To Catch A Predator And How Suicide Makes For “Good TV”
BUDDING Donal Macintyres and Roger Cooks beware. If the subject of your undercover expose decides to top himself, you could be hauled into court.
Patricia Conradt is suing NBC Universal for $105 million after her brother shot himself as a TV crew surrounded his Texas home to expose him as an alleged sexual predator.
Louis William Conradt Jr., 57, was caught in a sting operation by “Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator.” The show employs people posing as underage children in online chat rooms to lure suspected “predators” to a house that is fitted with cameras and where the show’s host, Chris Hansen, lies in wait along with police.
The lawsuit alleges that Conradt didn’t take the bait after a sexually explicit online chat with someone posing as a 13-year-old boy. So the Dateline crew swarmed the yard of his house where Conradt, an assistant prosecutor for Rockwall County, took his life.
His sister maintains that the TV company should have known such an outcome was possible. Her suit states that: “The suicide was reasonably foreseeable…Having trespassed and invaded upon Bill’s property to broadcast a spectacle to millions, the defendant took no more steps toward protecting him than are received by a gladiator or bull.”
According to the New York Sun, the lawsuit also claims that after the shooting a police officer at the scene told a “Dateline” producer: “That’ll make good TV.”
A spokeswoman for NBC Universal told the Associated Press: “We have not yet received the lawsuit, but we plan to defend ourselves vigorously as we believe the claims in the suit to be completely without merit.”
Posted: 25th, July 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink
