Chris Hansen on 'To Catch a Predator', Boondocks, Caught with Mistress, Arrest (Full Interview)

all right here we go we have chris hanson most known as the host of the infamous to catch a predator also eight time emmy award winner welcome to vlad tv vlad thank you for having me i appreciate it hey longtime fan well thank you on time fan and you know i've told a lot of people that when i really formed vlad tv 13 years ago we didn't base it on the hip-hop news platforms we based it on datelines 60 minutes these types of shows right and this type of investigative journalism and we try to emulate that we've done so well with it congratulations to you 13 years is that great we try yeah i know it's true yeah well this is our first time talking so i want to get into your whole story sure so you were born in chicago i was okay and uh you grew up in west bloomfield in bloomfield township michigan bluefield hills it's all in the same area so it's very close got it and how's the upbringing up upper class middle class did you have it rough very upper middle class never wealthy very comfortable my dad was in the auto industry in 1968 he was transferred from chicago to detroit so we moved to the suburbs of detroit it was just a very pleasant comfortable nothing fancy but we enjoyed life and i had two younger sisters and we lived in a nice colonial and a nice neighborhood and went to one of the best school systems in america and you know pretty much were afforded everything you could expect out of life we grew up on the periphery of wealth you know i i went to high school with people whose last names were pulte and you know uh people who were in the in the automotive industry but you know on my end we had to work in a back of a bakery to pay for half that tuition to go there but we knew that success was around us and it was out there you know well i guess when you were 14 uh jimmy hoffa disappeared exactly and you start following that whole investigation it was fascinating to me as a young guy i used to ride my bike up there and he was last seen and presumably kidnapped from a restaurant about a mile and a half from our home called the red fox and um i just to check it out one day rode my bike up there and 10 speed and there were fbi agents and local police and reporters from the local tv stations and network correspondents and and i really kind of got bit by the bug fascinated by the whole thing at that time well do you know who killed jimmy hoffa in 2021 i don't you know i've spent a fair amount of time covering it professionally and following it you know out of interest and you know i saw the irishman and i i'm familiar with that particular theory i mean obviously it was mob related the the mob didn't want him back in in business uh some of the movie i think rang very true based upon what i know um some of it was you know hollywood obviously but uh the story if you listen to the fbi agents and you get a look at the files basically you know they didn't want him back in power and so they made him disappear and and how he died and where the body is i think we'll never find a body because it was destroyed within hours of the kidnapping and the two leading theories are that it was a chromium dipping plate on detroit's east side or a garbage uh crunching facility in in around hamtramck which is a an area right next to detroit yeah i mean i've interviewed three mafia associates about the story and got three different stories completely different stories you know uh michael franzis yeah said he was buried somewhere wet yeah uh johnny russo gave a whole different version of it um alan gunner lin bloom who's associated with the detroit uh mob he gave a completely different story he said he knows the guy who's responsible for killing him they all said the irishman was fiction yeah but no one really said this is what happened and we still did well you're exactly right and i agree with you we had been involved in one of the wild goose chases at dateline several years ago i was doing a murder story that took place in suburban detroit and a producer of mine came back and said hey i was talking to this guy in the southern michigan prison in jackson he says he knows what happened to hoffa i said well you know he and six thousand other inmates you tell him to give you something that no one else knows and he does that and he said well there's a body period of another union official in a backyard in in in near saginaw michigan and i said all right we call the sheriff's department they go to the house they dig there's a body oh it's the guy so i said we'll get the hoff information so we get that i go to the then oakland county prosecutor who went to the same high school i went to growing up in the same area and i was a reporter in detroit for 10 years before i went to new york and i said look here's what we got you know i don't know if it's true it sounds like something that should be investigated and all i'm asking for is first crack when you go dig in the hole in the story was that in the same backyard a briefcase was buried that had a syringe and playing cards used by hoffa's kidnappers the syringe used to sedate him and theoretically there'd be dna on the syringe in the playing cards of the kidnappers when we get out there turns out to be you know false nothing there and another wild blues change gotcha okay well uh you go to michigan state university correct you graduate yep and then you become a reporter correct i guess you started uh at wi lx in lansing michigan uh you went to tampa uh you went to detroit uh and then in 1993 you joined nbc was that the big time for you it was very exciting yeah it was huge i mean the first job was at a news magazine called now which was anchored by tom brokaw and katie couric and i was one of the correspondents and about a year into it uh it merged with dateline and so i became a correspondent with deadline but they nbc ultimately decided it didn't want two news magazines competing against each other which made sense i mean during the oj you know situation you had now knocking on one door and dateline knocking on another and so why are we having competitors within the same network news organization you know so they put us all into daylight what was it like working with uh with tom brokaw and uh katie carr cause those are two legends loved them absolutely loved them that was a year of just you know figuring out as we went