Shownotes Transcript
A vigilante, I think, would be a good... I've used that word to describe him. I think that would be how he kind of saw himself as
In May of 2022, then 27-year-old Chase Johnston was messaging another local man from the Rochester, Minnesota area. But he wasn't texting as himself. He was using a made-up persona and posing as a 16-year-old boy. Johnston was masquerading as a teen who was looking for advice on how to come out to his parents. In other words, he was pretending to be a very vulnerable target. And like usual, it doesn't take long.
Johnston's conversation with the older man escalated quickly to the point of arranging a place to meet up. Johnston invited the man to his apartment, but the mark instead suggested a gas station in the neighboring town. When Johnston arrived on the scene, he accused the man of soliciting a minor. Things got heated. What happened next blurred the fine line between being a vigilante hero or a vigilante villain.
This is Vigilante, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Chase Johnston: Prisoner vs. Predator. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we'll hear about Chase Johnston's efforts to expose sexual predators, how his mission uncovered a sexual predator hiding in plain sight, and how the blowback further complicated his own legal troubles.
The May 2022 encounter at the gas station was just one of many stings that Chase Johnston had set up around his native Rochester, Minnesota. His M.O. was to make a profile on an app like Whisper or Grindr, pose as a young, vulnerable teen. Then he would throw out his bait and wait for a mark.
Disturbingly, it never took very long. So basically, I set up different accounts on different websites, anywhere from dating apps to friendship apps or anonymous apps like Whisper. And we post profiles. And when guys approach us on there and message us, we tell them that we are 13, 14 years old, 15 years old, whatever. And
When they initiate contact, we meet them in public usually or at a whatever, like we have went to their house before as well a couple times and with the camera and expose them. Johnston would then post these videos to a YouTube channel where they received thousands of views. The channel was initially called Prisoner vs. Predator.
A nod to his own checkered past with the law. Eventually the name changed to Midwest Predator Catchers, but then the channel was deleted for violating YouTube's policies on bullying. We spoke to Minnesota Capitol correspondent Mike Wasson, who's written several stories about Johnston for the Minnesota Post Bulletin.
Yeah, he definitely... A vigilante, I think, would be a good... I've used that word to describe him. I think that would be how he kind of saw himself. The impression that I got was he was a person seeking justice. Johnston himself agrees with this assessment. Sure. I guess...
The term vigilante, I guess some people, when they talk to me, they act like it's a bad word or something like that. And I guess it could be used in a bad way, depending on how you look at it. But I'd like to think that a lot of people, when they use that word towards me, that it's maybe not a compliment, but it's not a negative thing, you know? Johnston sees his vigilantism as a positive effort to protect his community. And he has a very personal reason for getting involved. I had some stuff happen.
happened to me when I was a kid, but nothing, it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily traumatizing or anything like that. I've learned to deal with this, but I see the victims of this stuff and I see the perpetrators getting away with it. And I, and I see the pain that it causes and
I see a direct correlation between drug abuse and people that are sexually abused. I think it all ties together. But I just couldn't stand to see more people get put on probation for this, so I started exposing them to the community myself.
For all the time Johnson spends taking the law into his own hands, he's also had some experience on the other side of it. Minor drug charges, driving while under the influence, theft, assault. I was in and out of jail quite a bit and ended up doing a little small prison bit as well. Yeah, a lot of my stuff is just little petty thefts or something like that from Walmart or something, which...
is still not good for sure. - Johnston is certainly a complicated figure. He has a history of letting his emotions get the best of him, which has led to physical violence. Additionally, he has faced domestic violence charges for threatening his partner and her family. His story seems to be pulled between his darker actions and his lighter intentions. He's done jail time, but he's also determined to put bad guys behind bars.
Like other self-styled predator catchers, he was inspired by the original, the hit show To Catch a Predator. Yeah, so I was, of course, seeing it growing up with Chris Hansen, you know. And then once I had seen that more people were standing up and doing this, it really inspired me. And I was watching different groups like Dads Against Predators and Colorado Pet Patrol. And I made an account and literally within an hour, I was about to meet a guy.
