The Prosecutor: Interview with Brad Casio

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering, how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement, corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil, many feel they are unspeakable.

0:50 Warning. Unspeakable is intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, KJ here back with another episode of Unspeakable. And I told you last week that I was super excited. I was going to have somebody in house today that I just think the world of, and I'm super, super proud to know that you would take the time out to come and talk to me today and to all of my listeners. But if you, I got a lot of feedback last week on the episode that I did about Amy and Layla and the kidnapping and rape and then ultimate conviction in that case and that The prosecutor who went in hard on that case was Brad Cascio. Well, I am just beyond excited to let you know that I have Mr. Cascio in a studio with me today.

1:33 If you want to tell everybody hello. Hey, guys, I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Absolutely. And thank you for I know you're busy and I know that you're you're working hard. So to take the time out to come and just talk to little old me means a lot. And I won't I won't forget that. But I want to start by saying that, first of all, on behalf of my listeners, I want to tell you thank you. Because I think that the job of a prosecutor in a case is this, you know, we don't know these victims personally. I don't. My listeners don't. But we're very invested in them. And we want the best. And we wanted them to get the win. And you got that. And On behalf of me and everyone that listens, I do want to tell you thank you so much because they messaged me and said, oh, my God, it's amazing. I did not think that was going to end this way. What a great story. And we need a win sometimes.

2:17 Yeah, you know, it's nice to be in a position to be able to help people like this. You know, I feel very blessed that I have the opportunity to do these good things for people. And when you're working with these victims, you know, you don't know them when you first meet them. But by the time you go to trial, you're like best friends with them. You know, you feel connected and you start to get invested in it personally. And to have somebody share their most or some of their most intimate situations that obviously they wouldn't want to. You're a stranger to them just as much as the, you know, a rapist would have been at the in the beginning. But to have the ability for them to open up to you and to share these things with you so you can really understand what they went through. What is that like? So that's definitely a slow process. You know, when I first meet with victims, especially children or victims of sexual assault, you got to kind of slow play it because you don't want to go in day one. Here's this man I've never met. Hey, tell me all these horrible things that happened to you. I just introduce myself. I explain more of the process. And I ask them if they have any questions for me. And I just kind of tell them how it's going to work for the next several months going forward. As we get closer to the trial date, we start going into more of the details, just a little at a time, never all at once at one meeting.

3:26 Because you don't want to overwhelm them, I'm guessing. Right. And then especially with children, I'll take them into the courtroom and show them where everybody sits and have them go sit up in the chair. you know, in the witness stand and, you know, just make them comfortable with the room. So it's not their first time walking in the day of trial. Yeah, that's cool. This isn't about me, but I'll just say I was a child once. And I remember during my parents' divorce, which is nowhere near as serious as this, though, that all these adults were talking to me like, you might have to talk to the judge. You might have to do this. And I mean, I remember just being so panicked, like, well, what does that mean? What's going to happen to me? So I'm sure it's a very delicate process, especially in something like this, like you said, to just slowly just let them see it and make it not be something jarring and new and take it at their own speed.

4:08 Yeah, because for a child, if we go back to when we pick a jury, picking a jury is really an art form. And when you're doing these cases involving sexual assault cases, I always pick one member of the jury when I'm talking to them and ask them questions about their life and how they feel about certain issues. Mm-hmm. I'll say, all right, Ms. Jennings, tell me about your last sexual encounter. And they look at me like, I don't want to tell you about that. And I go, look, I really don't want to know. But imagine how that made you feel. Think about the way you felt when I asked you that. Now imagine if you were nine years old or imagine that your last sexual experience was a rape and you were in a room full of strangers, full of adults you've never seen. And you had to talk about that.

4:51 Yeah. And to realize that, Even if you're a kid and you don't understand the full-length implications of it, you know that the sex act was improper. It was incorrect. As a child, you would know that. You would pick up on that. And then to have all these adults staring at you and everyone's hanging on your every word, I'm sure that would be just completely overwhelming. And yeah, what a great example, I would say. It is, yeah. I'll often let the victim, especially children, if they have a favorite stuffed animal, I'll let them bring it into court with them and hold it in the witness stand. The Children's Advocacy Center also has a therapy dog. And we've brought the dog into court before during trials, and the dog sits up there with the kid, and the kid just kind of pets the dog while she's telling her story. Yeah, that's awesome. And I'm glad that we pay attention like that to our victims, because it wasn't always like that.

