Human Trafficking with Detective Ricky Lynn | Part 2 of 4

A “white van” isn’t the center of most human trafficking stories. Vulnerability is. We sit down with Detective Ricky Lynn for one of the darkest conversations we’ve produced, and we ask the question people avoid because it’s uncomfortable: how does exploitation actually work when the victim is hungry, homeless, scared, or trying to survive another night?

We unpack a clear, real-world definition of human trafficking, including child sex trafficking and CSAM, and why “something of value” is often a meal, a ride, a hotel shower, dry clothes, drugs, or even a 50-cent bottle of water. Ricky walks us through how traffickers groom targets at malls and public spaces without force, by identifying the kid who has nowhere to go. We also talk about trauma-informed, victim-centered policing, why community contact matters more than activity metrics, and how so much harm lives in the unreported “dark figure of crime.”

Then we move into the tougher layers: family-based trafficking, neglect that opens the door to predators, and the reality that systems like social services may be stretched past their limits. For adults, we break down the legal test of force, fraud, or coercion and how addiction and “dope sick” withdrawal can be used as control.

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Transcript

A Disturbing Scene Sets The Tone

Detective Ricky Lynn 0:00

When we got to the house, they had f six dogs. And there was probably two inches of animal feces on in the living room floor, not like individual. Like when you walked, it the animal feces squeezed between your toes. That's what these kids were living in.

Wendy 0:23

The podcast you're about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

Detective Ricky Lynn 0:33

Human trafficking with Detective Ricky Lynn, part two of four.

David 0:45

We have a content warning that rolls in front of every episode because we usually talk about sensitive topics, and we do not want to trigger anyone or make sure that we all understand that the topics are of an adult nature. The episode you are about to listen to or watch is perhaps one of the darkest we have produced, and we wanted to make sure everyone is prepared for what will be talked about. Human trafficking covers a wide spectrum of atrocities and evil. This interview goes to some of those dark places. While briefly, but they are disturbing all the same. Children should not be present when this one is played. Also, if anyone takes a hard pass at listening to or viewing this episode based on trauma they have experienced or have been close to, we understand completely and would recommend waiting this one out for one of our future drops in stories. We care deeply about all of our listeners and viewers and want to balance making educational content while at the same time protecting vulnerable people. Take care and thank you for your careful consideration on this.

Detective Ricky Lynn 2:18

I remember on 7th Street. And we realized that there was more people hurting down there than just the drug dealers and the women in prostitution. That every community cookout we did, we'd throw a couple cases of hamburgers and hot dogs on a grill and just cook out and give them away. And the amount of kids that come up and said, I haven't eaten in three days. And uh the I I remember dad coming up and saying, Can I take more than a couple? Says I got a family at home and we haven't had food in in days. And we'd fix a box with like a week's worth of food and send it home with them. Uh and you know, we had marked police cars there, we had fire department guys there, we've had had all the Natalie sisters people come. So there was a lot of help for a lot of different people, and that kind of those little things made me trauma-informed and victim-centered. Like I'm starting to understand the dynamics of what drugs do to people, what prostitution does to people, uh, what human traffickers the because really back then I consider every guy that was selling crack cocaine to the girls on the street the trafficker. They were still, yes, they were not selling them for sex, but the dope that they had made them do sex. So the coercion piece in there, I think, is was all human trafficking.

David 3:58

Yeah, you used uh a term that I wanted to come back to and let the audience mark it if they've never heard it in the words dope sick. That's a tool. Am I right or wrong? Oh, yeah. The other thing I think is trauma-informed, victim-centered. Uh, in in my opinion, being away from a few years and kind of having those same epiphanies throughout my career, that's where policing in the community to me takes a complete shift from what you and I knew it years ago, and we change how we serve. I I so it's so cool. I it uh uh it's one of those things I wish I knew more when I was young and dumb. And uh well, no, when I started when I was 32, I was never young. I was new. And uh, but you know, it's like you look back and uh it takes so long for some people to get that. I wish we could get that in people earlier in their career. Maybe I think it's changing. Generationally, I think we're getting better.

Detective Ricky Lynn 4:48

I I see agencies, and you you you know, it takes a lot of different kinds of people to make a police department. Yeah. It takes the guy that wants to go write traffic tickets, it's the guy that wants to work homicides, it's the guy that just wants to work patrol and and help people. Uh, but it takes a variety of people, but I I see agencies that their whole like smaller agencies in Kentucky, some of their whole focus is traffic tickets. Yeah. And and that's just from the experience of what the administration has. Like maybe the chief has never worked in a detective bureau or deal with victims before. Uh it's not it's not bad, but I wish more departments would focus on people in the community versus traffic tickets.

