On November 5, 2006, police went to the home of Louis William “Bill” Conradt Jr. in Terrell, Texas. A Dateline NBC camera crew working with To Catch a Predator waited outside. They were there to arrest the 56-year-old chief felony assistant district attorney for Rockwall County, who’d exchanged sexually explicit messages with someone he believed was a 13-year-old boy.
The “teenager” was actually an adult volunteer with Perverted Justice, an online watchdog group that worked with To Catch a Predator for investigations. Conradt died by suicide after officers forcibly entered his house.
Now Primetime, a new A24 movie starring Robert Pattinson as host Chris Hansen, returns to that day and examines the role a television show played in an arrest that ended in death. Here’s what to know about To Catch a Predator and the encounter with Conradt.
What Happened on To Catch a Predator?
The show started in 2004 as a recurring segment on Dateline, NBC’s television newsmagazine. Perverted Justice, an online watchdog group, supplied volunteers who posed as children in chat rooms and talked with adults who wanted to meet them for sex.
The volunteers directed those adults to a rented suburban home, where an actor playing the child welcomed them inside. Hansen then appeared with transcripts of their online conversations and asked why they had come. Police usually arrested the men as they left.
The confrontations made Hansen famous. Audiences tuned in by the millions to watch him calmly ask a suspect to “have a seat,” pull out the chat transcript, and read the man’s own words back to him. NBC supplied equipment and assisted local police with the stings, but over time, that arrangement became a problem.
Who Was Bill Conradt?
Louis William “Bill” Conradt Jr. was born in Kaufman County, Texas, on January 30, 1950. He grew up with a sister, Patricia, in Terrell, Texas, and was class president in high school, according to Esquire. He attended the University of Texas and got his law degree from Texas Tech University. He became the district attorney for Kaufman County in his 30s.
In November 2006, police in Murphy, Texas, launched a sting operation with NBC to catch adults soliciting sex from minors officially launched in the fall of 2006. Adult volunteers from Perverted Justice posed as children in a chatroom Over just four days, two dozen men entered the decoy house and were arrested.
Conradt, under the username “inxs00,” communicated with a Perverted Justice volunteer posing as a boy named Luke. He made arrangements to meet the “teenager” at a decoy house NBC had equipped with hidden cameras, but never showed up. It left the show without a confrontation to film, and police had nobody to arrest outside.
According to an investigation by journalist Luke Dittrich, Hansen wanted police to obtain arrest and search warrants after Conradt stopped responding. A Murphy detective worked through the night to prepare them.
Hansen disputes the idea that NBC pushed police into acting. He has said the network and law enforcement ran separate investigations and that officers made the decision to arrest Conradt.
What Happened at Bill Conradt’s House?
On November 5, 2006, a police tactical team arrived at Conradt’s home with warrant in hand. Hansen and his To Catch a Predator camera crew waited outside to film the arrest.
When Conradt refused to answer the door, SWAT officers forced entry into the house and found Conradt at the end of a hallway. He stepped into a room and fatally shot himself. A helicopter flew him to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where he died within the hour.
Three months later, NBC aired its full report about the Murphy operation, which included a segment about Conradt. The episode showed police outside Conradt’s home and paramedics wheeling him out on a gurney before a helicopter carried him to the hospital.
The operation also produced an unexpected legal problem. Prosecutors dropped the cases against all the men arrested during the Murphy sting after concluding that none could be successfully prosecuted.
Why Did Bill Conradt’s Family Sue NBC?
Conradt’s sister, Patricia, sued NBC for more than $100 million. She claimed the network had encouraged police to stage an unnecessarily aggressive arrest because it wanted dramatic footage.
NBC tried to have the case dismissed. In 2008, federal judge Denny Chin allowed its central claims to move forward. His ruling did not find NBC responsible for Conradt’s death. At that stage, the judge was required to treat the lawsuit’s allegations as true and decide whether they could support a legal claim.
Chin wrote that a jury could conclude NBC had crossed the line “from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement.” Conradt hadn’t been accused of violence, and police didn’t think he had a gun. Chin said a jury might question why a heavily armed team was sent into his home.
NBC settled the lawsuit in June 2008. The terms were not disclosed.
Did Conradt’s Death End To Catch a Predator?
The show wasn’t canceled immediately. NBC aired several more installments before the original run ended in 2007. Though Hansen explained that the show’s concept had just run its course, other accounts have pointed to the lawsuit and advertisers’ discomfort with the series. And Conradt’s death changed how the show was remembered.
Hansen remains unapologetic. In 2026, he insisted he had no second thoughts and maintained that his crew only documented what police chose to do.
“It was unfortunate that somebody chose to take his life rather than face criminal consequences,” Hansen told The Hollywood Reporter in 2026. “You can draw your own conclusions as to why. They found child pornography on his computer. He had sexually explicit conversations with two different decoys posing as 13-year-old boys.”
What Has Chris Hansen Said About Primetime?
Hansen, 66, was not involved in the movie and has disputed its portrayal of him. During an appearance on Jesse Watters Primetime, he said he declined to see an early screening of the film because the film’s lawyers wanted him to “sign away my rights to my name, image, and brand.” A source told Rolling Stone Hansen was asked to sign a standard NDA.
Hansen is reportedly not happy about the film using his likeness and brand without his consent.
“You could have done the same movie without [my real name], and the reason why they used it is because it has commercial value,” he said an August interview on Dan Abrams’s SiriusXM podcast. “So it feels very exploitative to me. It feels sneaky and disingenuous to me that they would do this and not even say ‘This is what we’re doing.’ ”
In the same interview, Hansen suggested he may consider taking legal action against the film for its use of his name and the To Catch a Predator branding.
Hansen purchased ads that will run before every movie screening on Primetime promoting his streaming network, TruBlu, according to The Hollywood Reporter. On his network, he conducts investigations similar to his work on To Catch a Predator.
How to Watch Primetime
Though Hansen wasn’t involved in the film, director Lance Oppenheim says there’s a reason he didn’t consult him.
“In terms of not involving him, I think we live in a time where many films are sort of authorized in a certain way and it affects the authorship of the filmmaker,” Oppenheim told People. “It affects what you can do, what you can say. I wanted to make something that felt to me like a personal expression of my relationship to the material.”
Robert Pattinson stars as Chris Hansen alongside Merritt Wever as producer Andie Bender and Skyler Gisondo as aspiring actor Dan Plumb.
Primetime opened in theaters September 25.
Eric Spitznagel is a frequent contributor to magazines like Playboy, Esquire, and the New York Times, and was employed for over two decades by the Second City comedy theater, where Stephen Colbert was his Secret Santa _twice.
