer predicting that "one of these guys is going to go home and shoot himself in the head." That didn't take long.
Less than two months after our story appeared, a To Catch a Predator target has killed himself. Louis Conradt Jr., a prosecutor in north Texas, fatally shot himself as local police attempted to execute a warrant on his home on Sunday. According to the New York Times, Conradt had been exchanging IMs with a Perverted Justice decoy that he believed to be an underage boy, but he never showed up at the Murphy, Texas, house that Dateline had staked out with cameras.
But local authorities sought to arrest him on the strength of the IMs alone, and a Dateline crew came along for the ride. According to a Dateline insider, Conradt refused to open his door. When the cops broke in, they found him holding a pistol. He told the officers, "I'm not here to hurt you guys," and shot himself. He died later at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.