The most trolled and documented groomer in history: Lorne Armstrong from To Catch a Predator (Part 2)

The Sting, or, How to Have the Worst Birthday Imaginable

Picking up from where we last left off, Lorne gets into his pickup truck parked outside his apartment complex in Nashville and sets out on the long drive to Bowling Green, Kentucky where a Dateline camera crew, Chris Hansen, and an assorted law enforcement presence made up of local police and the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation are waiting for him. It's his 37th birthday and he's expecting to have one of the best nights of his life. He's about to finally get the perfect girl for him---a dumb and naïve girl who immediately submits to him. Kayla assures him in the chat that she will give him money so he can afford the gas for the ride back. His plan is to pick her up at her mansion:

to his empty apartment:

and introduce Mr. Peepee to Ms. Vagina. He has with him a cheap Walmart bracelet:

a camera to take some pictures of child porn with (he later claims something else but we'll get there):

condoms, and a carton of cigarettes.

I can just imagine his excitement grow during that hour and a half drive. Despite being 37, he had never had a serious relationship yet besides an online one with a catfish. He was finally going to meet someone in person and take their virginity. An idea that he was creepily obsessed with.

He arrives at the sting house after dark. He pulls up to this huge, impressive house on a big plot of land and he must feel smug at the idea that he as a blue-collar lowly educated guy who just landed a job at a construction company a few days ago is about to take the daughter of two wealthy and successful doctors. You can see it by how confidently he strolls into the house and with his shit eating grin plastered all over his face. He sees "Kayla" and his eyes light up.

And here's something that you will have trouble believing. There's no way that someone could be this dumb.

The three Kaylas

Perverted Justice was not a perfect organization, and by the end of the TCAP series especially they began to get really sloppy. The pictures they used of their online profiles were all PJ members or volunteers of themselves when they were kids so don't worry, I'm not doxxing some kids by sharing these. In Lorne's case the PJ volunteer talking to Lorne as Kayla originally sent this picture saying it was her:

Then a few days later with Lorne insisting to see more pictures of her the decoy sent this:

Here's the thing: to Lorne's absolute smallest amount of possible credit, he actually caught this discrepancy and confronted Kayla about it:

But as you can see he immediately just accepts what she says and changes the topic. But the PJ decoy was so sloppy she accidentally sent a picture with both "Kaylas" in it!

Yet Lorne didn't notice! Further more, when Lorne arrives at the house he is greeted by the on-site decoy, played by Casey Mauro (this name is important to remember for future parts):

Who looks completely different from both of the previous girls. She doesn't even have blonde hair. Lorne remarks on this when he first sees her ("I thought you had blonde hair!") but he's too busy fantasizing about all the statutory r*pe he is about to commit to really dwell on it.

So three different Kaylas, three different blazing red flags, and Lorne was too dense to notice any of them.

The Chris Hansen Interview

So it's really best if you just watch the actual interview between the two because no play by play I could write could hold a candle to the real thing, but I'll note a few things:

1. Lorne's face as Chris walks in is just absolutely amazing. A picture worth a thousand words indeed:

1. At the beginning during his interaction with Casey she tells him how to turn on the massaging chair and he does. He later confirmed to a catfish that the entire time he was getting grilled by Chris Hansen he was getting aggressively massaged by the chair.

2. The moment where Chris recites this line from the chatlog is one of my all time favorite TCAP moments:

1. Lorne is actually the third to last predator ever to be caught on TCAP since this was their last ever investigation

2. The transformation between the face on the left to the face on the right is just magical. It really did turn from the best birthday ever to the worst within the span of fifteen minutes.

Post-Arrest and How Lorne Showcased He Was Even Dumber Than Before

So after the reveal that he was going to be aired on national television as a predator Lorne made his way quickly to the front door only to be greeted by law enforcement who made him get on the ground on the front porch. Lorne was taken into custody without incident and processed. He was interviewed by two detectives and kept crying the entire time. While being interviewed he gave them permission to search his truck despite their being compromising evidence there with the camera and condoms and bracelet, and permission to seize his computer despite their being compromising evidence on there as well.

Lorne gave the detectives enough rope to hang him by saying he was there to meet Kayla and knew how old she was and only requesting an attorney after the detectives pulled out screenshots of Lorne showing off Mr. Peepee on cam. Amazingly, Lorne asked the detectives if he would be going to jail that night and cried even harder when they said yes. Little did he know that he wouldn't be outside of a jail or prison for years and this birthday was his last day as a free man.

Remember how in the last part Lorne was paranoid about the "Yahoo police"? Lorne thought they had nabbed him. As he explained to one of his catfishes he didn't know it was a sting until days later. He still thought Kayla was real. He thought she had gotten careless with her archives and the Yahoo police had intervened by sending a camera crew to shame him as a lesson to other guys. He didn't realize it was a sting and that Kayla was a decoy until his public defender spelled it out for him.

60 Months in Prison

After much convincing and pleading, Lorne's defense attorney finally convinced him to agree to a plea deal where he would serve 60 months in federal prison and get lifetime RSO status and probation.

Because Lorne had crossed state lines and elevated it to a federal case, and that he had the camera in the truck along with the mention in the chatlog of taking pictures of them having s*x which the prosecution could use to push a charge for the intent to create and distribute child pornography , he was looking at a potentially very lengthy prison term so luckily for him his lawyer eventually talked him out of taking it to trial which Lorne desperately wanted to do, believing he had been completely set up and could prove his innocence, which is just the start of how deluded he is.

Lorne claimed and still claims to this day that the camera was in his truck because he was going to sell it or pawn it so he could afford both cigarettes and the internet bill. I do believe he planned to sell it or pawn it...after he had taken pictures of the two of them having s*x.

Lorne was sent to a federal prison in New Jersey, and amusingly I found out that Lorne submitted a motion that he should get time served since he had been sitting in jail since his birthday, unable to make bail, and the judge dismissed it in kind of an annoyed tone.

Lorne, Actual Danger

I know most of this is to point and laugh at Lorne for how dumb he is, but I think it should be noted that if you take a step back you can see Lorne posed a very real risk, and as later parts will show is a risk. If Kayla had been real he had planned to drive her an hour and a half away from home and r*pe her repeatedly that weekend. It doesn't take much of an imagination to see where things could have gone badly, and as further parts will show Lorne has an awful temper. What if she had decided not to want to have s*x and he physically forced her? What if she wanted to leave and he wouldn't let her? He was essentially kidnapping her, because obviously a 13 year old can't consent to s*x and spending the weekend with her 37 year old boyfriend. It could have easily turned violent, or deadly.

Part 3

In the next part I will cover what Lorne did in those long months in prison, what he did when he got out, and how exactly a trolling community started to slowly form around a specific predator