Once Johnson made the decision to start setting up stings of his own, it didn't take long for him to be thrown into the deep end. Not only was I going to meet a guy, he was trying to, he was getting a motel room at Motel 6 to smoke meth with a 14-year-old girl and have sex with her. It was that easy.
But even though it was quick and easy to find a mark, there was still significant risk involved. When confronting people in public, things could and did get heated. In Johnston's videos, he sometimes threatened violence against the people he had filmed. Johnston was quoted in the Minnesota Post bulletin saying, "We do want to scare them a little bit sometimes, but we don't want to physically hurt them." But as Johnston himself admits, he has occasionally gotten violent in the heat of the moment.
I have been violent with them a time or two, yeah. And I was charged for that and I dealt with that. It is something I try to avoid. Like I said, the couple times that this had happened, your emotions get in the way and, you know, things escalate. You wouldn't believe the audacity that some of these guys have to say to you. It's insane. And next thing you know, you're like, all right, I'm about to hit this dude.
His fists aren't the only things that Johnson has brought to these stings. He's also said that at least one of the people who joins him for the stings is licensed to carry a firearm. So I've done this with guys that, you know, that three or two or three people, you know, and it's like there's no way that this person is going to take all three of us. And so we we've taken precautions. We'll say that. These combative tactics haven't earned him many fans in the local Rochester Police Department.
The RPD and the county attorney's office released a statement that said in part, quote, Mr. Johnston's aggressive nature is also very problematic. For the safety of all parties, RPD strongly discourages confrontational practices like the ones used in the videos, unquote.
On several occasions, RPD officials have asked Johnston to cease and desist with his in-person confrontations. And instead, they've directed him to file complaints through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Johnston disregarded that advice, however, and has continued to conduct his own stings. One of those operations got him in deeper over his head than he could have ever predicted. Coming up, one of Johnston's tussles with local law enforcement allows a predator to slip through the cracks. Now, back to the story.
Vigilante Chase Johnston is convinced that the county attorney in his native Rochester, Minnesota has a vendetta against him. Why? Well, Johnston says his efforts to catch predators have called attention to the county's lax sentencing for sex offenders.
And the craziest thing is Mark Ostrom, the county attorney of Olmstead County, who clearly has a vendetta against me. So when all this was going on, people were flooding the county attorney's office with questions saying, why are people getting probation? Because this is starting to go public. I was on the front page of the paper a couple of times and it sparked a little bit of a conversation. And Mark Ostrom sat down with Mark Lawson and talked to him about this stuff and
And he made it clear as day. He said, first thing he said is, first time nonviolent sex offenses deserve probation. What the hell is a nonviolent sex offense? Johnston and the county attorney are clearly at odds on how the law should handle sex criminals. Johnston fiercely believes that these offenders should serve serious prison time. But when local citizens disagree with policies of local law enforcement, do they have the right to take matters into their own hands?
This fundamental disagreement may have created even more bad blood between Johnston and law enforcement because it certainly seems as though the county has pursued harsh charges against Johnston.
Johnston has since gotten that charge dismissed.
While some of Johnston's obstacles are of his own making, others seem to be systematic in nature. The county attorney has essentially vowed that he won't prosecute any cases where Johnston provides evidence. This stance by prosecutors really isn't uncommon. Some DAs around the country will work with online vigilantes like Chase, but many will not. Every time he came up, law enforcement and county attorneys
basically called it irresponsible, said that this is dangerous, that he actually, by doing this, runs the chance of ruining any investigations that they could be actively doing.
And what happened was the local police department disregarded it at the direction of the county attorney who said, "Do not send me anything from Chase Johnston. Don't send me anything. Do not. Don't do it. We can't do anything with it." This is the issue with these types of online stings. On one hand, why not let the evidence speak for itself, regardless of the source?
Surely law enforcement's goal is to uphold the law despite personal differences or frustrations. As a county prosecutor, it's not ideal when a civilian takes things into their own hands, making the news, making noise, criticizing how you do your job. But if they provide evidence that helps your case, why not look into it? Especially if that evidence could prevent child sex abuse. On the other hand, society has police and prosecutors in place to promote the safety of the community.
