A 60-year-old South Dakota man reportedly killed himself after he was caught by a Houston-based vigilante predator hunting group, who accused the man of watching child pornography.
Alex Rosen, the founder of Predator Poachers, is known for conducting sting operations on adults who solicit sexual activity with minors.
Rosen posted to X, formerly Twitter, video footage of his confrontation with a man identified as Donald Letcher, who Rosen and his team accused of watching child pornography. The video appears to show Letcher admitting watching the child pornography and discussing disturbing details of the content.
In a follow-up post, Rosen wrote that Letcher had killed himself after police made contact with him. The post was accompanied with video footage showing Letcher rushing back into his residence as a sheriff's deputy attends to a call. Letcher then locks the front door. The deputy is seen knocking on the door before the video cuts to two deputies breaking through the door to get inside the house.
Rosen said he and his team were detained in the wake of the incident. No other details have been disclosed.
According to court documents, Letcher was a convicted sex offender who was found guilty of molesting his girlfriend's 9-year-old daughter in 1995. The girl told police that from August 1992 until July 1993, when Letcher was living with her mother, Letcher forced her to fondle his penis virtually every night that her mother worked the nightshift.
In June 1995, the jury convicted Letcher of two counts of sexual contact with a minor. He was sentenced to five years in prison. However, a year later the South Dakota Supreme Court overturned the conviction following concerns over the credibility of witnesses and the refusal to allow the former girlfriend's testimony "severely prejudiced Letcher's ability to defend against these charges." In August 1996, the prosecution dismissed the charges and Letcher was released.
