The "Jesus Rocks" Predator Is Telling Lies Again

Matthew Clifton Cogburn was born on July 22nd, 1984, in Gray, Georgia, where he was raised and ultimately spent his life. Apparently, his childhood was fairly normal for a kid in Georgia: he spent eight years flattening out a pile of dirt near his home, enjoyed playing with LEGOs, was an average student in school, and was raised as a very religious child, attending church camps every summer. He graduated Jones County High School in 2002. Around 2004, he began chatting with strangers online, later attributing it to "undiagnosed OCD," a subpar explanation at best.

Cogburn worked and attended college in 2006, bouncing from apartment to apartment during the school year, and his employer had enough faith in him to actually give the man his job back after a minor setback occurred in the form of Cogburn's appearance on To Catch A Predator in July of that year. He earned a pair of handcuffs in Fortson, Georgia, just outside of Columbus and two hours from his home. However, his trouble began in an internet chat room a week earlier.

Using the screen name "centgaguy04," this admitted virgin, who stated he was saving himself for marriage, began a graphic chat with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl named Wendy. He also had a chat with Wendy's friend, a 14-year-old girl named Devin, using the screen name "talmatt." The ages were listed as 14 on the profiles, but, between July 18th and July 23rd, he asked if she was "tight," if she had a gag reflex, if she was "on birth control or sticking with condoms," if she would practice with a cucumber, how she would pleasure him, if she had had sex with her previous boyfriend, if she would "deepthroat" and go to "third base" with him, if she had toys, if anyone had given her oral sex (and if she squirted), what positions she had tried, if her jacuzzi was isolated so that they could "moan and squeal all [we] want," and too many more graphic details to list, with both children, demonstrating his pattern of getting straight to sexual chat with young victims and making it likely he has experience at least chatting with minors. Interestingly enough, he also mentioned that he did not drink because it was against his religion.

On July 23rd, 2006, at 1:45 P.M., Matthew Cogburn arrived at the sting house in Fortson, Georgia. He took an extra half hour to get there, having trouble with the directions on his map. After making small talk with decoy Emily, he was confronted by Chris Hansen, confirming his fear that he was being caught by a decoy. Cogburn tried to leave before staying, answering only a few questions sheepishly as Hansen read his chat log and compared it to Cogburn's MySpace page, where he stated that his hero was God and that "Jesus rocks." When the cameras came out and Chris asked Cogburn if there was anything else he would like to say, he replied, "Keep your genes in your jeans," his way of telling people sex leads to trouble.

Arrested by the Harris County Sheriff's Office without incident, he was interrogated by detectives, where he admitted he knew Emily was wearing a wig, whined that he believed Chris Hansen was trying to "put him down" while professing humorous ignorance as to what would become of the footage, and admitted to having a yearslong "inner struggle" regarding online sexual chats with strangers.

He seemed resigned by the end of his interrogation, and, on February 19th, 2007, he was convicted of attempted child molestation and attempted sodomy and sentenced to four years in prison with 16 years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender. He was paroled on February 10th, 2009, and he will remain on supervision (which includes ankle monitoring in Georgia) until 2025. While incarcerated, his brother died, his close friends married and had children, and his parents lost faith in Matthew, which caused Matthew to rely more on his faith.

He still works the same job he did when caught in Fortson, Georgia, although he has since made a hobby out of art. In 2018, he launched a website called "Arts on 5th," which features his paintings, his drawings, and his woodwork. He lives at 440 Stonegables Court in Gray Georgia, 31032, a $200,000 home on a large lot of land with three bedrooms and two baths built in 1994.

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