In theory, they are trained and prepared to enforce laws to protect the public. And online vigilantes like Chase lack formal training and a comprehensive understanding of the law. Just one county over in Dodge, a different prosecutor has worked with John Stent, and one of his stings led to a full conviction.
So his first altercation, he had done a sting in a city called Dodge Center, which is in Dodge County, which is right next to Olmstead County. And there, the Dodge County Sheriff's Department charged the guy that they caught. He gave them chat logs and sheriff's office looked at it, gave it to the county attorney and county attorney said, yeah, there's enough here to charge him. So there is one person that has been charged with a crime.
Mark Ostrom made it clear that he wasn't going to charge the people that I exposed with any crimes, even though in Dodge County, one county over, they charged the guy and he got five years in prison. So in Dodge County, Johnston's efforts helped take a predator off the streets. But in Olmstead County, there's still a complete stonewall. And in one case, the county attorney's refusal to work with Johnston and to follow up on his leads caused a known predator to fall through the cracks.
Not just any predator. One who is operating right under the nose of local law enforcement. Because he was local law enforcement. Back in May of 2022, Chase Johnson was on the anonymous messaging app, Whisper, setting up yet another one of his stings to catch a predator.
He noticed a promising post: a local man offering to buy alcohol for anyone under 21 in exchange for "services." Johnson responded to this posting, using the persona of a teenage girl around 13 years old. And as they began messaging back and forth, the anonymous man clarified that by "services," he meant sexual favors.
Johnston went along with the conversation, agreeing to meet the man at a nearby Target store. To facilitate the meeting, the man sent a picture of himself. And the second Johnston saw it, he was shocked. He recognized the man. He was someone Johnston had met back in his time at the jail, and he'd seemed like a pretty nice guy. It was Deputy Matthew Adamson, an employee at the local corrections facility. Adamson had worked for the Olmstead County Sheriff's Office for 18 years.
Prior to that, he was a police officer in St. Charles for four years. And before that, he worked with young children in Rochester public schools as a substitute teacher for two years. So here was someone entrusted with carrying out the law and he was flagrantly breaking it. Someone who worked with children and was seeking to abuse them. In the wake of this discovery, Johnson decided not to confront Adamson in public. Instead, he did what the local law enforcement had been begging him to do and he turned over his evidence to them.
So I reported it to Rochester Police Department. I figured I should report it to RPD instead of Olmstead County at that point, you know. And I reported it to an officer in Rochester and I sent him all the evidence. I told him, I said, why don't you go check the target camera? Because he was parked in front of the police.
the target waiting for the, you know, who he thought he was gonna victimize to come out. He was on camera. They did absolutely nothing to investigate it, which this is a serious, serious claim that an officer of the law is trying to take advantage of a 14-year-old child with drugs and alcohol as an enticement. And they just completely brushed me off and let this guy run wild. Days went by after Johnston reported Deputy Adamson.
then weeks, then months, and nothing happened. No one followed up. But then, in a twist of fate, a year and a half later, RPD ran their own stings in conjunction with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Ibranically, after how vocally they disapproved of Johnston's methods, the local authorities pretty much followed the same playbook. An undercover police officer created a post on Whisper pretending to be a 13-year-old teen who was looking for advice on how to run away from home. And it wasn't long before someone pounced on the bait, a man using the screen name Geek_Crayon.
While RPD was chatting with Geek Crayon, Geek Crayon was also unwittingly messaging a special agent from the BCA. Geek Crayon made the mistake of sending a photo of himself to the teen girl he thought he was messaging. And law enforcement made the same horrifying discovery that Johnston had made over a year earlier. Police immediately recognized one of their own, Deputy Matthew Adamson.
It was bad enough that Adamson, who was supposed to be an officer of the law, was actively and maliciously engaged in breaking it. But it got even worse. Adamson appeared to be at work while he was messaging what he thought were teen girls. Adamson sent a selfie to the undercover BCA agent that seemed to be taken in a courtroom. The picture featured his on-duty uniform-style boots and the distinctive carpeting and wood molding of the Olmstead County Courthouse.