along what that news magazine was going to be we had nothing on the shelf no library and so it was part of my job to get launched out of a cannon weekly to go cover whatever breaking news there was whether it was the poly class murder in petaluma california or something happened with the unabomber or something happened you know in some other breaking news i would literally get on a plane saturday work sunday monday tuesday wednesday the show would be on at 9 00 pm go to the staff meeting unit thursday collapse for friday saturday and get ready to get on a plane again but it was it was exhilarating it was great it was it was wonderful to work with everybody jeff zucker was the executive producer and um a great great guy to work for we covered the columbine high school massacre you also covered the oklahoma city bombing yeah which is the biggest domestic terrorism incident still ever still 168 people my son now my second son is now a television reporter in oklahoma city and his apartment looks down on that that uh memorial it's for to have been there in 1995 and covered it and to go back today to visit him it's it brings back every every emotion every memory of covering what i thought then would be the worst disaster the worst a terrorist attack i would ever see in my lifetime well you actually exposed that there was a group that was linked to osama bin laden was trying to buy nuclear weapons so you actually uncovered that we did along with one of my producers we had access to a federal investigation and to an informant who worked in that investigation guy named randy glass no longer with us who went undercover and was posing as somebody who could sell stinger missiles and some of the people caught up in that were tied into and worked for pakistani intelligence which we knew at that time had ties to al-qaeda and other terrorist groups and you know we broke the story of how they were going to buy stinger missiles and there was a meeting in new york in which one of the buyers with ties to terrorism said see those buildings pointing over to the world trade center and this is before 9 11. if i get the right weapons those are coming down with chilling looking back and those guys all got arrested some got arrested some are still on the lamb in the middle east you know going through these types of you know high profile cases were you ever threatened uh intimidated anyone ever put hands on you that type of thing felt like your life was going to end or not to the extent where i knew at least that you know something was going to happen in detroit as a reporter you know a wiretap surfaced where a drug gang had said it wanted to pay a thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars to a crack addict to kill me because i was getting close to their investigation their their operation um in the predator investigations you know we've had a couple moments that looking back were pretty tense but nothing that i'm aware of where you know i was in a safe house for you know two months in the witness protection program or anything like that you know i think i think if somebody's they're threats all the time but if somebody's really going to do something they're not going to call you ahead of time or text you and say we're coming to get you that's intimidation yeah you know well then in 2004 uh to catch a predator yes who came up with that name the name i'm trying to think was it was a combination of people in a production meeting originally when we did the first one it was called dangerous web and then it just was a combination of the senior investigative producer myself the producer and our boss at the time our executive producer david corvo and to catch a predator just seemed like a good name for it and it stuck immediately so that's what it was okay and this was something very different way different on television completely there was nothing like this leading up to this show so i guess volunteers would impersonate minor children 13 to 15 year olds in chat rooms correct and they would agree to meet with adults for sex correct so i had become aware of a group called perverted justice which was an online watchdog group through a reporter friend of mine in detroit who took my job when i left and i started to think if we could work with them and use their ability to pose as 13 14 year old kids 15 year old kids online and use our ability to wire a house and really embed in this crime it could be compelling and so i pitched the story and it wasn't meant to be a completely different show it was meant to be you know a segment for dateline and so i pitched it and you know a lot of smart people weighed in on it we did it 17 years ago literally last week in bethpage long island okay so you guys get this house and there is a child impersonator basically in the house we had in the first investigation two members of perverted justice one uh a young woman who could pose as a boy or a girl and uh um she would be the on-side decoy now they the whole group perverted justice had people online existing in chat rooms now remember vlad at that time we only used aol and yahoo chat rooms that's all there was so that was where we went and they posed they set up a profile with a picture that was unmistakably underage was very clear there were guidelines you couldn't bring up the you couldn't make the first approach in other words these decoys couldn't go to guys and say hey i'm 14 but i want to have sex with you it just exists there with the profile they were hit upon by the guy okay the guy brought up the subject of sex the child was obviously open to it and the meeting was set if the guy came over before we got involved perverted justice would merely post the id in the picture on their website when we got involved they became characters in the show okay but the person in the house is over 18. correct okay pretending to be a 13 year old correct got it the man arrives to the house for sex and then you walk in so you've done the show a bunch of times but the first time here you are this strange man is walking into a house briefly meets with this underage girl who says she's going to go in the back and you know freshen up and then an adult man comes in to confront this guy who has no idea this is about to happen no clue tell me that first time that you did that my heart was in my throat we had gone through a bunch of potential scenarios we had security there ron