5:35 I'm sure we've learned a lot over the history of the courtroom and how we interact with our victims. So let me start here. Briefly, if you could just tell me, how did you become a prosecutor? Because when I first heard this, I was tickled by it, because you said that was not the plan. No, never. In my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd be doing this. I don't come from a family of lawyers or a family involved in politics. My mother was a school teacher. My father worked for a car dealership, and then he became a mailman. At the age of 19, I was in trade school to be a mechanic. That's the kind of work I wanted to do. And then for whatever reason, I ended up back at Southeastern, changed majors a couple times, decided to become a criminal justice major.

6:17 I said, man, I want to be a federal agent. I want to travel and do that whole scene. And I met my wife at Southeastern. What was she studying? Do you know? So when I met her, she was studying speech pathology. Okay. But being raised by a teacher, I told her, I said, you know, this is before we were even dating. I said, you really seem like a teacher to me. You've got that quality. And she actually changed her major to education and is a phenomenal elementary school teacher now. You go, girl. Yeah. Then you decided you were going to swap. Well, didn't you say once, you didn't say this on the podcast, radio with me. But didn't you once say that you were going to just pick whatever your friend had picked? Yeah, I asked him. I was like, man, what are you majoring in? And I think accounting or finance. I was like, yeah, I'll try that. I did it for a semester. I said, no, this is not for me.

7:03 But I realized traveling wasn't going to work out. But I was so far along in school, I didn't want to change my major again. So I got a little job in outside sales, and I just didn't like it. It wasn't fulfilling. It was boring. And my wife is the one that told me, you should really go to law school. I said, you are out of your mind. That's for rich people's kids. Like my family, we don't do that kind of thing. You know, how am I going to do that? And she kept pushing and pushing. And so I took the LSAT just kind of on a whim. And I remember I was at a red light at the corner of Highway 51 and Highway 190 in Hammond. And I got my LSAT score emailed to me. And I checked it on my phone and I saw it and I had to read it twice. Excuse me? I did what? This guy?

7:44 And so I called my boss and I was like, look, man, I love you. I'm giving you my four weeks notice. I'm going to law school. He had no idea. He was like, are you kidding me? I was like, no, I'm not. I'm dead serious. And so I went back to construction while I was applying to law school and I went to LSU for law school. I interned a couple of different places trying to figure out what I liked and I just showed up to A-Meet one day. I didn't know who Scott Perilou was. And for our listeners that are not local. Oh, yeah. So Scott Perilou is the current district attorney. Gotcha. This year is his 30th year in office. Yeah, he's been around a while. A long time. So this is 13 years ago, right? No, longer than that. It's probably 15 years ago because I was still in school. And I said, I want a part-time job while I'm in school. And he said, well, we don't have it in the budget. We can't pay you.

8:29 I said, that's okay. Don't pay me. I just want to see if I would enjoy what y'all do here. And so I worked for free for quite a while, but I just fell in love with the work. And I said, okay, I found something that I love. I found something that I know I'm going to be good at, and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. And I've been there ever since. And you did well in law school, obviously. I'm guessing you knocked it out of the park. I did well in law school. Graduated in May of 2013 from LSU Law School. Took the bar that summer. And then he hired me. The bar exam, so you take it in July. But you don't get the results till October. So that's like every day you're just thinking about it. You're laying in bed awake like, oh, my God, I hope I passed. And we got it back in October.

9:12 At the end of October, I passed. And November 1st, I was a felony assistant DA. That is so awesome. I'm so excited for you because I have a dream. I'm too old probably, but I have a dream that I'll go to law school one day. And I just want to go slamming these people in the courtroom that do these things to these innocent victims. And I want them to pay. And, and whatever that means, you know, people like you're mean. No, I'm not. No. I want justice for these people in whatever that means. Yeah. Look, there's a difference, you know, you got to know how to use that prosecutorial discretion. Right. Right. There's some cases you don't go all in and you don't go for the jugular. Right. You know, but, but on these particular type that we're talking about today, absolutely. Let's jump in on that. So last week I dropped an episode on Charles Smith and that is the case that you prosecuted and I got so angry telling this story.

10:02 I think people could tell. I was just getting so mad for just a woman I've never met. Because how dare you do that to somebody? How dare you think that you can do that? So I wanted to start by asking you this. How often do you find yourself today, current times, prosecuting sex crimes? More often than I'd like. I would say... You know, I'm one of six assistant DAs. There's six felony divisions in every parish. Okay. And we each keep somewhere between 250 and 350 open felony files at a time. Okay. The vast majority, probably 75%, is drugs or drug-related. You know, that's our number one crime around here. That's our biggest problem. But second to that is domestic abuse and sexual assault. Okay.

