Town mayor criticizes child sex sting

MURPHY, Texas, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The mayor of a Dallas suburban town has criticized a weekend child sex sting that resulted in the suicide of a suspect.

Murphy, Texas, Mayor Bret Baldwin said while his town's police were aware of the operation that used a decoy house in the town of 3,000 people 20 miles northeast of Dallas, he hadn't been told of it in advance.

Murphy police, along with a volunteer group called Perverted Justice and the NBC news show "Dateline" set up the sting last week, that resulted in the arrests of 22 men who were allegedly going to the house to have sex with children they met on the Internet, the Houston Chronicle reported. The "children" were volunteers with Perverted Justice.

The mayor said he had reservations about the technique employed and the use of his town as a baiting center.

"I don't think bringing predators into the middle of our neighborhoods where children live is the answer to the problem," Baldwin told the Chronicle.

One suspect, former Kaufman County, Texas, District Attorney Louis Conradt, failed to show up. When police went to his house Sunday night, Conradt refused to come out and apparently shot himself fatally in the head, police said.