The Murphy Curse: How Five Predators from One TCAP Sting Ended Up Dead

     Is there really a Murphy Curse? I don't know. I'd like to believe I'm not necessarily a superstitious person, but some superstitions have some weight to them. Just look at the Curse of Tippecanoe, named after President William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison, the first president to die in office. Elected in 1840, he died of pneumonia 30 days into his presidency. Elected in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; as was James Garfield, elected in 1880; as was William McKinley, re-elected in 1900; Warren G. Harding, elected in 1920, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, re-elected in 1940, both died of natural causes; elected in 1960, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1960. Since then, Presidents Reagan, Bush Jr., and Biden have seemingly broken the curse. However, the "Curse of Tippecanoe" seemed to be proof that a curse can exist.

     If one "To Catch a Predator" investigation was cursed, it was definitely the Murphy investigation. Over the course of four days, Hansen and crew had to endure the hostility of local politicians caught in a war of egos with the local police department as well as the hostility of Texans hostile to those they viewed as outsiders while trying to do the good work of catching attempted child molesters. Still, 21 men showed up in four days while four more were arrested at home, one on the toilet. It wound up being 24 arrests, not 25, because one man, Assistant DA Louis Conradt, died by suicide when he was busted not only for soliciting a minor and possession of child sexual abuse material, but for having information on corruption by his boss, the DA in a neighboring county.

     As a result of this suicide and the aforementioned war of egos, charges were dropped against all of the men featured. That couldn't stop quite a few from facing justice, however: one man, Asif Khokar, was charged in his home county and pleaded guilty to a felony sex crime in exchange for a sentence of two years in prison. Another man, Randall Wolford, was divorced from his wife in 2007 and busted in a sting targeting another decoy posing as an underaged girl the next year; he was convicted at trial and sentenced to more than 24 years in a federal prison, where he remains today. 

     One man who didn't get enough attention was Timothy Gilliam, the man who drove by the house with his children in the car. He and his wife co-owned McDonald's franchises and both died by suicide after they were apparently implicated in a large-scale embezzlement scheme in 2011.

     Also in trouble was Stanley Kendall, a teacher who returned to his home state of Indiana after his arrest and caused controversy when he got a job as a substitute teacher; he was fired in 2014. Soon afterward, he was caught in a sting set up by a fan of the show talking to a young male; he was captured on video eating feces and performing other unmentionable sex acts. Kendall died at age 64 in 2017.

     Others who managed to lay relatively low also died. Edward Hollingsworth V, better known as "Twink Toilet," documented the last few weeks of his life in May and June 2012 via Twitter, where he gained a sizeable following but was apparently oblivious to the fact that they were all TCAP fans. He was hospitalized and died of pneumonia, talking about how bad the hospital food was "lol." Another dead predator was a relatively obscure one, Timothy Knowles, better known as the "Calling Card Predator," who died of unknown causes at age 45 in 2016 in Florida. 

     I think the "Murphy Curse" may be explained by a variety of factors. The predators there lived in Texas, a red state with a lower life expectancy than some of the other states visited by Perverted Justice. On top of that, the predators were overwhelmingly in their 40s and 50s, compared to men mostly in their 20s and 30s in other stings. These two factors mean that the life expectancy after the sting would be much lower than in other states. The predators who were younger were either overweight and unhealthy or repeat criminals emboldened by getting off on these charges who died when they were finally forced to face the music for their actions. Several surviving predators are also in the "old and overweight" category, which means that Murphy will likely see around half of its predators dead before the decade is out and continue to be known as the "cursed" sting, likely because of its association with Louis Conradt.

     Still, I could be wrong. Is Louis Conradt bringing death and suffering to his fellow predators caught in Murphy, Texas, in November 2006? We'll never know, but it will always be cool to think about in a field that is so often filled with nothing but sickness and evil.