10:45 It's almost mind-blowing, but I like it coming from the horse's mouth here that it's not being blown out of proportion when we say that these crimes are everywhere and they're happening all the time just because they're not in your face or you're not seeing the outcomes. Oftentimes, we don't, as the public, get to see the outcomes of them. This happened right in our backyard, and I had no idea about it until I really started reading on this case. I was like, golly, that was just right down the road, places I go, places I drive every day. Yeah. Whenever you decide to take a case, you look at the reports from the officers and you say, okay, great, we've got a solid case here. You do what you've got to do. Whenever you decided to press charges or to take the case and prosecute, when you first met the victims, that was very soon on in the process or was that after you had more kind of built the case? Like at what point do you meet the victims?

11:34 So in this particular case, because the charges were so serious, I meet them pretty early on. Okay. Because I know this is a case that's likely to go all the way to trial. Okay. You know, because the guy was looking at three life sentences, you know, as a maximum penalty. And when you're looking at a life sentence, if you're going to plea it out, you know, you've got to have some problems with your case, right? Or you've got to have some witness problems, things like that. But ultimately, most of these will go to trial because no one's going to plead a life. Right. Like, why would they do that? I'll, you know, I'll roll the dice. Right. You know? Well, I actually talked to the officer in this case and I'm glad you said that because I was talking to him about it and he said, yeah, I remember when I spoke with the prosecutor in this one, I kind of walked in, just kind of talking and was like, okay, so, you know, what kind of deal is he going to get?

12:20 And he said, that man looked at me and said, deal. There's going to be no deal on this one. There's going to be nothing. He said, we're going to take this one all the way home. Yeah. And he was like, all right. Like, you know, he liked it, you know. Well, it was a solid case. And I always talk to the victim first because sometimes these victims don't want to testify. They don't want to face their accuser. They don't want to go through all that, you know, because it re-traumatizes them a lot of times. Yeah. But the victim in this case, her courage and bravery was something that we don't see all that often. Tell me about her as much as you can without, tell me what you, I don't know if you were able to listen to the episode or not, but I kind of gave how I felt about her. What was your feeling about her as a person? Well, if I remember correctly, she was about 27. You know, she was raising her two-year-old daughter. And you could just kind of get this sense that she was very independent.

13:09 You know, she took care of herself. She took care of her kid. And, you know, she was making it on her own kind of thing. And she was well put together, would you say? Oh, yeah. No, very presentable, very well put together. She didn't have any criminal history. You know, she really didn't have any issues other than this one particular case. serious issue. And what a woman. What a woman, man. She stuck that one out and she won. You know, I don't know how to say it other than that, but she won. And whoever you are, ma'am, I hope that you're listening to this, but whoever you are, you're my hero. And your little one, your little one is my hero, too, because I went through something together that I think is a lot of people wouldn't be tough enough to go into a courtroom and stand up to their attacker and face them and say what happened. And she did.

13:55 Yeah. You know, some people aren't. But I think you know, not even in the courtroom, but during the actual progress of that crime, like while it was being committed, what she went through, you know, just in the back of her mind of, I have to do this to keep my daughter safe. I don't want him to take off with my child. I don't want him to hurt my child. I have to be able to stay in the car with my child to go through what she went through to protect your child says a lot about how she is as a mother. Yeah. And as a human being, you know, that you're not willing to self-sacrifice for that baby. And that's, I just, it means the world to me that we have people out there, because I'm telling you, I'd fight a bear for my babies. I'm telling you. So you got those life sentences in this case. He's gone forever. And something that I like to mention is that we can never count how many lives have been saved or victims have been saved by this because it'll never happen. So you can't necessarily put into numbers of how much it means to have someone put away like this. But what was it that, my listeners don't know this, but you took it to the next level after that conviction, because we had two big cases that came about in the next few years. There was the William Porter case and the Glenn Sullivan case. Can you tell us a little bit about each of these guys and what you decided to do when I mean take it to the next level?

15:13 Yeah, so Glenn Sullivan was the next case out of this list in order. And he had impregnated a 14-year-old girl And how old was he? 54, if I remember correctly. 54 years old, impregnating a 14-year-old girl. Yeah. And he forced the girl to lie to her family about who the father was. He made her say that it was a random guy at a high school party. She didn't even know his name. She has this baby. She's raising this baby. After two or three years, she just can't take it anymore. And she comes out and she says what actually happened. And so because we have an actual child, right, we can do a DNA test. Right. And it matches. He is the father. As Maury would say, right?

15:54 You are the father, yeah. And so he couldn't deny it. We also had him on jail calls talking to his mom. She's like, Glenn, did you do it? And he's just like, yeah, mama, I did it. Oh, my God. So there was no doubt he did it. But he was a very strange fellow. I think there were a lot of talk about him. And, man, everybody felt uneasy about him for a number of years from what I can tell. But nobody could ever really pin him for something. I got you. Thank you. There was talk about as far as him with children? Just being a dirtbag, just a general dirtbag. This guy's never going to get right. Did he have any priors? I don't remember him having any serious priors sticking out in my memories.