David 5:47

I see the same thing. You and I both travel a lot, is that we still have an old vestige in the industry of being metric driven, quantitative, like like your whole existence is based on activity. And you have filled out activity sheets for years. And uh you know, some people think there's a quota, even if there's not a quota, which is is is ridiculous. It's I'm with you, is that what we should be working on qualitative. And and that's the moderate police thing that more and more people are picking up on, is that all of that has a purpose. But I think balancing that out is a big one.

Detective Ricky Lynn 6:20

I I think the sheet that used to have like what kind of crimes did did what tickets did we write for what kind of crimes versus you could change that sheet to get the same same quantitative numbers and make it community policing related versus traffic related.

What Human Trafficking Actually Means

David 6:44

Yeah, yeah. I d I know that uh just and I don't want to go to delve too deep, but when I had a patrol sector, is one of the things I really pushed out was the community contact concept is walk into those stores, stuff that you and I just did. But you do you wonder sometimes, is it missing or are we overfocusing? But trying to put people, or I remember uh when I was in a sector as a lieutenant, sending people out down off of Smith Street and Fifth Street after dinner to go door to door and hand out those tip panels and speak to people. And and at first you'd get some guys and girls that you could tell they were like, I'll do it, but but man, I had so many people, Ricky, come back. And that I think when they did it, they flipped a little bit because they would talk about how they spent 45 minutes on a porch with some person in their 80, and that person was telling them what the specific problems in the neighborhood were. But it was that whole thing, get out of the car, right? Not not have your windows roll down like we all start. But that's a neat thing. And uh going back as we we forwarded it too is that it's neat to watch how one act of doing those cookouts opens an envelope inside the community and inside the cops' brains. And and super commendable. But I'll finish with this. I think that's what separated RPD from some other PDs. Not to brag, but I think that that was real. So uh a neat epiphany to look at these people from just the the quote criminal side to the victim side, they can be victims. It's a vulnerable population. There's a thing called the dark figure of crime, and that's the unreported crime, and that's usually from people in a vulnerable population. And back to your book is that these men and women uh very rarely reported horrific crimes. And I can look back at serial murders that were solved when we finally connected with somebody who said, Yeah, he may he drove me out in the country and uh bit me and did I mean, and it was like, wow, but that would have never been reported. So take us here. What is human trafficking? Because you're retired, but now you deal with this solely. But what is a good definition for the listener and the watcher is what human trafficking is.

Detective Ricky Lynn 8:45

Well, so the first thing we ought to do is do away with Facebook and social media. Oh, thank you. Uh uh so everybody's scared of human trafficking. Human trafficking's pretty simple. Uh one, human trafficking goes on in every county in Kentucky. It goes on in every county across the United States because everybody's laws are pretty close. Uh ours, uh Alabama, Texas, all mirror the same like Kentucky's laws because they're all based off federal law that got written first. So uh nobody is going to snatch your kid out of the mall. The white van is not gonna come down the street. Now, could we have a pedophile that's looking at one child, and that's way different than human trafficking.

David 9:46

Good point.

