by Bob Hamer
When the discussion returned to his online chats, he said, “One of my fantasies has been to be with someone like [his eleven-year-old cybersex partner], and I figure that’s as close as I can get. . . . I would never do that . . . get with an eleven-year-old.” Then he added, “After I did that, I was so glad that I had; that is something I wanted for a very long time.”
Jeff didn’t take the bait when I pitched him on our trip to Ensenada. He said he would think about the invitation and described it as a potentially “life-changing experience.” I assured him it most definitely would be. He said he would contact his Long Beach BL friend and see if he was interested. We parted that afternoon, planning to meet again.
We never did. Neither Jeff nor his friend joined us on the “trip” to Mexico. But “Youth 4Bob” contained all we needed for a federal prosecution. The CD contained one hundred graphic sexual images and eight movies of boys in sexually explicit acts, all violations of federal law, the distribution of which carries a minimum mandatory prison sentence of five years. The disc also had twenty-five images of “erotica,” images that presented disturbing, full-frontal nudity of boys, though not rising to the level of “pornography” for federal prosecution purposes. Within a few months, if things went well, Jeff might learn that whether or not he joined us on the February trip, his actions on December 17 would have been a life-changing experience.
David, Todd, and I set up the first of several conference calls for December 12. The call was better than anything the FBI could have expected; it lasted almost forty-five minutes, with both Todd and David making valuable admissions. Todd set up the three-way from his office.
David’s humor was evident from the beginning of the call as he complained that my “mother,” who I said was living with me, was going to inherit the estate upon my untimely demise. When I joked that my real reason for going to Mexico was to find an eleven-year-old to whack my mom, Todd chimed in, “So we’re going to be co-conspirators in two different crimes. One we’ve already discussed and one is murder. This is going to be messy.” The divorced dentist from Dallas had just admitted he knew that the purpose of our planned trip was illegal.
David said in an earlier e-mail that he had to go to Washington for a consulting job. I suggested that David worked for the CIA, which became a running joke. At one point, David and I even discussed the type of recording equipment we used to monitor conversations. When David said he used the sixty-minute tapes to record our calls because he didn’t “want to bother with changing tapes,” Todd laughed, saying we would have to “bs for another fifty-four minutes before we get serious.” Little did they know or suspect that all of our calls were being recorded.
Todd talked about his phone call from Peter Herman warning against traveling. According to Todd, Peter said, “Todd, you’re a fine, upstanding man, and I just don’t want you to do it.” This, too, I knew, would defeat defense arguments of entrapment.
Todd and David attempted to contact Paul Zipszer, but were never able to get past his mother, whom David described as “trailer trash.” Todd said her voice made her sound as if she had been “smoking since age negative eight.” They claimed the third-degree she subjected them to caught both of them off guard. Whatever their complaints, Paul’s mother exhibited a mother’s protective instinct; she tried to keep her thirty-nine-year-old son out of trouble.
I lied when I told them I had recently read an article in the Los Angeles Times stating that criminal matters were a low priority with the FBI because they were concentrating all of their resources on terrorism. David responded, “Thank you, 9/11.”
Although I thought through my basic plan for the travel package, I was flying by the seat of my pants during the call. I said I contacted the travel agency and they forwarded me an application requiring a $200 deposit. The total cost of the trip was $620. I told them my imaginary friend described the facility as similar to the bed and breakfast in Miami. Todd asked questions about the size of the boat and the length of the trip. I again punted and said I would check with my friend for all the “juicy details.” When David asked what happened to the boat after we landed, I said it remained, so we had access to it throughout our stay. We could use it for whale watching or fishing.
Todd asked if the boys would be joining us on the boat trip from the States to Mexico. I explained that the boys were locals and would meet us at the resort. In fact, we were to specify the age range so we would be matched up with boys within the preferred range who would perform the desired sexual acts. Both Todd and David laughed at this; such “shopping” was different than anything they’d ever done.
David explained about his Acapulco experiences. He had a friend who owned a house near the beach. Either his friend would obtain the boys for David or David would stroll the gay beach and pick up a willing juvenile. David described his success as “hit or miss,” depending upon whether the local police had recently done a sweep, limiting the number of boys working the sands. David said when police dragnets didn’t interfere, the selection was large.
Todd’s desired age range was twelve to fourteen, he said, and David wanted “prepubescent” boys.
David contacted a Bob in Los Angeles. David described him as a BL whom he had never met in person, but David knew through friends that Bob traveled to Thailand. David’s second friend was Morgan. He wanted to go but was interested in meeting boys and girls. I said I would check and assumed someone had a sister, so that should not be a problem. Why not jail another pedophile, even if he wasn’t 100 percent BL?
When the issue of costs came up, I scrambled for the piece of paper on which I had roughed out the figures. I told Todd that when I spoke with the travel agency, I didn’t record the call, as David would have, so I had to find my notes. David requested that I just forward my notes after having them notarized and include my fingerprint and DNA analysis. We continued to joke about collecting evidence of our conspiratorial wrongdoing.
