How a shocking death led to the downfall of To Catch a Predator

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Why don't you take a seat right over there?

It's a question asked by journalist Chris Hansen of dozens of men caught with their metaphorical, and in some cases literal, pants down by the news reality show To Catch a Predator.

Running from 2004 to 2007, the hidden camera show became such a cultural touchstone that it was parodied in the cold open of the 2006 Emmys, with Conan O'Brien playing the part of a distressed accused sexual predator confronted by Hansen in a rented house masquerading as a family home.

A ratings juggernaut for US network NBC, the show ended following a high-profile suicide after one of the program's sting operations.

Almost 20 years later, the program and its host are being put under the microscope by documentarian Lance Oppenheim in his directorial narrative debut, Primetime.

The 30-year-old, whose next project is the highly anticipated Nathen Fielder/Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything, grew up watching To Catch a Predator.

"I'd never seen anything before that had mixed truth and fiction in the way the show had. Hiring adult actors pretending to be children … these houses that would be turned into sets," Oppenheim tells ABC News.

"All of this artifice would collide with the very real high stakes situation of getting an attempted child predator into the house.

"There was something so odd about the mixture of real-life horror with this sort of surrealist absurdity that came from Hansen."

What is To Catch a Predator?

To Catch a Predator premiered in 2004, originally as a part of NBC's Dateline news program.

A typical segment would include production working with private investigation organisation Perverted-Justice whose volunteer decoys would pose as children to chat with potential predators.

The decoys would then invite them to a house leased by production with the promise of meeting and sexual activity. After being initially greeted by hired actors playing tweens, Hansen would emerge, questioning the men and revealing the hidden cameras. The men would then be allowed to leave, only to be arrested by local law enforcement. All of which was recorded and broadcast.

To Catch a Predator soon outgrew Dateline, with episodes featuring the segment attracting 13 per cent more audience than those without. By 2006, the show was moved to its own prime time slot on US television, directly competing with ratings juggernaut Lost. This is also around the time To Catch a Predator brought law enforcement officers into the co-ordination of the stings.

Men caught by the program included firefighters, teachers, religious and government workers.

In 2006, a To Catch a Predator sting in Murphy, Texas netted 25 arrests from men arriving at their decoy house. Perverted-Justice volunteers had one more man marked, soon revealed to be local assistant district attorney Louis William "Bill" Conradt.

Production was unable to lure Conradt to their Murphy house, so in coordination with local law enforcement, the decision was made to confront Conradt at his home. After a multi-hour sting, local police sent in a SWAT team to arrest Conradt, who killed himself.

Following the incident, legal issues were found with all arrests made in Murphy, including insufficient evidence and lack of active warrants. In June 2007, a Texas district attorney refused to prosecute any of the 24 men arrested in the sting.

A month later Conradt's sister brought a $US109 million wrongful death lawsuit against NBC Universal. Although the network initially announced to be fighting the claims, in June 2008 the suit was "amicably resolved" with an undisclosed settlement amount.

To Catch a Predator was cancelled shortly after.

What is Primetime about?

Primetime chronicles the period of time leading up to Conradt's death, loosely based on the 2007 Esquire article Tonight On Dateline, This Man Will Die.

Some characters, like Robert Pattinson's Chris Hansen and Perverted-Justice founder Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher) are based on real people. Some, like Merritt Wever's stern producer and Skyler Gisondo's starry eyed "Decoy Dan" are an amalgamation of several real people involved in the story.

And some like Jeff Zucker, the former NBC Universal CEO who moved To Catch a Predator into its prime time slot to compete with Lost, simply play themselves.

"I liked this idea of being able to mix truth and fiction in a way that almost was an homage to the show and the way the show created almost this reality-distortion field," Oppenheim says.

"When people would enter it, they would no longer be a part of the world we all exist in. They were a part of Chris Hansen's world."

Oppenheim paid particular care to the characters playing "predators": young men; older men; a rabbi who demands to know who gave Hansen permission to conduct the sting; a man with cerebral palsy.

"It was interesting to present the predators in a similar way to how Chris Hansen would experience it, to how his crew would experience it," Oppenheim says.

"The attempt to sort of deny any form of humanity to these people and see them as almost a form, a token of entertainment. They almost became commercial objects in this sort of space race against Lost."

How to keep children safe

Hansen has condemned Primetime as "detached from reality", going so far as to buy ad space before US screenings to promote his streaming service TruBlu, where he still conducts predator investigations.

In Australia, child safety in online spaces remains an issue, with a 2025 eSafety report revealing one in four girls experience online sexual solicitation by an adult before they turn 18.

Cybersecurity and privacy expert Joel Scanlan is the academic co-lead of the CSAM Deterrence Centre, working with the technology industry and other stakeholders to prevent the access and sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

"To Catch a Predator did raise awareness of this harm occurring, and that is great, because the awareness of the level of harm that's occurring online is actually pretty low," Scanlan says.

"However, it is doing it for entertainment. The motivations aren't there. So many of those cases got thrown out or overturned. What if it had just been law enforcement in the first place and not all those other elements?"

Scanlan says there needs to be a "generational shift" in how we view online safety for children and that the solution lies in robust prevention including education, deterrence messages, legislation like Australia's social media delay and higher expectations of online companies.

In August, Meta agreed to pay $23.6 billion and add child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial.

"To stop this kind of crime that's happening at this large a scale, we need five or 10 different approaches as there is no quick fix," he says.

Scanlan points towards the Stop It Now! Australia program, Australia's first national child sexual abuse offending prevention service, as an effective tool for harm prevention.

Launched locally in 2022 by Jesuit Social Services, the program includes a free phone helpline and resources for anyone concerned about their own sexual thoughts or behaviours toward children, or about the behaviour of someone else.

The program received federal funding in April 2026 as a part of the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Child Sexual Abuse 2021-2030.

"People ask, 'Why are you sympathising with them?' But I do work in this space. I see the horrific scale of the problem. We need to have less harm happen," Scanlan says.

"If that means we need to get people in therapy, let's do it. That's it. That's literally abuse prevention."

Primetime will be in Australian cinemas from October 29.