When Water Becomes Payment

A Runaway Trades Sex For Food

Detective Ricky Lynn 9:47

Uh the white van probably isn't gonna snatch your kid off the street. It might sell you some weed because it's selling ice cream too. I d I d I don't know. So uh, but nobody's gonna put a zip tie on your car, on your car windshield, and and and they're waiting to snatch a grown adult out of a parking lot. Do we have traffickers at the mall? Certainly, every day. But they're gonna sit down next to that kid with his hood up and earbuds in at the front door that has no place to go. And I'm gonna sit there and if I was a trafficker, talk to him for 20 minutes, say, I got I got some weed in my car, you want to go smoke a joint, and we're gonna just drive off with no no noise, no hollering. That person's gonna be a willing participant to go with me because things are so horrible at home. Human trafficking deals with vulnerabilities. Uh like sex tortion is about threats, coercive threats. Manipulation is about control, grooming is about expanding boundaries, uh, and exploitation is exploiting vulnerabilities. So, human trafficking, to make it simple, if we're talking about kids under 18 in Kentucky, it's a trade of something of value for a sexual act, sexual performance, or CSAM uh child sex abuse material, like we used to call it kitty porn. Right. Uh so those three things for something of value. Rarely, it's money. I'm gonna buy a runaway kid a happy meal, I'm gonna put him in a hotel room, I'm gonna take care of them, I'm gonna fill vulnerabilities. Uh, we had a case, uh, James Ford had a case, and I went down and helped him in Greensburg, Kentucky. And the trafficker, there was 13 kids involved, and one of the families I remember that three or four of the kids were out of. So I went and talked with mom and dad, and they had sulfur water, and you couldn't drink it. Their mom was a nurse, dad was an overroad truck driver, and they allowed a gentleman to come in and babysit their kids while they were at work. This guy that was like 35 years old, uh, James Ford did uh 90% of the work, 90, 98% of the work. I went down and just wrote his tailcoats in this, but the trafficker was uh we interviewed all of them, and I say we interviewed, we took them to uh a uh child advocacy center to have them interview them. And we got all done, all six kids, we take them back home and we determined there was no trafficking. And I drove all the way back home from Greensburg, Kentucky, which was about two and a half hours. And it's kind of funny. I pulled in my driveway and the motion light kicks out of my driveway. And out of the blue, I'm going, we missed it. So I called James for it. I go, go get the kids, I'll be right back. I back out of my driveway. Like I didn't even get out of my car. Like when the light came on, I I said I got it. He goes, I just took all the kids home. I go pick them up, take them to Greensburg Police Department, and we gotta ask them some questions. Everybody missed it. We get back and I walk in, and the girl goes, I've been with you guys all day. I'm hungry. And I said, I tell you what, we'll take everybody for pizza if this, and these are 11, 12-year-old little girls. And uh I said, tell me about the bottle of water. You mentioned in this that that the trafficker took you for a bottle of water every time that he had uh in intercourse with you, and they used other words, of course. And she goes, It's a bottle of water. We went to Dollar General, we got a 50 cent bottle of water. I go, tell me about your water. Sulfur water, you can't drink it. The health department said we can't drink the water in our home. I said, All right, what did you have to drink in your refrigerator? Probably spoiled milk. I said, So you had nothing to drink at all. How long was it before, like the last time you had drank something? She goes, I don't know. It was usually two, two and a half days. So he was using like, and the longest you can go without drinking fluid is 72 hours. He was pushing the envelope for them not to have anything to drink to turn tricks with these girls, and then you take them for a bottle of water, and that's that that was worth it to the girls to have 12 ounces of water. So rarely it is money. If you're a runaway, you haven't eaten, and you haven't eaten a couple days. Uh, in uh Portland, in Louisville, I'm I'm at Wendy's, and I like going to that Wendy's when I was there because there was like a 60-year-old lady that used to call me honey, and I just thought that was the neatest thing in the world. And like I'd I'd only get there like once a week, but she recognized me and said, Honey, how can I help you? Like, like she was the sweetest lady in the world, and I'm sitting there, and while I'm order ordering my food, like picking it up, some girl come out of the blue. I didn't see her, and you've had someone bang on your window.

David 15:36

Oh, yeah.

Vulnerabilities Traffickers Target Most

Detective Ricky Lynn 15:37

Oh, scare me to death. That's early hard disease. And uh, so my work truck had roll-up windows, and so I gotta climb over my gear and roll down this window. It is pouring the rain out. And this little 16-year-old girl says, I haven't eaten in like a day. Can you buy me a happy meal? And I tell the lady, hey, give me a happy meal. I tell this girl, go over and stand over by like where I can park, and I'll bring your happy meal to you. And she goes, which I thought about that was absolutely horrible because it's pouring the rain, and there's a little roof over where you picked up your food. So I sent her out into the rain to wait for me. But I was there looking for another human trafficking victim at the time. So I pull over there, and the girl uh opens my door and I said, Listen, you can't shut my door, but you can get in out of the rain and eat your happy meal. Um I don't know this girl from Adam. I'm I'm in a uh at that point, I work for the attorney general's office undercover, and the last thing I need is a 16-year-old homeless girl in my car. Uh, just a lot of allegations could be made, and that's a boundary I was not going to cross. So I said, leave the door open. You can eat your meal out of the rain. And I I could like if my truck got wet, it didn't matter. So uh she's eating the meal, and I said, I'm looking for this girl, and I gave her the description. She says, I've never seen her before. I said, Okay. And as we're talking, I explained what I did, and I was a human trafficking detective. And uh I said, Have you ever had to do a sexual act out here to get food? She goes, I gave a guy oral sex right here in McDonald's parking lot yesterday. So, I mean, so when it comes to human trafficking, it's the buyer or seller for one of those three things. So when we talk about kids, it's pretty simple. A trade of something of value for the sexual act, sexual performance, or CSAM uh of anything, it's something of value to the victim. So it could even be fulfilling a need, getting them out of the rain. What's and it's like it's not your value system, it's their value system.

Wendy 18:10

Parents are there no parents?