knight my security guy was there i had the transcripts the guy came in goes to the counter and i walk out and immediately start the conversation what are you doing here and i don't say right away i'm chris hanson with dateline nbc because i want to know what this guy is about now like you said i didn't have all this perfected in the first investigation so i'm just trying to keep it together right i got a guy across from me in a kitchen who's rangy at best who doesn't know whether i'm a cop the mad dad right who walked in or option number three which they probably didn't think of in that first investigation chris hanson of dateline nbc right so the first guy comes in i keep it together we have the discussion and he leaves second guy comes in same thing happens the third guy comes in and now it's getting chaotic because it's all happening all at the same time and the transcripts of the chats are laid out on the dining room table they're all mixed up so i grabbed the wrong transcript for the third guy and i go at one point i said well it says right here that you want to do this this and this with a 12 year old name susan no that's not me excuse me walk back out got a second set of transcripts a 14 year old named diane no that's not me third set of transcripts a 13 year old named beth yes that's me okay great let's continue and we went into the interview he stuck around while you're getting he did that scripts he did and it turned out this guy and i remember distinctly his screen name was darkhero73 and i just did a podcast on him predators i've caught is the podcast and we got into his segment and he really got aggressive and when people say well was there a time when you really thought that you were potentially in danger thinking back he was one of the you know top potentially dangerous guys and it turned out that he had a restraining order against him by a former girlfriend that he had just gotten out of a mental institution and while i'm not suggesting there's a link between predatory behavior and mental illness clearly you've got somebody who is potentially unstable and could have done something harmful to a 13 year old girl had there been a 13 year old girl there okay were the police involved from the first episode or no the police were not involved in the first two episodes okay it wasn't until the third episode so you basically contacted police and said hey we're about to do this be waiting outside to arrest this guy we did not in the first two investigations we just did the investigation we didn't know what we'd find just let the guy walk up the guy just left which was obviously we came to the conclusion that this was very unfulfilling from a television production standpoint and more important you know it wasn't socially responsible i mean here you've got a guy who commits a crime and in in some of these cases in the first two investigations there were charges filed the police stepped in in in the first one afterwards after the fact yeah so there was a there was a firefighter who surfaced in the first investigation he was prosecuted by the feds in the second one we had the rabbi and a number of others who surfaced and they were prosecuted but it was after the fact by in the rabbi's case the fbi and the other cases of the fairfax county police department okay but then the police got involved in the third one in the third one we had been contacted by the riverside county sheriff's department and the sheriff's department was willing to do an investigation parallel to our investigation so that was the first time that law enforcement was involved okay and were a lot of the people prosecuted from that yes they were all prosecuted 51 guys surfaced in three days when the when the police showed up how badly do the people start to panic oh they're they're very panicked because imagine we have this house and riverside it's a good-sized house probably a five-bedroom house they come in now this is the third time we've done it right so some of the guys actually are starting to recognize me not many in that case but some and they go through this interrogation this interview with me and then they leave they walk out the door and a team of sheriff's deputies grab him and take him to a nearby motor home that's how we did that case and he was interrogated in the motorhome and then a police car sheriff's car took him away for processing so it got so busy in that particular investigation i mean imagine 51 guys showing up in three days that guys were being arrested as other guys were showing up and so they would call the decoy and say hey i see the police outside what's going on and the decoy would say well there was just a pot bus there was a loud party next door don't worry about it come back in five minutes the guy came back okay i didn't realize that all these shows were being done in the same day like that one after another well each guy yeah you know was a segment but but or a part of a segment but yeah i mean we would continue if you know we would go from 10 o'clock in the morning till as late as guys would show up and so however many guys showed up that's what the production schedule was and it obviously was fluid and changed and we had to be flexible so the show started in 2004 and there were 12 investigations across the u.s but then in 2008 there was a show with a guy named louis conrad an assistant district attorney correct uh in texas tell me about that situation we had done this investigation in texas and about the second night into it a guy had surfaced chatting with a 13 year old boy he did not show up at the house but in texas the actual chat itself constituted solicitation of a child and so the next day the police department goes to his door he's an assistant district attorney and goes to arrest him he has a handgun in the house and as the police are moving in he takes the handgun and shoots himself in the head sadly committing suicide what was found out later was on his laptop were at least 10 images of child pornography for which he knew as a district attorney assistant district attorney he would face in texas ten years in prison per image and while you don't want to see anything like that happen to a guy suicide you could pretty much clearly assume that he didn't want to face the music on that and chose to take his own lives how did you feel when you found out that he died it was you know a difficult moment for everybody involved