Bill Conradt was a Texas prosecutor whose 2006 case became closely linked to NBC’s To Catch a Predator. Police and the show’s crew went to his home as part of a sting operation, but Conradt died by suicide.
Now, Primetime, an A24 film starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, revisits the 2006 sting operation carried out by To Catch a Predator with the Murphy Police Department.
Who was Bill Conradt?
Louis William “Bill” Conradt Jr was born on January 30, 1950, in Kaufman County, Texas. He was the only son of Louis William Conradt Sr and Montie Estelle King, according to his obituary, as per People.
He grew up in Terrell, Texas, with his younger sister, Patricia Conradt. He was president of his high school class before attending the University of Texas, according to Esquire.
Conradt later earned his law degree from Texas Tech University. By the age of 30, he had become the district attorney for Kaufman County.
In 2000, Conradt moved back to the Texas home where he grew up after his parents died. He never married.
In 2002, after more than 20 years as district attorney, Conradt ran for district judge but lost. The loss reportedly affected him deeply, and he did not work for nearly a year.
He later returned to law and became the chief felony assistant district attorney in nearby Rockwall County, Texas, according to CBS News.
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What was Bill Conradt accused of?
In November 2006, police in Murphy, Texas, worked with NBC News and internet activist group Perverted Justice to set up a sting operation, as per New York Times.
A Perverted Justice member posed as a teenager and exchanged messages with a user named “inxs00.” Murphy police allegedly confirmed that the account belonged to Conradt.
The messages were reportedly “sexual in nature,” Xavier von Erck, then-operations director of Perverted Justice, told The Times.
However, the messages between the decoy and Conradt suddenly stopped. Conradt never went to the house set up for the sting. He also started deleting his MySpace profile, apparently trying to remove his online activity.
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What happened to Bill Conradt?
Dateline producers urged Murphy police to get an arrest warrant for Conradt and a search warrant for his home.
On November 5, 2006, Murphy police, two Terrell police officers, a tactical team and the camera crew from Dateline’s To Catch a Predator, including host Chris Hansen, went to Conradt’s home to carry out the warrants.
Conradt refused to open the door, so the tactical team forced its way inside. SWAT officers found Conradt in a hallway. He then went into a dark room and shot himself in the head.
He was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where he was pronounced dead. An NBC News spokeswoman told The New York Times that no one from Dateline had contacted Conradt. She also said there was no indication that he knew the camera crew was outside before his death.
In July 2007, Conradt’s sister Patricia filed a $105 million lawsuit against NBC Universal, according to TODAY. In the lawsuit, Patricia alleged that NBC was “concerned more with its own profits than with pedophilia.”
The suit also claimed a police officer told a Dateline producer, “That’ll make good TV,” after Conradt’s death. NBC settled with the Conradt family in June 2008 for an undisclosed amount.
NBC cancelled To Catch a Predator in 2007 and parted ways with Hansen in 2013.
