Texas community seethes after child-predator sting

By Saturday, this quiet residential neighborhood had, on the surface, returned to normal. The sun warmed the morning chill. A dog barked in the distance, and children played in their backyards.

But inside an otherwise empty stone-and-brick rental house were reminders of an undercover police operation that caused an uproar in this neighborhood last week: Electronic equipment was stacked on a kitchen counter. A stuffed toy hung from a chandelier like a Christmas ornament.

“Creepy, when you think about what happened,” real estate agent Lara Blum said.

Over a four-day period, 21 men drove to this house north of Dallas believing they were about to have sex with minors they had met on the Internet, authorities said. Instead, with cameras from “Dateline NBC” rolling, police arrested the men at gunpoint and hauled them off to jail.

When another man who had been expected -- former Kaufman County Dist. Atty. Louis “Bill” Conradt Jr. -- didn’t show, police went to his house in a neighboring town. As authorities moved in, Conradt, 56, put a gun to his head and killed himself.

Though the suicide rocked this community, it was the undercover operation -- which brought dozens of alleged sexual predators to a neighborhood chockablock with children -- that continues to reverberate here.

Hundreds of angry residents packed Murphy City Council chambers and an adjoining overflow room Saturday demanding to know why authorities knowingly exposed their families to suspected criminals.

The meeting, meant to allay residents’ fears, turned into an emotional three-hour debate on how far authorities should go to catch sexual predators.

“It was too close to my family, 20 to 50 feet away,” said Michael Smith, 32, who lives across the street from the site of the sting. “It was a very stressful and disturbing week. My son wanted to avoid driving on our street after seeing police activity. The ends were admirable, but the means showed poor judgment.”

The sting had been preceded by a similar operation in July, when Murphy police worked with a private organization called Perverted Justice to capture four suspected child molesters.

After that sting’s success, the police, with the approval of the city manager but without the mayor’s knowledge, agreed to team up again with Perverted Justice -- this time with “Dateline” crews filming the arrests.

A house was chosen in the Rolling Ridge subdivision, a newly developed neighborhood of wide streets and large brick homes.

Murphy Police Chief Billy Myrick said it was ideally located -- near a cul-de-sac, with an empty house next door that gave authorities a place to hide.

Across the street from the sting house, Kaylee and Michael Smith watched the strange doings from their windows. Strangers set up scarecrows, pumpkins and other seasonal props in the frontyard and hid small cameras in them.

“We didn’t know what was going on,” Kaylee Smith said, and police wouldn’t clue in the homeowners association.

It wasn’t until she saw police, with guns drawn, arrest one man after another on the front lawn, as camera crews filmed, that “the light went on,” she said.

For four days, she said, she kept her children indoors and away from the windows. “I couldn’t sleep; I felt like my children were in danger,” she said.

Most of her neighbors were also frightened, their anger building with each passing day. “We couldn’t believe what they were doing with children all around,” she said.

Myrick said so many police officers were involved that Rolling Ridge was the safest neighborhood in north Texas that week.

His supporters -- who include the parents of molested children and the father of a boy who lives across the street from one of those arrested -- agree.

“I do not for one moment think our elected officials put one person in danger by arresting 21 sexual predators,” said Murphy resident Sharon Jones. “With Internet access, there are no Small Town, USAs. No one place you can go to insulate yourself from this kind of crime.”

Volunteers for Perverted Justice, who pretend to be minors in Internet chat rooms, have gone on the offensive.

“Which are worse -- the predators out there trying to rape children they befriend online, or ignorant elitists who enable their attempts by trying to stop law enforcement from dealing with this issue?” reads a statement from the organization’s website (www.perverted-justice.com).

“Our vote? Damn both equally,” the statement concludes.

Murphy Mayor Bret Baldwin, who seemed drained by the week’s events, said Saturday’s meeting was a “first step” toward determining future town policy on undercover stings.

“There’s a lot of anger and emotion wrapped up in this issue,” he said.

But Myrick said if conditions were right, he’d do it again in a minute.

“We still believe we did the right thing,” he said as residents streamed out of City Hall on Saturday.

“In all my years in law enforcement, I never thought there would be a reaction like this to police doing their job.”

lianne.hart@latimes.com