MURPHY, TEXAS — By Saturday, this quiet residential neighborhood had, on the surface, returned to normal. The sun warmed the morning chill. A dog barked in the distance, and children played in their backyards.
But inside an otherwise empty stone-and-brick rental house were reminders of an undercover police operation that caused an uproar in this neighborhood last week: Electronic equipment was stacked on a kitchen counter. A stuffed toy hung from a chandelier like a Christmas ornament.
"Creepy, when you think about what happened," real estate agent Lara Blum said.
Over a four-day period, 21 men drove to this house north of Dallas believing they were about to have sex with minors they had met on the Internet, authorities said. Instead, with cameras from "Dateline NBC" rolling, police arrested the men at gunpoint and hauled them off to jail.
When another man who had been expected -- former Kaufman County Dist. Atty. Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr. -- didn't show, police went to his house in a neighboring town. As authorities moved in, Conradt, 56, put a gun to his head and killed himself.
Though the suicide rocked this community, it was the undercover operation -- which brought dozens of alleged sexual predators to a neighborhood chockablock with children -- that continues to reverberate here.
Hundreds of angry residents packed Murphy City Council chambers and an adjoining overflow room Saturday demanding to know why authorities knowingly exposed their families to suspected criminals.
The meeting, meant to allay residents' fears, turned into an emotional three-hour debate on how far authorities should go to catch sexual predators.
"It was too close to my family, 20 to 50 feet away," said Michael Smith, 32, who lives across the street from the site of the sting. "It was a very stressful and disturbing week. My son wanted to avoid driving on our street after seeing police activity. The ends were admirable, but the means showed poor judgment."
The sting had been preceded by a similar operation in July, when Murphy police worked with a private organization called Perverted Justice to capture four suspected child molesters.
After that sting's success, the police, with the approval of the city manager but without the mayor's knowledge, agreed to team up again with Perverted Justice -- this time with "Dateline" crews filming the arrests.