you don't want to see somebody do that i don't feel responsible for it i sleep well at night and did after the fact we completely reported on it the next morning you know that obviously the predator episode didn't hear for some time but the next morning i was on the today show first thing from texas laid it out exactly we're completely transparent about everything that happened and reported on it well then uh his sister patricia ended up suing nbc correct saying that the police had raided uh the house on behest of nbc and then a judge actually well throughout most of the case but there was one claim that the judge allowed so explain to me what happened in that case so the judge in several lawyers opinions went outside the four corners of the case and considered things that our lawyers didn't think should have been considered but you know when a federal judge does that you can appeal but it it the case moves on to the next level so they were preparing to go to trial and um nbc at the time made the decision to settle the case before trial do you know how much more i don't know the exact number to be honest with you was a minor percentage of what the initial number was and the number when you file a lawsuit you attach a number it means nothing 20 million dollars 150 million whatever then otherwise but there's a settlement for you know a minuscule part of that and nobody was crazy about that you know nobody liked that they were ready to go to trial and and i'm convinced that we would have wanted trial but ultimately the decision was made that they didn't want to have me tied up for three months they didn't want to have the other people tied up for three months and when you settle a lawsuit like that the settlement comes out of an insurance policy if you go to trial the money comes out of the news budget a trial is much more expensive than a settlement so while the settlement was absolutely not palatable to us at the time i think everybody involved grew if not comfortable okay with it well i guess the judge had ruled that patricia had a reasonable chance of proving the nbc had pressed police into engaging in unreasonable and unnecessary tactics solely for entertainment value thus creating a substantial risk of suicide or other harm uh they also found that the police disregarded their duty to prevent conrad from killing himself and that nbc's actions uh amounted to conduct so outrageous and extreme that no civilized society should tolerate it the interesting thing about that and think about this for a minute we had no control over when they were going to do the the arrest so i know a lot has been said about oh they were trying to hurry up and get it done because you know nbc had to go elsewhere on sunday or monday morning and it just wasn't true i mean the reality was this had they decided to arrest him the next day at his office at the district attorney's offices that would have been arguably much better from a television production standpoint and more dramatic than going to a house and knocking on a door so were your cameras there when they knocked on the door yes they were ah got it so and again we didn't control what the police were doing we were there covering it obviously as any journalist would do if you were involved in such an endeavor but we didn't have a hand in saying you need to go to his house right now force the issue right now versus you know pressing him on the street or in his office or anything like that the part that always seemed somewhat interesting to me was in this particular case in this show these men are being arrested for attempting to have sex with a minor but in fact the person is over 18 and just impersonating a minor so although i do not condone this type of thing at all and believe that these type of men should be put away but in this particular case aren't they technically not breaking the law they're just dealing with an impersonator well they're technically breaking the law because the law and the courts have upheld that sting operations are viable and constitutional it's like if somebody does a cocaine bust and they use fake cocaine for part of it okay um or counterfeit money or illegal arms that are you know not uh functional for for the purposes of a demonstration or a sting operation so it's the intent to commit the crime that counts and you know that it's not like the um the predator can argue that well i knew it was an adult and i was just testing it i mean they've argued that i mean i mean i know better you know better the police don't okay got it yeah i'm just wondering how the law works no that's that's exactly how it works so okay well ultimately because of the suicide the show got canceled that's not exactly true we went on after that and did a number of other shows now ultimately nbc made the decision not to do new productions but i think it had more to do and i'm not saying the suicide had nothing to do with it i'm sure there were considerations about okay if this could happen what could happen next i wasn't in on those meetings what i can tell you is that the production became very expensive and what nbc figured out is that they had a lot of material that could be repackaged repurposed and re-aired for many years to come without the expense of having to go out and shooting another one and getting ratings and attention and generating profits without doing another investigation okay i mean were you upset when the show was ultimately cancelled you know it was i thought we could go do more i was ready to do some other topics at the time quite honestly it was one of those shows that became iconic for a lot of different reasons i was attached to it there were a lot of other things i want to do you know i'm known for this but it's still two three four five percent of my portfolio and reporting out of all the emmys none of them are for predator i'm not saying it wasn't any worthy oh you weren't getting all the emmys for to get your par no everything else ah okay i didn't know that so you know i was game to do some other topics uh which i was doing all along anyway again it's it's it's it's become iconic for all the reasons we know it's important for all the reasons we know but it you know is a small portion of what i did at 20 years at nbc well in 2010 uh one of my all-time favorite shows the boondocks did an episode right called the booty warrior it's uncomfortable uh where you were actually