16:36 This has been— I understand. It's been a while. That conviction was two and a half years ago, a little more, a little more than two and a half years. But one day I was going through Title 14, and I come across this law about physical castration. Hmm. Now, up until this point, I knew about chemical castration, and I had done a few of those. And what that is is it's a series of injections of essentially estrogen female hormone therapy. Now, they still go to prison. Don't get me wrong. Everybody's still going to prison for this. But this estrogen, there's been a study. They did it to like 400 inmates, and it showed a reduction in sex drive, and they don't even want to have sex anymore. And so– I was doing those. But then I found physical castration. And I looked at it and I kind of read it again.

17:24 I said, Mom, make sure I'm reading this right. And I went into Mr. Paraloo's office. I said, hey, boss, did you know about this? And he didn't know. It had been on the books since 2008. So the option was there to physically, surgically castrate these men versus the temporary reversible injections that they get. Correct. Right. And so I said, do you mind if I start doing this? And he didn't tell me no. So that's all I needed to hear. I said, all right, I have the perfect candidate because there's no doubt about his guilt. There's no doubt that he is a dirtbag. And he's, at this point in his life, if you're 54 years old and you're behaving like this, you've probably been doing it for a very long time. Correct.

18:06 I would agree. And you're probably never going to stop. Because once somebody's wired like that, you know, I had a defense lawyer one time. It was on a child pornography case. And he was actually one of my professors at LSU Law School. And he came to me. He said, Brad, I'm going to send my client to a rehab in Philadelphia. He's going for eight weeks. It's going to cost him like $ 6, 000 a week. We're going to cure him of his addiction. Okay. I said, sir, I need to stop you right there. I said, I respect you as an intellectual and as an attorney. I think you're a very bright man. I said, but you can't fix this. There's no rehab or reform in these people. I said, you know, I like adult women. You can send me to rehab for eight years. Guess what?

18:48 I'm still going to like adult women when I get out. You know, it's just how I'm wired. And unfortunately for your client, that's how he's wired. So knowing that this guy's never going to change, Glenn Sullivan, I decided that's the one we need to do. Now, that was under the old law where he actually had to agree to it. And so, you know. So how did that go? Well, let me, I want to say this real quick. It also infuriates me to a different level that it's bad enough he got this little girl pregnant, but then he made her bite the bullet and make it look like she was sleeping around at a party and that she got pregnant by some random kid. You know what I mean? That's another level of victimization, I feel like, just by making her have to lie and do all those things. But now he's admitting he's done it to his mama. He really didn't put up much of an argument, it seems like, at all that he had done it, other than he said, I didn't do it, and then he was The DNA was put in his face. He's like, okay, fine, I did.

19:42 Basically. Pretty much. That's pretty much what happened. All right. And so he's found guilty. And then when you come forward with the, oh, by the way, we're also going to cut your nuts off for lack of a better term. Okay. You know, how'd that go? He was surprised. Let's put it to you that way. He was very shocked. He did not want to do that at first. You know, so this is all part of the, we haven't gone to trial yet or anything. I'm just saying, look, if you want to plead guilty, I'll give you 50 years, but we're also going to physically castrate you. But hey, having a number behind your name sounds pretty good because you have a chance of potentially getting out. Yep. Now, he's 54. He's not getting out, right?

20:24 And his lawyer said, well, how are you going to do that? And I said, well, and I opened it up and I showed it to him. I said, look, we can definitely do this. Well, no one's ever done that. I said, it doesn't mean we can't. It's the first time for everything. And so there was some back and forth and he wasn't real thrilled about it. But ultimately, I had to draft a motion in order that he signed, his lawyer signed, I signed, and then the judge signed it. And that was part of his sentence. And then I'd say about a month later, I got a phone call from somebody within Department of Corrections. And he said, Brad, I just received a motion in order you drafted to have somebody castrated. I said, yes, sir, you did. And he said, well, what do you expect us to do?

21:08 And I joked about my friends in La Ronja that have bulls. And I said, man, you could just put some bands on them and call it a day. They'll be fine. No problem. And I said, look, realistically, this is no different than if you have an inmate that has appendicitis and they have to have their appendix removed. You know, DOC has doctors and surgeons and dentists. Yeah, they have everything. Yeah, on contract. And if our tax dollars can be used to pay for a child molester to have open heart surgery if he needs it, it ought to be able to use it to pay for a castration. I mean, hell, Derek Todd Lee, serial killer, he got a pacemaker. Right. We got to keep you alive so we can kill you later. I mean, it's kind of wild. It doesn't make any sense to me. No. And this is the thing, too, I want to bring up to my listeners. All right. So there's an argument against...

