Former Hancock man is first arrest after being ‘busted’ by decoy teen girl account

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By Dave Taylor

A former Hancock County man was arrested last week after allegedly being caught sending an explicit photo to a 14-year-old girl, but his arrest made a splash as the first resulting from the efforts of a coal miner who poses as a young girl to expose online predators.
Nicholas Ray Parrott, 32, was arrested by Tell City Police and charged with felony child solicitation on February 20, just one day after being “busted” by Miners Against Predators, a new organization formed by a Morganfield man who simply wanted to show his daughter the dangers of social media.
“It all started by accident,” Eddie Runyon, the lone force behind the group, said Tuesday.
His own 12-year-old daughter had been asking for a Facebook account and he kept saying no, but he wanted to find a way to demonstrate what it’s like for a young girl online, so he enlisted the help of a young looking adult family member and made a fake Facebook profile posing as a 14-year-old girl.
“(I was) just expecting to have some older guys tell me how pretty I was and just to show my daughter, this is why,” he said. “Well, what I got was completely different.
“Within an hour I had guys asking if I was a virgin, if I shaved, if my parents were home, if they could take my virginity, sending me explicit pics. I mean that quick,” he said. “I was like oh crap, this is something completely different than what I thought, so I thought man, I’ve got to let people know. These are people that are out right now and people have no idea that they’re like this.”
Taking a cue from a group he already knew, Truckers Against Predators, the underground coal miner formed Miners Against Predators and set out to expose the men who broke the law with who they thought was a 14-year-old girl.
“I work underground and as soon as I get off work and get home I turn into a 14-year-old girl until I go to bed,” he said.
He talks with guys who message him on Facebook, and if they go too far, he’ll screenshot their conversation and post it, and the man’s identifying information, on Facebook in a private Miners Against Predators group.
To cross that line the man either has to agree to meet for sex or send an explicit picture to what they believe is a 14-year-old.
Despite only running the decoy account for a few weeks, it’s been frighteningly successful.
“I’ve only been doing this since the end of January,” he said. “I’ve already got 14 people… “That’s 14 people that have crossed the felony barrier.”
“I probably have 75 that were completely inappropriate,” he said. “They just didn’t send me a picture or try to get me to meet them for sex.”
Patton, he said, did cross the felony line, by sending a picture of his genitals last week, but only after weeks of otherwise normal conversation.
“At the beginning, when I told him how old I was he backed off and started asking about my mom, ‘show my mom your picture,’” Runyon said. “And he was cool. He talked and it was fine.”
After not hearing from him for a while, Parrott sent an innocuous message on Valentine’s Day before disappearing again for a while.
“Then he messaged me out of nowhere, ‘What are you doing?’” he said.
When Runyon, posing as the young girl, told him she was watching TC and asked what he was doing, Parrott allegedly replied, ‘You don’t want to know.’”
“And I knew right then I had him,” he said. “It was weird. He turned so quick.”
After sending a photo of his genitals, Runyon sent him a return photo of his hat, with the Miners Against Predators logo on it and told him he would be posting their conversation online.
He posted screenshots of their conversation, and members of the group tagged friends who knew Parrott, as well as people who were in law enforcement, including a Tell City officer who printed the messages, took them to a judge, and got a warrant.
“The next day he was locked up,” Runyon said.
Despite having posted at least 14 different conversations with men who think they’re sending explicit photos or planning to have sex with a 14-year-old, Parrott is the first man to be arrested as a result.
“Apparently Indiana don’t mess around, which I like. At least Tell City,” he said.
Others in Kentucky haven’t been arrested because of a law that requires such a sting to be done by a law enforcement officer, so Runyon is letting his Facebook group, and the men’s own words