a character yes on that ship yes i was you watched it i've seen it yeah uncomfortably i watched it yeah okay i could play it again for you oh i know what's in there you know what's in there yeah well uh you know this character is actually based on uh this guy named fleece johnson right who was uh a gay man in prison who uh forcibly uh you know raped other men right in prison and uh they basically took that little viral clip right and they they reenacted it with uh the booty warrior yes where uh you come in and uh instead of you catching a predator he was actually wanting you right exactly called you chris hansen yeah and then uh basically had his way with you before the before the police showed up well as it so happens and i don't i don't know how this actually occurred but um fleece johnson actually got released from prison oh is that ryan yeah yeah and i guess he knew that you were coming on the show so he he recorded a little message for you would you like to hear it sure i'm still a wall are you chris and guess what i'm out of prison and you fired so we both ain't got nothing but time on our hands chris i'm gonna tell you like this here i still like you and i still want you now we can do this the easy way or the hard way the choice is yours i i don't care about vlad's little cameras cause i'm a warrior chris i'm still a warrior well got some bad news [Laughter] it's not gonna fly uh shout out to carl jones he actually did the voice of uh the booty warrior on the boondocks and uh you know we went ahead and have him do a new segment that's awesome and just for you i was actually uh a character on the show as well uh episodes yep yep uh you know it's funny because uh obviously there were a number the simpsons did something and uh family guy and one evening i was on here on the west coast working on a story and my one of my agents text me and says uh south park is doing you tonight it's pretty funny i said well it's great i'll in three hours i'll watch it and 20 minutes later he says it's taken a dark turn and it was funny because at the time the two older boys were in high school my sons and you know they went to high school on the east coast where kids had dads who were you know involved in the movie industry involved in wall street and so didn't have a dan on tv is you know no big deal but when i was on south park suddenly i was cool i was the closest to him there well uh you'd been married for a long time uh two sons like you mentioned and then in 2011 uh it was exposed that you were having an affair uh with a woman that was 22 years younger than you uh kristen cadell am i pronouncing right i believe so yeah number one who exactly was following you and and capturing because i guess there was a some video there was a you're what you're referring to is a tabloid story that got legs for a couple weeks and so much of it was inaccurate and wrong and um people had a little bit of a heyday with it but it was you know i've said everything i'm gonna say on it you know it was you know it was a national enquirer story and it had all the credibility of a national inquiry story it was a moment caught that was taken out of context and much more was made of it was worthy i believe well then in 2013 there was a photo the surface of the two you kissing and then it was announced that you're gonna be let go uh from dateline well from nbc was it over that photo no the the two things had nothing to each other you know look dateline was going in a different direction i was there doing a lot of investigative stuff but also the murder stuff and you know there was discussion about different roles and different things and i had the opportunity to do a lot of different things at that time and and so to to to suggest the two were linked would not it's just not true okay and uh you know the woman she wrote an open letter at one point said that uh she can't find a job anymore her career was ruined and everything else i'm not familiar with at all i mean people say people say a lot of things when they they're desperate and people could say what they want i'm i'm comfortable with um the way i dealt with it how did your wife take it you know it wasn't a big issue in my life it just wasn't okay were you guys separated at that point we're divorced now uh-huh were you divorced in 2018 uh we've been legally separated for quite some time before the divorce ah okay got it i mean a lot of people felt like it was karma to a certain degree here you are i don't buy into any of that look i mean you know people people who live public lives you know this people say that you're an informer for the fbi rights i'm guessing that's probably not true so you know people talk a lot of smack and you know when you reach that level the lesson i think is that at least for me you have to make sure that you completely conduct yourself in the approp way because if you do find yourself like a little too much fun or hanging out with people maybe you shouldn't be hanging out you create the opportunity for somebody to to to say something or do something true or not that could be misconstrued or they can make the tabloids and that's you know nobody needs that i mean was it a hit piece from the enquirer was it like yes it was so much it was wrong i don't think it was revenge i think i think it was um you know somebody took advantage of a situation and made it look like something it wasn't and that's the end of it got it well i guess in 2015 you had a new show called hanson versus predator okay and i guess 10 people were arrested 11 11 people were arrested what was the the premise of this show it was very similar to to catch a predator it was um rebranded it was something i wanted to do i thought we could uh we hadn't done a predator investigation for a number of years and i thought it was time to go out and do it so we produced it and it became a part of crimewatch daily which is a syndicated show that i hosted and reported for for a couple years well i guess some of the people who were arrested there was a former mailman who bought a chips and iced tea to the decoy for attempting a hugger man drove two hours from boston jeff shokel with a pizza real estate broker who you actually knew i didn't know him well but it was interesting because when i walked out and the guy looks so familiar and when i came out he said chris no chris no it's not what it looks and and i knew i knew him from