Gilroy
– Jason Bell surfed the Yahoo! personals a few weeks before his
34th birthday and spotted a profile that caught his attention.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Jason Bell surfed the Yahoo! personals a few weeks before his 34th birthday and spotted a profile that caught his attention.
“Hello,
Your pretty damn sexy! Since I am also from Gilroy how about partying with me some night?
Jason Bell
P.S. I would love to … till you claw the sheets into ribbons.”
The recipient of the Jan. 3 e-mail was Catrina Wilson, from Gilroy. Her picture showed a blonde 13-year-old girl whose profile said her age was “130” because the Web site would not register “13.” It would have taken someone only minutes to find her by searching a messenger service using identifiers like Gilroy, female, and 13-18.
“Catrina” was actually Gilroy police Detective Mitch Madruga. He set up the profile last September to catch potential child molesters.
On Jan. 28, “Catrina” sent Bell a reply.
“Mmmmmmmmm. I would luv 2 have u do that…..wut part (of) gilas do u live”
So began a back-and-forth between the two that would eventually lead to Bell’s arrest eight days later for attempted lewd acts with a child younger than 14 and attempted distribution of harmful material to a minor.
The man who lived down the street from Gilroy High School and told “Catrina” that he catches himself looking at young girls all the time, is still in custody on $100,000 bail.
Bell last appeared in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Martin April 22, and is expected to enter a plea May 20 at 9am. If convicted, he faces more than four years in prison, and would have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
After receiving “Catrina’s” reply, Bell continued to e-mail her and, according to court records, also continued to describe multiple sex acts he wanted to perform. At first, “Catrina” said she was a student at Gilroy High School, but on Feb. 3 she said she went to South Valley Middle School, at which point Bell asked if she was 13.
“I just kept making her younger and younger and it didn’t dissuade him at all,” Madruga said. “He actually started getting more explicit.”
During their first two days of chatting via instant messenger at the end of January, Bell suggested “Catrina” sneak out and meet him at a park, or have him pick her up. He requested she wear a skirt with no panties so he could easily perform oral sex, court records show. They agreed to meet at Christmas Hill Park Jan. 31, and although Bell left his home under surveillance, he did not show, police said.
On Feb. 1, Madruga contacted volunteers who run the controversial Web site Perverted-Justice.com, and chat with would-be child molesters online and over the phone to expose them.
“A lot of agencies view them as a vigilante group,” Madruga said. “But there’s a lot that use them as a tool because they have a lot of resources that smaller agencies like us don’t have.”
For example, young-sounding females who could talk to Bell if he wanted to have a conversation, or volunteers who can work late into the night, when kids are online. Bell had given “Catrina” his phone number, so a Perverted Justice volunteer conducted a chat that night in case Bell wanted to talk, Madruga said.
Madruga has printed out Bell and “Catrina’s” chats and e-mails, and stacked, they are about two inches thick. During the Feb. 1 chat that went from 7:30 to 11:13pm and fills 22 pages, Bell asked “Catrina” if she was a virgin and had ever been with a man his age. He said he still wanted to meet.
“I may just take you out of the truck and lay you down on the hood,” Bell wrote. He followed that with explicit descriptions of the sexual acts he would perform. That narrative alone fills one page of paper.
Also in their chat that night, Bell told “Catrina” he would get a motel room with two beds “so as far as they know you’re my kid (lol) and we are spending the night and sleeping separately,” court records show. He asked if she was “into bondage,” and would wear pantyhose so he could tie her up and have intercourse with her.
He sent “Catrina” an unsolicited photograph he said was him, that showed a nude man from upper abdomen to mid-thigh, holding an erection. At one point, he said: “now I don’t want to go to jail for sex with a minor … Are you working for or affiliated with any sort of law enforcement?”
In their final chat, conducted again by Madruga, Bell said he had enough money for a motel room, rum and coke, or for pot, crank, alcohol and a stay in a friend’s RV with no bathroom. He chose the motel room, and spent the last roughly 90 minutes of their last chat pinning down their plans to meet on Feb. 4. He asked whether Del Rey Park was well-lit and if she would be able to stay out late. “Just stay close to the road so you can see me as I drive up Calle Del Rey,” he requested.
Instead, police arrested him after he circled around the park at their meeting time.
Madruga said he expects he and other departments will be conducting more investigations like this one. Statistics show strangers propositioned one in five children online last year.
“If we can stop something from happening, from someone becoming a victim, then it’s worth it,” he said.
But he worries that ignorance on the part of parents and children could be putting kids at risk. Many youngsters provide information on the Web that could make them easy targets. When he spots profiles with too much information – full names, for example – he will contact the child and parents and ask them to remove some of it, to make them more anonymous.