But Adamson didn't let the irony of breaking the law inside a courthouse stop him. Repeating a move that he used in his chat with Johnston, Adamson, aka "Geek Crayon," offered to buy alcohol and cigarettes for underage youth.
When the undercover agent inquired about the prices, Adamson again proposed services as a means of payment, specifically listing a few different sex acts. Adamson wrote, quote, "I don't pressure people only if they want to do this. I also don't change the deal once we agree," unquote. As he continued messaging with the undercover officers, they made plans to meet outside a nearby mall.
So Adamson left his workplace and proceeded to go meet what he thought was a teenage girl for sexual favors. Meanwhile, the BCA deployed another undercover agent to pretend to be the 13-year-old girl from the chats. This agent stood outside on the curb and waited. As soon as Adamson pulled up to the curb and called out the name she had used online, detectives swooped in to block his car. They took him into custody without incident.
Up next, investigation into Deputy Adamson reveals even more disturbing details. Now, back to the story. In November 2023, a year and a half after vigilante Chase Johnston reported him to authorities, Deputy Matthew Adamson was finally charged with counts of production of child pornography, possession of child pornography, and coercion and enticement. And while the situation was awful all around, it was actually about to get even worse.
After the initial sting, Adamson quickly made bail. But RPD and BCA looked further into him, and it turned out his soliciting minors online was just the tip of the iceberg. Minnesota detectives executed their own sting in November of 2023, and they confirmed what Johnson had found out more than a year prior. And Adamson was taken into custody for soliciting a minor. But there was still more to come.
When Adamson returned home after making bail, he collected two of his hard drives and attempted to destroy them. But his wife stopped him and reported his actions to the police. A search warrant was issued and the hard drives were recovered before Adamson could destroy them. When investigators opened them up, they found the drives were full of hundreds of appalling, illicit images and videos.
Law enforcement discovered that Adamson had been abusing his position of power. He had hidden cameras in the bathroom of the detention center where he worked. Detectives found, quote, The timestamps on the pictures and the videos range from 2015 to 2019.
He had also misused the security cameras in the jail changing room to take photos of detainees, some of whom were minors, while they were partially undressed as they were booked into custody.
As part of the investigation, authorities also found pornographic images on Adamson's phone of girls as young as 8 years old. Adamson secretly took screenshots of women in this exposed position and saved them to his personal devices. He was re-arrested and charged with eight new counts including possession of child pornography, gross interference with privacy, and misdemeanor misconduct of a public officer.
In yet another disturbing turn, Adamson was not the only officer to get caught up in the wave of stings. A 23-year-old Rochester police officer named Timothy Morgenstern was also engaged in criminal sexual activity. Morgenstern had been working as a coach at a local high school where he met a teenage girl and allegedly groomed and raped her.
So that was not one, but two law enforcement officers at the Center of Sexual Activity with Minors in a county with a decidedly lax stance on sentencing sex offenders. Some wondered if this was a systemic issue in Olmstead County. Johnston sure believes there's something darker afoot. I think it goes deeper than just what I have going on. I think that there's some, you know, possibly some corruption even crazier than I can imagine going on.
Though the charges against Adamson vindicated Johnston's efforts. Johnston feels his evidence against Adamson was ignored and that allowed Adamson to continue taking advantage of women and girls for an additional year.
Because, I mean, clearly, clearly they're being they're protecting these individuals. And clearly there's a vendetta against me. And then with, you know, Matthew Adamson, the corporal in the Olmstead County Adult Detention Center, who was busted for having actual victims. He I busted him, exposed him and reported him and they did nothing about it. And he continued to work there and film women changing in the in the showers in the jail for a year and a half.
But Johnston himself has not received any such leniency. Take for example that May 2022 sting at the gas station. When Johnston arrived, he confronted the mark, accusing him of soliciting a minor. To be fair, Johnston did get violent. He hit the man on the shoulder and face, punched him in the groin, and allegedly slit the tires on his vehicle.