somewhere and the rest of the crew thought well he just observed television but he ended up being a fellow who rode the commuter train who i knew [Music] uh just from the train back and forth between connecticut and new york so yeah this was a fellow that that i had met and talked to before well the most serious one was an army vet who tried to get the girl into his car yeah and when the police showed up he had a loaded gun a knife and duct tape in his trunk so he was ready for a all out kidnapping you know you had to wonder had it been a 13 year old girl there and not us that ends in a whole different way you know and this is fairfield connecticut so it's not like we're in some horrible area and it doesn't matter what area we're in we can be in lower class middle class upper class you're going to get people we did one you know just weeks ago in michigan for a new series a predator series and again we had a michigan prison guard we had a guy who worked in the auto industry we had a guy who was a cop in lebanon we had a babysitter i mean a guy who had done work in the governor's home the same governor who was targeted in a kidnapping plot i mean this is still going on and and it's become more prevalent i think because there's so many more platforms social media platforms uh where predators can potentially approach children and think about the pandemic for a year now i don't know if you have kids or not but every kid has been doing everything online whether it's interactive gaming or whether it's communicating or seeking entertainment and predators have more chances to approach kids there before and while everybody's at home potentially parents you think would have the greater ability to monitor this they're busy doing trying to do what they do in their computers so there's a tendency to not see everything that's going on and all the men were arrested now were you actually showing up the way you were on to catch a pr it was it was basically the same okay so when they see you they recognize you and they're like [ __ ] some some do and some don't i mean we had a guy in that particular investigation the one you're talking about where i said uh i'm chris hanson said no you're not so yeah i am i said it hasn't been that many years i don't look that different you know it's me trust me you're about to find out okay and how many years were some of these guys getting in total i think the highest sentence was 24 years and that was big because of a you know prior history of this kind of conduct on the low end you know guys got probation monitoring registration as a sex offender but the vast majority and i mean the vast vast majority of cases either ended in a guilty plea no contest plea or a conviction by a jury or a judge only a couple cases in the texas investigation the prosecutor declined to to go after the cases and that was more of a political reason than a criminal reason but once police did a parallel investigation virtually all the cases were prosecuted successfully have you ever run into any of the guys that you helped put away no that's an interesting question um no and i've reached out to some of them for interviews uh-huh uh what kind of answer did you get for those guys mixed you know nobody has really offered to sit down and do it but i've had conversations uh there's one fellow lance uh or lauren um and he is uh he's become famous in the in the predator to catch a predator following community lauren armstrong and like 10 000 people follow this guy and what he's done since he was arrested in kentucky in bowling green kentucky he's a child predator he he was arrested in the sketch repetitive investigation the social media celebrity now and he's he's got they have he said oh cod was his he kept saying it over and over again being oh god but he said it with a main accent and so now there's this church of cod cawd with thousands and thousands of followers who who keep track of lauren armstrong okay that's that's weird you never worry about these guys coming back to go after you you know maybe you know because clearly it's their it's their own fault right it was their own action they did it and guys but ultimately those who who who brought attention to them yeah yeah i i consider i take precautions you know i'm not crazy but um you know i i'm not unmindful that that could happen yeah well in 2016 you did a kickstarter uh campaign uh for a new show that you were gonna do um you're trying to raise 400 000 you only raised 89 000. so i guess there's supposed to be some memorabilia that was supposed to be sent out to the people who uh contributed and then uh things started to go wrong it all got taken care of i mean i think the lesson there is that you you know if you're gonna have a business with your name on it you have to have the right people operating it and if you're not that kind of a businessman then you really need to pay close attention to it and and there were some some people involved in it who didn't get the job done ultimately it got done and the stuff went out and the vendors got paid and everything but yeah it was a bit of a bit of a mess for a minute well you got arrested i guess for uh uh paying for a check that ended up bouncing a guy who worked with me had issued a check that that was returned and had to be rectified and it was all right okay but then your you know your mug shot is now being plastered off it could have been it could have been handled so much better in hindsight but it was all handled and you know the lesson is if something's got your name attached to it you need to be attentive to it uh that certainly will never happen again well then in 2019 it was reported that you got evicted for failing to pay rent in manhattan yeah that was there was a landlord tenant issue that got resolved again it was much more was made of it than actually deserved attention but once again here you are on on tmz and these types of publications uh does it get annoying sometimes that a lot of this stuff looks like i think i think i think there was um you know just a short period of time where uh there was a ton going on it all got resolved and you know you move past it and you know things are in a really good place now a lot of projects going and you know it's it's all in the past there was a situation where you were investigating a guy named onision yes so tell me the story with that so i started to explore the youtube space and