Stephen Robert Deck, an Orange County-based lieutenant in the California Highway Patrol, desperately craved illegal sex with underage girls and took numerous steps to achieve his fantasies.
But Deck ended up nabbed in a 2006 Perverted Justice sting orchestrated with undercover officers at the Laguna Beach Police Department.
closed the complaint after accepting a magistrate judge’s detailed report that Deck, who retired claiming on-the-job injuries is now living in San Diego County, was convicted righteously by Mestman’s “overwhelming” evidence.
more than a passing interest in pursuing middle school-aged girls for
intimate relations. In a Yahoo chat room, he met 13-year-old “Amy,” the
decoy, asked her what times her mother left the house for work, mentioned her “beautiful lips,” suggested he wanted intercourse and asked the girl if she “likes sucking cock.”
Apparently thinking he was clever and in hopes of having a legal defense if his scheduled meeting with Amy was a sting, he called the girl while driving to Laguna Beach and said he didn’t want to have sex during their rendezvous.
Police arrested him when he approached the decoy and he immediately faked a serious illness.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.