21:52 chemical castration. Let's start there, right? Because they're getting Depo-Provera or whatever it is that they're being injected with. And okay, y'all, the symptoms the men get are going to be very similar to the ones we women go through. Their breasts might enlarge. They might get heat flashes. Okay, well, we've been doing that for years. Okay, so wah, cry me a river. But the problem I find with just doing that is if they are to get out and then they're done, right? They stop getting the shot. They go right back to. Well, so that's the thing. If they get out, they have to stay on it the rest of their life. If it's in the sentence. Yeah, they have to come in on a schedule and have it done for the rest of their life. And they have to get drug tested because if they ever miss an injection or they test positive for testosterone, if they're taking steroids to combat it and overcome it, that's a new charge and they go back to prison.

22:41 Nice. Because you're never going to be able to take away the mind of the individual. And the other thing, too, just because I want to open listeners' eyes maybe to think about this, too, that some people are like, oh, it's brutal. I know you said one time you had a guy call in from like another— Oh, a guy. From Canada called me repeatedly for like a week. I can't believe you would do this. This is inhumane. It's brutal. You bunch of rednecks down there in Louisiana. You should have said, yee-haw, and hung up. Well, finally I had enough of it. And I said, sir, where are you from? And he said, Canada. Canada. I said, well, the way you're defending this man, it sounds like you might be the same kind of person he is. So if I was you, I'd stay out of Louisiana. Stay right over there. Yeah. Well, since you can't rewire the brain of these people, the problem, too, would be that let's say that they did somehow cheat the system because we know criminals are going to do that. You know, they can then continue to offend people or children or whatever when they get out.

23:33 But they also just because they can't perform justice. Standard sexual means doesn't mean that their fingers aren't there, that there's not tools there. These people are very perverse in what they're willing to do. And so when you are doing this physical castration, it's not reversible. Right. Right. And so they're kind of stuck with it. Yeah. And I've read a lot of the comments online, right? Like, oh, he still has hands. It doesn't affect his mind. But it kind of does affect their mind. I mean, you're taking out all their testosterone. So the drive reduces. The mental drive is not there anymore. And there's medical studies that show that. And I followed a study in the same regard on this because I looked deeply into it before this. And they did some interviews of these offenders that had been physically castrated. And they said that while sex would come up, every blue moon in their mind, it's not like it would go away. It was just like a mild passing thought.

24:29 It didn't stimulate. It didn't. The drive to like, seek it just was not there. And so long-term you're saving victims. If you take the drive away, it's like, take, I guess when a, when a drug addict no longer is searching for the drug, I guess, in a way. Kind of what it is a good analogy, you know, but the other part of that is in my mind is that it sends a message to, to all the other offenders out there, right? If you, if they know, Hey, in the 21st judicial district in Louisiana, you get caught doing this, you're getting castrated, you know, It may make them think twice, or if nothing else, you know, maybe they'll go somewhere else. Yeah. You know, because as the DA here, assistant DA here, my job is to protect this community. You know, I can't do much for the people outside of this community, but my job is here.

25:17 I got you. And I'm with you. And I really support it. I just, I feel like in a world, we live in a world now where everyone's supposed to be just so nice. And I tell everybody, no, you're required to be a good person, not a nice person. And once you've been offended by somebody like this, I'm with you. Do what we got to do to protect the children, protect women and anybody really that they would become victims of theirs. So let me ask you this. What specific problem do you think physical castration is going to solve that the existing sentences do not? I know we kind of covered that probably, but. Yeah. Well, again, it really removes that sex drive from them. You know, it takes it basically out of their mind almost entirely. That's what the studies show. But again, it sends a message. It sends a message that we're not going to tolerate you hurting our children here. And we're going to use everything we can. Look, if the legislature is willing to give me a tool to use to combat crime, I'm going to use it. That's why it wasn't there to fill space in the book. Yeah. It was there for us to use it. Yeah. So why not?

26:16 I agree. It's there. Let's hand it out. You get like Oprah. You're the Oprah of Livingston Parish. You get a castration and you get a castration. Now, let me ask you this. Which sex offenders are eligible for this penalty? So it's very limited. You know, they really limited it in scope. You know, it used to be called aggravated rape. Now it's referred to as first degree rape, you know, sexual battery under 13. It's, you know, it's very finite, very finite ones that you can use it for. It's not your it's not your everyday, you know, sex crime. I say that and it sounds like I'm numb to it. Right. I get around it all the time. Just everything doesn't apply, though. So it's not like you're just running around literally doing this to everybody. Oh, no. This is the worst of the worst. It's saved for very horrendous and atrocious situations beyond your wildest imagination, not to diminish any other situations that have occurred.