we had done some shows and stories and it was strongly suggested to me by a number of other content creators that i should investigate onision gregory james jackson who was very popular at a big channel and had a big following amongst young women and the allegation was that he had preyed upon them taken advantage of them had inappropriate sexual contact with some of them than engaged in bullying and harassing behavior so we had a lot of those victim survivors on the show and it became it got a lot of attention and ultimately we did a series called onision in real life which just came out on discovery plus and that's out right now um which is fascinating and very much worth worth watching well uh youtube ended up suspending his channel it did demonetizing his challenge yeah indefinitely correct uh he ended up uh i guess filing charges against you not charges he he we went out there about a year ago to get his side of the story and we knew that he had been living away from his house and we tried to find him for an interview and ultimately i did a i knocked out his door and we told his crews out there with us and i could hear him and he called the sheriff's department and and you know lucky didn't answer though didn't want to talk fine back off i've done hundreds of door knocks in my life it's not a new concept okay and so the sheriff's department shows up i explain what happened they go interview him everybody leaves and goes on their way we use the video on the youtube channel ultimately it was also used in the in the series that's not one on discovery plus he went to court filing his own motion for some sort of restraining order and it was dismissed it was you know is one of the goofiest things i've ever seen and well you've done hundreds of door knocks and you know people get on me for the type of questions that i ask people call me the feds and the police and so forth right because in the hip-hop space you know hard journalism isn't has never been a thing but i don't know if i could bring myself to actually knock on someone's door just simply because of the the danger aspect of it because behind that door you don't know what type of weapons exactly a person is holding well you you have to you know do some research you have to be prepared if something does happen that's why in detroit you learn to knock you know on from the other side of the door because okay that's brick and that's wood so if something comes through the wood you're behind the brick right i mean you know someone knocks on my door that i'm not familiar with i may have my pistol in my hand i mean i've done it before actually i've had my pistol in my hand when i've some strange person's knocked on my door luckily nothing's ever happened but what came out of that door knock though were dozens and dozens of law enforcement reports about events that had taken place at that house including the near death of the couple's two-year-old child who with both parents home onision gregory james jackson and his spouse fell out of a second story window where the child was severely injured and it was noted in the police report that greg jackson oddly took a video of the child before rendering assistance and continued to have texts with young followers in the whole process of taking the child to the hospital so there were also other complaints and and um police runs to the house it was it it opened a whole new view into what was happening there too so i think i know what you're saying about a door knock and and sometimes you need to to go the extra mile to talk to somebody now he spins this whole misinformation campaign about no trespassing and this and that and you know the guy wouldn't know the truth if it hit him on the side of the head he's delusional dangerous so you could legally knock on somebody absolutely you can why not if they ask you to leave and don't come back you leave and don't come back i mean you know you have to do it appropriately okay and but it's it's a time-honored journalistic tradition well your newest show is an investigation on peter nygard correct and i've been hearing about this guy for years way before he got arrested recently and i had heard that he would have girls and everything else like that i never heard about the underage thing to be honest um you know probably because of the circles that i go has nothing to do with that so i never heard that so when i heard about all the underage stuff it was like okay like this is way more serious this just i just thought it was some old guy who just liked a lot of girls around um but ultimately there were some really interesting stories about abortions can you explain that he was obsessed peter nygard was with stem cell research and anything that he could get his hands on to preserve his health and youth and to create longevity and according to many people involved in the investigation he actually would impregnate underage girls have them get abortions and then harvest the stem cells of the fetuses to inject in himself under the belief that it would be more beneficial than random stem cells from another source and that he would go to china and other countries to learn how to do this and have it done and the underage aspect of this is you know a big part of the investigation too but that's part of it that's how far he would allegedly go to extend his life and his lifestyle well he's 79 years old right now so he felt that injecting stem cells from aborted fetuses from women he impregnated himself would somehow keep him alive longer correct and he kept doing that over and over again he did a lot of things i mean this is a guy vlad who is being investigated for sexual assault going back five decades involving potentially thousands of women uh in canada in california in the bahamas where he had a compound where he would routinely according to witnesses take underage girls drug them get them drunk seduce them and rape them in a most vile and vicious fashion and we went down to the bahamas it's been a year now and interviewed a lot of the victims the survivors and some of the people who were witnesses and he was able to get away with this for so long because of wealth and corruption and a sense of impunity uh like i've never seen and i've covered a lot of criminal cases in 40 years right because he's worth 900 million dollars right he's got a fashion empire correct and uh i guess he has a big compound in the bahamas