re: NBC News defends child predators, attacks groups that expose/report child predators

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On a cool evening in October, Alain Malcolm, 20, walked into a vacant two-story colonial house in Bristol, Connecticut. Two members of a local internet vigilante group — who regularly try to expose and shame alleged child predators they entice online — were waiting for him.

Malcolm was tall and handsome. The oldest son of Jamaican immigrants, he wholly subscribed to the idea of the American dream. In high school, Malcolm was vice president of the Future Business Leaders of America club, assistant captain of the tennis and swim teams and a member of the student council and Model United Nations. He started a social marketing business at 15.

After graduating in 2016, Malcolm filled his Instagram and Facebook feeds with photos of New York high-rises, bathroom selfies in three-piece suits and links to news articles in which he was featured. He went to community college while working as a junior buyer for a local circuit-board manufacturer and was the subject of a Connecticut Public Television series that profiled recent high school graduates. Earlier this year, he was named one of Litchfield County’s 40 Leaders Under 40.

Malcolm was also gay, which was difficult growing up in a religious family in Torrington, a sleepy former mill town in the northwest part of the state, friends said.

“It’s not easy to be black, Jamaican, a Jehovah’s Witness and gay in Torrington, Connecticut,” said Allie Morrissey, a friend of Malcolm’s.

Starting in high school, Malcolm used apps like Tinder and Grindr to meet men from around the state, friends said. On that October night, he had come to Bristol to meet someone younger, purportedly a 14-year-old boy “going on 15,” according to a video posted by the digital vigilante group known as POPSquad.

When Malcolm arrived, he found that there was no boy — there was only POPSquad. For the 126th time in two years, the group — an acronym for Prey on Predators — had catfished a man on the internet, posing as an underage teen on hookup apps and luring him into a meetup, this time at an empty home whose owner allows it to be used for the group’s stings, according to POPSquad.

Like the others before him, Malcolm was greeted by Shane Erdmann, 31, better known by his alias “Incognito,” who questioned and berated Malcolm as the camera rolled. (The entire encounter was posted on Facebook the next day, though it was later removed. NBC News spoke to three people who watched it — two friends of Malcolm’s and one POPSquad fan — and described its contents.)

Confronting Malcolm with copies of the alleged sexual online messages sent to a POPSquad member, Erdmann asked: Why had Malcolm come? What disgusting things was he planning to do? What would his family think?

“I don’t have anything to live for,” Malcolm said as he stared at the ground.

Although his targets may initially believe otherwise, Erdmann isn’t with the police, and Malcolm wasn’t required to talk with POPSquad. As Malcolm walked to his car, Erdmann followed to film his license plate, reading the numbers aloud, “for the camera,” Erdmann said.

“Your family is going to see this. How do you feel?” Erdmann asked, according to people who saw the video.

Malcolm honked twice as he sped away, driving 30 minutes back home to his parents’ house in Torrington, where he hanged himself.

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