27:09 Right. All right. And so would you ever support physical castration as a mandatory in any type of situation? Specific type of offense, do you think? So for these worst of the worst cases that we use it for now, I think it should be mandatory. That's one of the platforms I'm using in my campaign that I'm standing on. That's going to become office policy. If there is a case where physical castration is allowed by law, we are going to do it. I love that. Every time. To that point, you are running for district attorney out here. And so I know I have listeners that are all over, but to my local folks, pay attention to that because you're listening to the man right here answer these questions.

27:50 And I know that you're open. You're on Facebook, aren't you? We are. And you can go follow him on Facebook and you can ask questions and interact and see kind of what he's doing out here. And I love that. So that will become the policy of your office if you're elected. 100%. Is that we go for it in any situation that's available. Yes. I love that. So you said before or you had mentioned that the old law was that they had to agree to it. That's since changed? That's since changed. Last year it changed for the same offenses. The court can do it on the state's motion that the court wants, even if the defendant doesn't want it. Got you. So it's not mandatory. You know, the judge can say no.

28:31 I got you. But. We don't need the defendant's consent anymore. Good. Because the victims didn't give their consent either. Thank you. Thank you. But it only applies to crimes that occurred after the change in the law. So even if you committed the crime before and it's still pending, we can't utilize that. Understand. But moving forward, it's good to know that that would be a great policy. I think you're moving in the right direction. And so tell me this. You said he was surprised. That was Glenn, right? Right. Whenever that was brought up, it came out of left field. Did you feel some type of way when you threw it out there? Yeah, I knew he was going to be surprised because no one's ever talked about it. And I'm sure that physical castration was not on Glenn Sullivan's bingo card when he came to court that day. Right.

29:14 But it's also not let's make a deal. That's not what this is. This is more like, hey— This is what you should do. This is what we'd like you to do, and it'll benefit everybody, including yourself, help you calm down and not do. So what about William Porter? So talk to me about his case. William Porter is a guy that really sunk his own ship. Okay. He was being investigated by a lot of different agencies for possession of child pornography. Okay. And, you know, they have, the way that works is for people that don't understand, it's pretty interesting. Every file that's ever been saved on a computer has what's called a hash number or a hash value. And it's like a, like a social security number or a fingerprint. They're all different. Okay.

29:58 And the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, has a database of known child pornography, and they store it by their hash numbers. So certain files. Certain files. So if they're shared, you can follow the hash. Correct. So it alerts the system, hey, somebody's sharing this file that we know is child pornography. So that hits at NCMEC. Somebody pulls it up, looks at it, verifies it is what it is, and they reach out to whatever agencies in that area. They get a warrant for the IP address. They get the IP address, and they go to the service provider, whether it's Cox or Charter or AT & T, whoever, with a warrant to them. And then we get the subscriber information, their name, their address.

30:40 And so we know exactly where they're at, and we can find out when it was downloaded. Look, you know the exact address where it was downloaded or uploaded. You know the time and date, like down to the minute of when that file was accessed. And even if they delete it, it doesn't matter because it's already. We already got it. Yeah, you already got it. We already got it. Love it. I had a guy actually admit the other day, there's no way they got that child porn from my computer because I deleted it before they showed up. And he said it in court on the record. And I looked at my court reporter and I was like, hey, can I get that please? Ding, ding, ding. There it is. Wow. So they execute a search warrant at William Porter's house to take his computers and his phones and that kind of thing. And the agents are talking to him about the child porn. And not only does he admit to the child porn, he then admits to a sex act on a juvenile.

31:31 Just right there. Right there. Just out of the blue. And the agents were kind of, they were shocked, right? They looked at each other like, wait a minute, what did you just say? And he just confessed to it again. And I had pulled some of that because I was reading through it. And from what I understand, it was a nine-year-old victim, correct? That's a second grader. Right. And he was abusing this child just, you know. So for people who say, oh, child porn, that's something I wanted to ask you about. The ruling by these federal judges that this AI child porn, oh, that should be protected, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a testament to why I can't understand that. Anybody that is fueled by child pornography, you think that they're not going to want a real victim?

32:12 It always, inevitably, if we don't stop it, it will escalate to that. Yes. You know, like it used to be the men that would flash people in public. You know, you had your flashers. Yeah. They would start doing that until that didn't, you know, do anything for them anymore. Yeah. And then they would start groping and touching and grabbing, and then it leads to raping. Yeah. It's the same thing with child porn. Yeah. No one's going to look at something and then not– I mean, hell, we look at a menu before we order. Why? Because we want to get prepared for what we're about to eat. And so this is one of those exact things. Like, you just thought you were going in– not just for, but, you know, for child pornography, not with a live victim. Then you roll out of there with a living, breathing victim right there, you know– not even expecting that. No, I don't think anybody expected that.