it's amazing he is right next door to a fellow named louis bacon who's a billionaire hedge fund guy and this part of the investigation at least the bahamas part of it began over a battle over beachfront property the stuff that nygaard was doing upset bacon bacon fouled motions not guard filed motions it got nasty the stuff that nygar did to paint bacon as this horrible human being in this misinformation campaign it was just wild but ultimately you know bacon was able to fund an investigation that unearthed evidence wow that was given to the federal government that led to an indictment and a prosecution by the human trafficking task force of southern new york and manhattan and that indictment was unsealed and nygard was arrested in winnipeg where he's being held now without bail pending extradition to the united states right he's 79 79 so whatever amount of years he gets there's a reasonable chance he's going to die in prison correct and i'm told by sources and uh we did a a series of interviews for a show that's coming out on my youtube channel on nygard that you know because he's not getting the supplements and the vitamins and the injections that he's used to getting that he's literally withering away in jail right because uh nygard k which is the compound has gotten visited by michael jackson correct george h.w bush robert de niro and a name that you've heard before in these types of circles prince andrew correct who is also tied to the jeffrey epstein correct situation well the nygard and epstein is there any connection between the two not specifically that i've seen nygarden present nygard and prince andrew it's been alleged that prince andrew had visited nygard's compound uh to what extent i can't tell you at this moment got it uh crazy story you know unbelievable it's it's it's i mean it's you couldn't make it up and it was in the course of putting the story together i mean there were days that that it seemed like it was a it was a game of 3d chess there's so many moving parts uh lawyers with civil suits victims who may or may not want to talk it literally took two years to put this together from first finding out that you know this story existed and there was something to look into and thanks to the very brave survivors and victims ranging from the young women in the bahamas to supermodels here in la in the la area who had the courage to speak up we were able to put this story together but you guys weren't the reason why he got indicted no i i think we were not unhelpful and we're not the only human beings who've reported on this the new york times did a big story the cbc has done reporting but he was able to use his money in power to effectively silence a lot of this i mean he intimidated a lot of people and there were threats there were payoffs to government officials in the bahamas canada has much more restrictive laws involving the fifth estate and he was able to keep it silent for a very long time and again he was charged and arrested on december 15th of 2020 and i'm sure it was not you know unknown by investigators that we were getting ready to do a story but i i they they knew that there was a big case here and they knew that they had to go after him well what's next for you we are looking at a number of other stories like the nygard story like the onision story i think there's a real bright future at discovery plus we've got the podcast that's into episode 6 predators i've caught the youtube channel we're doing the predator investigations again as i mentioned we just did another one in michigan that's going to be not only on the youtube channel but we're in discussions with a couple networks about a television series there and a lot of other just really exciting projects it's uh it's a good time with a lot going on so i'm very excited about it all well i mean chris congratulations on a a long story career uh you know to catch a predator sort of has become just part of u.s history at this point i'm iconic you know and look you can and i have this discussion you know both the boys are in the business one behind the scenes doing production and camera and that sort of thing and one is on camera and you know we talk about it and you know at one point you think you're headed towards one sort of thing and then you get involved in the predator something that becomes so iconic and so you either embrace it and use it for all the good it it can bring or you spend time running away from it to do more mainstream things so you embrace it and you use that that power and that energy to do you know really good stories really good television important media stuff yeah i mean i don't think people realize how tough the job that you and i have to to put our necks out to ask the tough questions to get the uncomfortable stories to to be in uncomfortable and dangerous situations you're exactly right and it's it's it's not for everybody no it's not you know and uh and it was tailor-made for me though yeah i i still get up 40 years into it every day and and love what i do and am excited about the new projects and and um you know there's just a lot of great stuff going on people always ask well how have you you know done it at this level for so many years i said well you know part of it is just being too stupid to realize there's anything you can't do and don't place limits on yourself um you know i've also been blessed with working uh you know with tremendously talented creative clever people who know how to harness my energy um and with very few missteps in 40 years i i caught myself very fortunate well congratulations on everything well thank you vlad and the eight emmys actually oh it's 10 now oh i got it wrong the first time you didn't even correct me ten emmys ten enemies hopefully eleven or twelve before the next year is out there you go uh you know i'm gonna check out the peter nygard yeah uh peter nygaard unseemly with peter nygaard on discovery plus onision in real life on discovery plus the youtube channel have a seat with chris hanson and the podcast that's what it is until next time peace

Channel: djvlad

Views: 192,474

Rating: 4.8501439 out of 5

Keywords: VladTV, DJ Vlad, Interview, Hip-Hop, Rap, News, Gossip, Rumors, Drama

Id: CRFrLBqzdzs

Length: 58min 59sec (3539 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Hassberg1]

"I call you Chris Handsome" 🤣

[u/Wizradsandmagic]

I love that Hansen is aware of Lorne.