So Johnston added to his own rap sheet: "Assault in the fifth degree" and "Intentional damage of property in the fourth degree." But on top of that, he was charged with "nonconsensual sexual conduct" for hitting the guy in the testicles. At best, that seems like a creative application of the law. And at worst, it's a malicious attempt to retaliate against Johnston for taking the law into his own hands. He set out to catch a predator, but instead, he was the one that got put behind bars.
But the real kicker came a year later, after the fallout from Deputy Adamson, after law enforcement learned that Johnston had been right about one of their own. In July of 2023, another one of Johnston's bus went sideways and authorities threw the book at him.
So we're talking directly through text at this point. The conversation immediately gets heated, it gets sexual, he's sending inappropriate pictures. I told him that I was 16, which apparently in Minnesota they say is the age of consent, but it's not if you're in a position of power or if you're a sex offender already, which this guy was. And
So they're basically trying to charge me also on that basis too. But the conversation, it was sexually charged. He was sending pictures to who he clearly thought was a 16-year-old boy. And I met him in the lobby of my apartment and exposed him. But they start kind of yelling at him. They call the police. They're screaming at the guy. The police show up.
He calls the police, which is, you know, a lot of times they end up calling the police on themselves. And ultimately, the police had came there and they conspired with each other to falsify charges on me and they didn't take my side. He reviews the messages, notes that they had a conversation and that it appeared to be consensual. And like I said, Minnesota 16 is the age of consent. The local police department warns him not to do it again.
They looked at his little 30-second clip that he had on his phone, and they didn't look at the evidence on my phone, and they charged me and took me to jail for, at first it was just for, like, false imprisonment or something like that. And then I went to court two days later, and they hit me with felony stalking, felony assault, and felony false imprisonment. Even after one of his stings led to an arrest, even after he reported a corrections officer for breaking the law,
Local authorities still seem to view Johnston as a dangerous threat. And he is. There are several accused predators in southeast Minnesota who would agree with that assessment. Johnston gathered legitimately damning evidence. But then he set up these men to confront and agitate and provoke.
Why not just perform a citizen's arrest or broadcast the "aha" moment without bullying or provoking on a different platform or even send it to the media? Is he just looking for a loophole to validate his violent tendencies or trying to assuage the perception of his urge to hurt someone? If he really wants to do something about it, why not become a licensed investigator, a lawyer, a victim's rights advocate, anything that isn't bloodthirsty?
Yes, something is rotten in Olmstead, but is a domestic abuser beating up a new demographic safer? If a cop was convicted of domestic abuse, we'd want him off the force, no matter how many perps he has or will put away. Johnson is still awaiting trial. If he's found guilty, he could face several years of prison time.
He's gone out of his way to make sure that sexual predators face consequences for their actions, and his actions could receive consequences that are just as serious. Johnston's future remains uncertain, but even if he does go to prison, he has big plans for when he gets out. We're going on the front lines, man. We're going to be, I'm about to be hopefully working with a guy going up to northern Minnesota to talk to some families of missing Native girls and
And we're going to try to do even more than just expose the perpetrators. We're going to try to help victims. And I have an idea for a small outreach thing. Basically, what I'm going to do is get kids that their dads are locked up and stuff like that, like sports equipment.
But as far as the activism goes on that end, yes, I'm going to be hopefully doing some important work here. I just want people to know that I really want to make a difference and I really want laws changed and I really want victims to have hope. And I want a future where people are scared to commit these types of offenses.
Whether that be because people like me might expose you or someone might, a victim's family member might do something to you or you know that you're going to go to prison for life. Like that's what I want because this type of stuff ruins lives and we're supposed to be a nation that protects our children and we're falling away from that. Johnston wants to fight for the good guys. He wants to protect vulnerable people. But ultimately a jury will have to decide whether Johnston's actions deserve praise
or punishment. Thank you for tuning in to Vigilante. Among the many sources we used for this episode, we found Mark Wasson's reporting in the Post Bulletin very helpful. This episode was written by Nani Okwulagu and executive produced by Connor Powell. We'll be back next week with a new story about people taking justice into their own hands. Until next time.
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