32:53 And so what ended up happening with him? Um, same situation as Glenn, you know, um, he agreed to it. He did. And he did not at first, it took him a few months of coming back and forth to court. And I kept telling this lawyer, I'm not budging on this. Yeah. He can either do this or we're going to go to trial and I'm still going to ask for it. Yeah. Good. Um, Good. I mean, this is just, you know, there's some things that like I heard you say before, like you can at least understand why someone got where they were. Like if you got mad and you pulled a trigger. Right. It wasn't right. You know, but. You can still follow the logic. You can follow it. You know, a drug addict who breaks into a car to steal, to get money, to go buy dope. I don't agree with it, but I follow the logic. I see how you got there.

33:35 Yeah. None of this makes sense. No. And it's not something we can predict either. It's very hard to, I think. Without seeing red flags, which are– then that means things are happening, right? Right. So let me ask you this. What about juvenile sex offenders? How do you– where is the line drawn in the law insofar as castration of juvenile offenders? I don't think we're allowed to do that. I wouldn't think so. Yeah. But– I wouldn't– I don't think we're allowed to do that to juveniles. I would say that on juvenile sex offenses, those are really, you got to take them case by case. You got to treat those totally differently.

34:20 I agree. We don't have to go in more depth. I just was curious if you were going to be– I didn't know if you were going to be like, oh, well, actually. No, no, no, no, no. I was like, oh, God. Wow. All right. And so the medical professionals that carry this out, like I think you touched on that too, that that's just going to be like going for a procedure, get it done, and then go back. I mean, I can't see why it would be any different. Yeah. You know, we use our tax dollars all the time to perform, you know, so inmates can have surgeries and doctor visits and dental visits. I got you. This is just a procedure form. And so as far as motive of going for this, would you say it's a combination of incapacitation and deterrence and retribution and public safety? Or would you say it's more one or the other? What is your ultimate viewpoint on that?

35:05 I think it's a combination of, you know, stopping them from ever being able to do this again or doing as much as we can, right, to stop them from ever doing this again to somebody. Mm-hmm. and sending a message to every other offender out there. This is not the place to play around. I love it. Tell me this, considering everything we have discussed today, I want to tell you this, though. I do appreciate your viewpoint and that you're going after this on these offenders. And again, not because I'm mean, but because we got to do something. This is getting out of control with technology today. It's... Technology, look, social media and technology, you know, it's great for stuff like this. Yeah. Right? But... Just like anything else in this world, when advancement gets in the hands of evil people, they use it for evil things. The amount of cases that start with a juvenile and a phone, it's always a phone. For years, since I've been an assistant DA, 13 years, I've been going to schools and talking to kids about their phones, saying you really need to be careful what you're doing on that phone. When you're on Snapchat, when you're on these apps and you're talking to people and you're sending pictures, you don't know who you're sending that to. You don't really know who you're talking to.

36:13 And it's like they don't get it. And that's actually what I was rolling into. What would your advice be in these situations of the things that you've seen over and over and over again, just over and over again? The answer seems to be don't give your kid a phone. Yeah. You know, my daughter is going to be 12 in a couple weeks. And she's like, Daddy, I really want a cell phone for my birthday. And I said, I love you, but you're not getting one. Yeah. You know, there's no need for her to have one yet. Now, when she starts going out on her own, you know, in her teenage years. And driving. Yeah, she's going to have a phone. Right. And I'm not joking when I say this. She thinks I'm joking. It's probably going to be a flip phone. All she needs to do is to be able to call people. Hey, we had pagers, okay? We had to go get a pay phone.

36:54 That's right. Okay? My little boyfriend in high school, I'd put in 143. So it'd say, I love you. And I'd page him just so he would know. Okay. We had to live in the hard times back then. That's right. The struggle. They'll be okay. They'll be all right. There's just, you know, there's no need for a kid to have unfettered, unsupervised access to everything on the internet. Because there's so much bad stuff out there and there's so many bad people on the other end of that phone. You know, here in Livingston, I've been working with our ICAC team for years. And when Chris Hansen comes to town, I've been on five or six of those undercover operations. And it is frightening when you, you know, the LPSO will make a profile of a 15-year-old girl, set it up, send something out there. Within a matter of 20 or 30 minutes, you've just got messages coming in. inappropriate photographs, inappropriate questions. One night at an apartment in Denham Springs, we had 11 men show up in one night thinking they were meeting a 15-year-old kid. I mean, they were rolling in one after the other.

