Posing As Girl, Retired Cop Nabs Prey

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Photos of some of the suspects arrested through investigations by former Diamond, Mo., police chief Jim Murray hang in an office in his home near Diamond, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008. Since retiring in 2000, Murray now regularly patrols the Internet in the persona of a 13-year-old girl, and his work has resulted in 20 arrests of men accused of making online solicitations for sex, including most recently the mayor of Collins, Mo. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) (Mark Schiefelbein - AP)

Jim Murray, a retired chief of the Diamond, Mo., police department, speaks in his home near Diamond on Wednesday, Jan., 16, 2008, about his role in a sting that led to the arrest on Tuesday of Collins, Mo., mayor Allen Kauffman on four counts of felony enticement of a child. Murray, who posed as a 13-year-old girl in alleged online chats with Kauffman, revealed that Kauffman had telephoned him on Wednesday morning asking Murray to destroy the evidence of their conversations. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) (Mark Schiefelbein - AP)

Former Diamond, Mo., police chief Jim Murray explains his techniques for investigate alleged online pedophiles as he sits in an office in his home near Diamond, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008. Since retiring in 2000, Murray now regularly patrols the Internet in the persona of a 13-year-old girl, and his work has resulted in 20 arrests of men accused of making online solicitations for sex, including most recently the mayor of Collins, Mo. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) (Mark Schiefelbein - AP)

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By MARCUS KABEL

The Associated Press
Friday, January 25, 2008; 8:52 AM

DIAMOND, Mo. -- No one will ever confuse Jim Murray with a teenager. His tall frame, broad shoulders and clipped gray hair give him away for the grandfather he is.

But the 69-year-old retired police chief of this small Missouri town cuts a credible figure as a 13-year-old girl surfing the Web, looking for friends. He knows all the instant-messaging shorthand, the emoticons.

Murray's retirement job from a rural home office has netted 20 arrests since he started in 2002. His latest catch was the biggest: four felony enticement charges against a town mayor, who after his arrest called Murray up and begged him to make the case go away.

Nineteen other defendants have included a Missouri furniture company executive, an Arkansas professor and a Tulsa, Okla., school security guard. Ten of those men have been convicted and sent to prison. One was deported. The other cases are still pending.

The defendants ranged in age from 24 to 62, with an average age of 39.4 years, and mainly come from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, Diamond police said.

Internet child safety experts say police officers like Murray are heroes who do good work at the cost of wading through the muck of online pedophile fantasies.

"He's a trailblazer. 2002 was very early for smaller police departments to start doing this," said Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a children's Internet safety group.

Murray, who taught elementary school for 27 years before switching to police work, is more humble.

"This is really about the kids," he said.

The first thing he hands a reporter at the start of an interview is a neat packet of newspaper stories about Kacie Woody, a 13-year-old girl in neighboring Arkansas who was abducted, raped and killed by a man she met online. It's not a case Murray worked on. Instead, he said, it's "a motivator."

Murray said he manages to shake the online conversations out of his head after a while, but they can still make him angry.

"There'll be times when you just want to reach through the screen and choke them or slap them," he said. "To think they could talk that way to a girl."

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