Dairy State Degenerates

     Ernesto C. Linayao, Jr. was born on March 17th, 1975, in Lodi, California, just outside of Stockton, a city he would live in for his entire life. He had a girlfriend, but they broke up in 2003, and he soon began to fill that void by chatting up strangers online.      On August 19th, 2006, Linayao, using the screen name "norcal8guy," began chatting with a 13-year-old girl named Leigh Anna, really a decoy for Perverted Justice. When she said she was grounded for being caught at a party, Linayao began one of the most alcohol-intensive conversations I've ever read. He asked what she liked to drink, and she responded with the good old "Mike's Hard Lemonade," which Linayao believed to be too sweet; he preferred jack and diet coke. He asked if she had a drinking buddy and said he would come over with movies and wine. He was about to drink wine before the conversation began, and he talked on and on about "getting wasted" with her and watching a movie ...

     Petaluma, California. This past month, I've highlighted predators Norberto Avalos , Jaswinder Cheema , and Maurice Wolin , who, like Yancy Shane Wallace, all surfaced in the Petaluma sting. I think this episode has to be one of my favorites. Sandwiched between the Silicon Valley and the military bases of Central California, it features immigrants working high-paying IT jobs, active-duty and former military members, a prominent doctor, and everyone in between. It's set in a town that became synonymous with crimes against children. In 1993, 12-year-old Polly Klaas was abducted and murdered there by a then-39-year-old man named Richard Allen Davis; Davis would later be sentenced to death. In 2006, less than two weeks before the Petaluma sting, local resident Alexis Valoran Reich (known as John Mark Karr before coming out as transgender) was arrested in Bangkok after falsely confessing to the decade-old murder of JonBenét Ramsey, giving details already known to the publi...

     I'm not going to get into the usual thing I do with my "Celebrity Rapist Spotlight" stories. Everyone knows who R. Kelly is; at least, they thought they did. Instead of focusing on the career of a man once dubbed the "King of R&B," it's time we focus on the victims in this case. I understand Kelly had a rough life: no father, a life below the poverty line, sexual abuse for eight years by an older female and at least once by an older male, a bullet wound from a suicide attempt, and the death of a childhood best friend he vowed to marry.      However, that's no excuse for what he did. At age 27, he married 15-year-old star Aaliyah, whom he had known since she was 12 and had been having sexual relations with since she was 13. Demetrius Smith, his tour manager, obtained false papers claiming Aaliyah was 18. After years of denial at having been victimized, Aaliyah's annulled marriage was expunged. In 1998, he paid $250,000 to Tiffany Hawkins, who...

     Jaswinder Singh Cheema was born on October 20th, 1975. Residing in San Jose at the time of the sting, he worked a good-paying job as the marketing manager of a Silicon Valley technology company. He, however, was apparently not married, and that's where his trouble may have started.      Beginning on August 23rd, 2006, Cheema, using the screenname "xclusivelyinit," began chatting with a Perverted Justice decoy he believed to be a 13-year-old girl named Willow. Willow claimed that her father was 54 and her mother was 31 and that she had had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boyfriend, so age was no problem for her. Unfortunately, it wasn't a problem for him, either. His chat was both boring and strange. After asking her is she was a virgin, she replied that she was not and asked if he was. He emphatically replied "no" and said that he had "plenty of experience on hand." The decoy took a jab at the predator, saying, "I bet your hand....

     Norberto Avalos was born on February 28, 1965, in Mexico. In 1979, at the age of 14, he was brought to California by an uncle. He was granted temporary lawful resident status in 1986; in 1990, he became a permanent United States citizen. He married the following year, had two sons, and began attending college. In 1997, Avalos and his brother committed armed robbery at a gas station in Stockton, tying and gagging two employees and assaulting a witness. He was arrested, and in 1998, sentenced to five years in prison after taking a plea agreement to avoid a longer sentence. He served his sentence before being deported to Mexico on December 26th, 2001. After his deportation, he worked in sugarcane fields owned by his mother's family for just under three years before illegally returning to the United States in 2004.      On August 23rd, 2006, Avalos, using the screen name "sebastian_for_u," began chatting with a girl he believed to be a 13-year-old named Wi...

       Randall Wolford was born in 1954. Residing in Whitewright, Texas, he worked as an oil-drilling consultant, a high-paying job, and married, having a daughter born in 1980. He lost a portion of his right index finger, but it has never been revealed how.      Using the screenname "itnew2me," he chatted with a Perverted Justice decoy named Sequoia, who told him she was just 13 years old, on November 3rd, 2006. In spite of her being just a quarter of his age, he said, "I would come over and make out with you... show you how it feels... let you enjoy me as much as I would you... I love to give oral and feel the sensation for your orgasms." Just an hour after the brief chat ended, he hopped in his car and drove an hour to the Dateline sting in Murphy, Texas.       He showed up that night believing that Sequoia's mom was a technology executive away in business in Austin. After helping himself to a drink and pointing out the pool tabl...

           While not generally viewed as such, Keith Williams is, without a doubt, one of the worst predators to appear on "To Catch A Predator." Born on April 27th, 1973, Keith was 31 when he began (as far as we know) his career as a child molestor.       Living in Redondo Beach, California, and using the screen name "southbayguy310," Keith began a sexually explicit chat with a decoy he believed to be a 12-(soon to be 13-)year-old named Megan, a girl from Long Beach whose mom had just moved to California from North Carolina and whose dad lived in Florida. After confirming she was a minor, Williams asked if she had ever had a boyfriend, what her weight was (Megan said 100 pounds), and how she liked Cali before he got into his more graphic chat. He asked if she had given her boyfriend oral sex, if he had fingered her, if he ejaculated, if her privates were shaved, if she was a virgin, if she masturbated, what size her breasts were, if she...