37:56 Just like clockwork. One guy drove all the way from Arkansas. And I can remember thinking like, man, you had like six and a half hours to think about what you were doing and change your mind and turn around. And all he did was press that gas harder. We had a doctor from HOMA. one man came in with a book sack, and when they looked into it, he had bungee cords and a pistol. Yeah. And I think about all these kids, you know, I think about a lot of kids that, you know, I'm a helicopter mom, and I don't care. You're going to go through me. That's all I can tell you. You're going to go through me. But I think about all these kids that don't have that. But for some reason, they always seem to have a phone. They won't even be fed, but they'll have a phone. And I think about the thing my daddy, my stepdaddy's a Marine, okay?

38:44 And something he told me when I was in like fifth grade, I've never forgotten it. He said, baby, don't ever forget that if the enemy is in close range, so are you. And so when I think about the cell phone, we're telling our kids, be careful about what you put out there. Be careful about, but what's happening is they're not realizing is that what's on the other side of the phone is coming after them. And it's like, I don't think they understand that. It's not even you really. You could be innocent. doing just putting normal pictures. They're going to be coming after you. They're looking for you. I mean, these guys are on there. They're looking for people. And every single guy that shows up at these sting operations, they all say the same thing. I've never done this before. There is no way somebody is so unlucky the first time they have an inappropriate chat.

39:30 with a child online, it's actually the police on the other side. There's just no way. And they say it like 15 times. Yeah. I'm 13. We make it very clear. They make it very clear that they are underage. Are you okay with that? You know, my parents aren't home. I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to get you in trouble. And they just don't, they don't care. You know, and when you talk about parents giving their kids phones and not really paying attention, you know, my wife and I remind each other of this all the time. Being a parent is hard if you're a good parent. Yeah. You know, it's very easy to be a parent if you're just going to throw a phone at them and just walk away and have them entertain themselves. Right. But what you're doing is setting your kid up for a disaster.

40:12 It's frightening. I know it's becoming almost a necessary thing nowadays to have some type of communication with your child. But just be aware. I tell parents, be aware of what apps are on your kids' phones. At nighttime, for instance, when your kid's at home and they're going to bed, take the phone. Put it on the charger in your room because why else would they need it? Right. And I'll tell you something in my household, too. The second you turn that phone over or you swipe out of something when I walk up, you've lost it. Give it to me. Let me see it because there's no reason. And I'm not talking about a little cuss word here and there, which I do not condone. My kids better not be cussing. But what I'm saying is, you know, I understand kids are going to do silly things like that.

40:54 But it's the one time you don't check that it could be a communication with somebody that'll take your kid and never see him again. Yeah. You know, come pick him up and you never see him again. I had a case here in Livingston of a started out on the phone, on the Internet, talking. And it was an underage girl. I believe she was in the city of Walker, if I'm not mistaken. It's been several years. And the defendant was in his late 20s. He drove from Texas to her house. And he walked up to the door and knocked on the door. Well, he was at the neighbor's house on accident. And, you know, a man answered the door and he was like, oh, I'm here to see, you know, so-and-so. And the man said, well, she lives next door. And he closed the door and he said, well, that was weird. So he called that girl's dad or stepdad, I can't remember now, and told him he came home. He was packing her suitcase. He had a hotel reservation on the other side of town.

41:48 He was going to leave the house with that child. It's a real deal. And look, I'm still figuring out this parent thing, right? My oldest is about to be 12. My two boys are eight and six. It's a hard thing to figure out because you know, you get scared off. I'm too overbearing. They're going to, they're going to lash out and they're going to, you know, they're going to get wild whenever they get a second of freedom. Yeah. But if you just cut them loose and don't watch them, they're going to get in trouble. So where do you find that balance? That's hard. You'll just have to hate me today and love me tomorrow. That's where I'm at. Hate me today and love me tomorrow. Cause I want you to live to enjoy your life and not have something traumatic happen to you that I can't undo. Well, listen, thank you so much for your insight because I love having the person who actually deals with it and does it sitting across from me and, I hope that in the future, maybe we could do some other cases I could cover of yours. And, you know, we could get back together and we can talk about it. Will you be at Fall Fest?

42:40 I will. In Denham Springs? Yes. Cool. I'll be at Fall Fest, too, for my local listeners. If you are going to be out there, look for me. I'll have a booth, my unspeakable booth. And then, Cassio, you'll be out there. We'll be out there. You know, you can shake his hand, tell him hello, and say, hey, I heard about you. Yeah, we'll probably have a booth out there as well. Okay, perfect. So, yeah. Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Yeah, thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. No problem. And until next time, we will catch you on the flip.