They Caught A 'Predator.' Then This Guy Caught Them.

Have you read this story yet? The one in this month's Esquire? About how the good folks at Dateline, in their zeal to show you footage of themselves catching predators, manipulated the police into storming in on a man who may or may not have been a predator?



Go read it. Then come back and check out our interview with its author, Luke Dittrich, whose name you probably should get to know.



Start to finish, how long did this story take you to write? How long after the incident did you get started? Did you pitch it, or was it an assignment?



Dave Katz, articles editor at Esquire, emailed me in mid-February, told me a little bit about the Bill Conradt case, and asked me to send him a…