It was really my decision to determine how much to charge for the trip. I needed to make it realistic, yet I didn’t want to price anyone out if he was truly committed to traveling in violation of the law. Knowing the judicial system, I also knew I needed to make it expensive enough that the travelers couldn’t argue in court they merely wanted a cheap respite from Chicago winters. Even though accepting a free trip would still be in violation of the law, forwarding a down payment or partial payment was almost irrefutable evidence of intent. I checked online to determine resort prices in the Ensenada region and determined that $70 per night for lodging seemed appropriate. Since this was a bed and breakfast, I settled on $25 per day for meals, bringing the cost per day to $95. For no particular reason, I assessed each traveler a $240 charge for the boat—hey, it was my trip, right? I also noted that my “friend” suggested that additional entertainment and gratuities would roughly work out to about $50 per day, but would vary with each traveler, depending upon what activities they chose to do with the assigned boy. Those added details provided a sense of authenticity.
Todd wanted to take the four-day trip the first time, with the longer stay on a second junket. I suppose he wanted to make sure he was getting value for his money before committing to the lengthier package.
The issue arose as to whether we could get six travelers and whether we wanted to buy out the boat with just the four of us: David, Todd, my imaginary friend, and me. David described this as a worst-case scenario, still hoping we could find six. Trying to add realism, I expressed concern that I didn’t want to be on the boat with people we didn’t know or trust. Todd and David agreed.
Todd kept pressing for more details my “friend” relayed. I essentially made up info off the cuff. I said he had traveled twice, and both experiences were similar. The resort furnished the boys who spend the night with the travelers in their respective rooms. You can spend time alone with the boy or team up for group activities, I told them. You could pal around on the beach, lounge in the room, or go into town. The police look the other way as long as the
re is no abuse. David endorsed my friend’s assessment; he described sex tourism as the “biggest moneymaker these boys have” and said the police recognized this, allowing it to happen. I told them my friend said he kept the same boy throughout the trip, but one traveler turned his boy back in and received another. I said the boys allowed themselves to be videotaped, but David cautioned against it—you can’t be too careful, after all.
I told Todd and David my friend even said you could get multiple boys if that was your desire. David confirmed that one time he had “three boys in Thailand.”
I said the trip sounded “perfect” and Todd agreed: “It sounds great to me.”
So far, so good.
34
HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?
Both Todd and David were concerned about customs and whether to take passports. They were satisfied with my explanation: since we were not going into Mexico through a port of entry, we would be avoiding customs. We would be slipping in and out of the country undetected, and even if boarded by customs on the high seas, there would be no contraband onboard.
I suggested that when writing a check or money order for the deposit, they should include “Johnny Rockets” in the memo section so we would all be identified with the same travel group. The implication that this “huge travel agency” couldn’t keep a few names straight played into the belief that this was a massive organization dedicated to feeding the sexual fantasies of American pedophiles.
Todd complained that his e-mail to the travel agency had not been answered but thought that might have been because he had not mentioned Johnny Rockets. I didn’t correct his impression.
Todd and David wanted to invite Steve Irvin, the schoolteacher from Pittsburgh, but neither had a contact number. Todd felt safe inviting Steve after meeting him in Miami.
We agreed to another conference call the next week, playing on my supposed paranoid belief that phone calls were safer than e-mails. They weren’t, really, when they were being recorded verbatim, but my phone buddies didn’t need to know that.
I wound up the conversation, excited by what I had just recorded. But . . . had the criminal admissions come too easily? The excitement and willingness of both David and Todd was far beyond what I expected from cautious members of a suspect organization. I wondered if this wasn’t what we called a “blue on blue” situation—one undercover cop unknowingly pitted against another. David initiated the criminal conspiracy with his travel talk within only a few minutes of arriving at the Miami conference. Although I didn’t suspect either of being an actual law enforcement official, I suspected that one, especially David, could be an informant. Miami was the first conference he ever attended, and his actions were far different than the way I behaved in New York the year before, as a first-time attendee. Was he “working off a beef,” needing to produce results immediately? I also entertained the idea he was conducting some type of educational study of boy lovers and we were all part of his research. These thoughts would linger in the back of my mind as the investigation proceeded.
In an attempt to placate my concerns, my San Diego case agent researched our files and contacted the Chicago and Dallas offices. Neither David nor Todd was a known informant for the FBI; our counterparts in those offices were unaware of any operation at any level of law enforcement targeting NAMBLA members or “travelers.”
The e-mails continued. David contacted his friends Bob and Morgan and was still awaiting a response, he told me. Todd had nothing on Steve Irvin. When Todd tried to e-mail Paul, it was returned as undeliverable, the same response I received. Between a bad address and Paul’s mother’s vigilance on the phone, I was starting to eliminate Paul Zipszer and his muscular physique from my most-likely-to-be-arrested list.
Todd and I spoke again by phone on December 14. The evidence mounted as the recorder ran. He was preparing to make reservations for his return flight to Dallas following our four-day excursion, and asked me what time the boat would be returning from Ensenada on the Wednesday morning following our sex tour. I wanted to tell him that booking a return flight was the least of his worries, but I resisted the urge.
Todd told me his expectations for the trip included spending time with a “special little friend or a couple.” Todd wasn’t interested in “multiple friends at the same time” but did “want more than one” while he was there, unless he decided his first kid was “the most incredible thing around.”
In most undercover assignments, playing the role of a criminal requires certain legally imposed restrictions as well as practical, self-imposed restraints. Entrapment is always an issue with any undercover operation. For example, is the person predisposed to commit the crime? Did the government merely create the opportunity to violate the law, a violation the individual would have committed if given the opportunity by someone in the criminal element, or did the government somehow induce the violation from someone who was otherwise disinclined?
Self-imposed restrictions are a bit different. A judge or juror might ask, Is the undercover agent more despicable than the criminal? Agents are judged by their language, demeanor, and dress. Whenever possible, I try to imagine my grandmother sitting on the jury. Would she be offended? Would she judge me to be as criminally culpable as the defendant? Typically, I try to let the target drop the f-bombs—although, as I’ve already said, when you’re working the streets and need to blend in, you can’t always talk like a choirboy. Still, there’s a difference, in my view, between protective camouflage and being gratuitously or habitually foulmouthed. Let the bad guy make the suggestive comments and racial slurs, whenever possible.
The NAMBLA case was especially challenging in this regard. Jurors who have any familiarity with TV may forgive a rough-talking undercover agent and may even expect it. Chances are the juror might also resort to foul language in certain circumstances. But throughout this role, I was burdened with passing as a BL, yet not personally detailing sexually explicit acts that would sicken or disgust the jury. This was especially difficult because we needed the targets to discuss the specific sexual acts they desired to perform. We needed details, not generalities. How could I elicit those specifics from their lips without shocking the jury with my own language? It was a constant dilemma.
I preferred the targets to speak in graphic street terms, but I needed to remain almost clinical. I hoped to get each target to detail his desires in the coarsest language, especially concerning his sexual history with underage boys. Yet, at the same time, I knew that if I explored that topic with a suspect, I might be expected to discuss my sexual history as well. On the one hand, I knew that if I portrayed myself as a virgin, my credibility would be destroyed; yet, if I provided lurid details of alleged previous sexual encounters, a jury might view me as disgusting and just as bad as the defendants I was trying to implicate. It was a most difficult line to maneuver.
Based upon my correspondence with incarcerated members who participated in the pen-pal program, I was convinced that if I graphically discussed my history, our targets would respond in kind. I decided, however, to take the high road and tried to skate around the questions as they arose.
Todd, for example, wanted to know my expectations for the trip. My response was cautious. “I hope that I can find someone that wants to love me and let me love them. . . . It’s been a long time since I’ve really been able to spend quality time alone with someone.”
Todd told me he had “never spent quality time. . . . It’s been experiences I can count on a few fingers, and then it’s been rushed or an environment where it was scary because you were afraid you were gonna get caught. . . . So, never have I spent what I would describe as quality time with the age group that I desire. I’m very excited.”
The youngest boy Todd had been with was thirteen, he told me, “ten days away from his fourteenth birthday.” Todd met him at a health club when Todd was attending dental school. Todd was working out and noticed the boy inside the club. When the boy left the club, he “motioned with his head to come outside, and, boy
, did I drop everything.” Todd followed the youngster into the grocery store and stood by the magazine rack, so as not to miss him if he left the store. The boy picked up a magazine and Todd followed him into a closed restaurant deli area of the store. They talked for about two minutes, then went to Todd’s car, he said. They drove to a quiet neighborhood where they engaged in mutual oral sex. “It was awesome,” Todd said. Todd met him again when the boy was fifteen.
When I broached the subject of anal sex, Todd said, “I’m very into that kind of stuff, absolutely. I can’t imagine a typical ten- to twelve-year-old having the ability to accommodate in that way.” But he was looking forward to anal sex. I countered, saying that I “just like to be held and caressed. . . . I want to be able to experience everything that I want to experience.” I was trying to keep the conversation general yet still encouraging to Todd, in case he wanted to make more admissions.
Todd had known for a long time that he was a BL, but was also attracted to women earlier in life. He grew less attracted to women over the years, however. When younger, he was desirous of having children and thought that he could make marriage work. He loved his wife and described their sex life as “good.” But, as the marriage progressed, his wife “gained weight and grew less attractive” to him. This was one of several problems that led to the divorce.
Todd said that while he was working as a nurse’s aide there were opportunities to touch the penis “for like a half second” while bathing a kid, and that “was exciting!”
When I said this travel opportunity was going to be exciting and could be a regular event like the one depicted in the movie Same Time Next Year , Todd responded with a laugh. “Same time next month. . . . How about May? How about September?”