Detective Ricky Lynn 18:12

If someone's run away or run away, you'll like there's thir 33 group homes in Louisville. So there was there's kids that run away all the time. Most of the like I said, this deals with vulnerabilities. It deals with parents with domestic violence, substance abuse, somebody in jail. Uh think about the vulnerabilities you have. Let's say someone's water gets shut off, and they have a 15-year-old high school kid in the house. Nobody thinks about the vulnerabilities just for that simple thing. I don't have money, we'll turn the water back on when I get paid on Friday. Think about this kid going to school. I got dirty clothes. We can't wash dishes, so we have dirty, rotten dishes, rotten food on dishes in our house. Now they're gonna stack up that you're probably gonna put some in the shower or bathtub. I'm gonna stink the bullying, the the grief from all the other kids because they don't want to be around you. Think about that in a kid's world. Like, like spin that out of your adult mind and put it in a kid's world. What you have to go through, even if your water or electric is shut off for four days. Is it better? Can me as a trafficker, can I sell a better life to you? And now we talk about all the people that have been sexually assaulted or domestic violence, violence in homes. Uh Kentucky has has been number one in domestic violence for years. Uh, the average number of a person being sexually assaulted before they're 18 is one in four girls and one in 13 boys. So the violence and stuff going on in the homes, kids leave. And me as a trafficker, I my job is to fill that vulnerability for kids. So I just have to provide for them. Think about, you know, think about a kid that hasn't had a shower in 10 days or hasn't eaten in 10 days, and I get them a hotel room where they can take a shower and go buy new clothes for them. That's pretty simple. And I've been sexually assaulted at home for the last four years. Is it better to sleep with dad or a stranger? So for kids, it's it's really easy. The number one trafficker for kids being there's two different types of trafficking. Like there's regular trafficking, and then we have trafficking within families. The number one trafficking, if it's somebody in the home, is mom. And uh it's just vulnerabilities, you know, at the age of 13 or 14, the kid can be making money for families. You know, if mom and dad are both using heroin, uh, they shoot the kid up at 14, and it's just a family drug business or drug users, and the kid's making money like mom's making money to buy drugs. My youngest victim was seven months old. Mom traded heroin for oral sex with her baby, and my oldest victim was 78. So it doesn't matter how old, doesn't matter whether you're black or white, it doesn't matter what race, what dynamics uh that you live in, doesn't matter with a single mom home, single dad home, it's all about vulnerabilities. So if you think about that, and if you break down like somebody's life for vulnerabilities. Uh and it it's tough to be a kid now.

David 22:04

I think tougher than never has been. I think tougher. You make a good point too, because you emphasize it again, that it's not how you and I perceive the value of something. And that that extends into this whole world of seven months old is to get around this and to open your mind to it, you have to you have to be, you have to see things that are so desperate from our value systems that are most of the public. I've always said that uh, especially in a good sized city, that if somebody gets summons to grand jury duty for a month, they usually come out and their eyes are wide open because they sit there and they listen to people like you come in and testify this stuff that really the the mainstream media I don't think feels compelled to talk about it because it's just so ugly. I I think a lot of it is that. But that whole thing that back to a 50 cent bottle of water in lieu of drinking sulfur water, that's that's the motivator.

Wendy 22:59

How do you find these people, Ricky? Somebody tipping them off, or how how do these tips come in?

Detective Ricky Lynn 23:06

So the case in Greensburg, it it's it's it this breaks my heart. So the case in Greensburg is one of the girls confided in her parents that this guy that was providing the money, water and stuff, took them to the a creek in the summertime with alcohol and gave them alcohol. They got drunk and he touched everybody. Well, one of the girls went home and told her folks, and that's what started the snow this to snowball and what it was. Going back, there was twenty-seven out of the three kids in the home that were all sisters, there was twenty-seven reports to social services of different things dirty clothes, you know, water. The school was writing to social services. Through this whole thing, the social service gentleman uh arrived at the house prior to us and he wrote a home plan for them. And when we showed up at the house, I called the guy who wrote the home plan for them. When we got to the house, they had six dogs, and there was probably two inches of animal feces on in the living room floor, not like individual. Like when you walked, it the animal feces squeezed between your toes. That's what these kids were living in. And the social worker wrote a home plan for them to clean their home and left.

Wendy 24:44

And you said mom was a nurse and dad was a truck driver. And um uh the feces aside, were they not able to purchase water for anybody to drink?

Detective Ricky Lynn 24:54

I don't think the kids were a priority for either of them. Dad was gone for eight, ten days at a time. He'd come home and he says, Well, she's taking care of them.

David 25:05

Yeah.

Detective Ricky Lynn 25:06

And he'd sleep for a couple days and go back on the road. And she worked in a nurse, like, nobody cleaned in this house. Like, nobody.

Wendy 25:15

How did they how did they find the caregiver? And I use that term loosely, the man that looked after the children.

Detective Ricky Lynn 25:22

So James Ford started talking to all these kids and put all the pieces together.

Wendy 25:28

And well, I mean, mom found them. Just somebody she knew. I'm somebody babysitter.

Detective Ricky Lynn 25:33

It was a gentleman volunteered when, like, it wasn't a newspaper thing. He came up and volunteered because there was girls in the house.

David 25:44

And he's like and and like a lot of predators, Ricky, he smelled the vulnerability.

Wendy 25:49

And mom just takes him up on it. Yeah, and he childcare.

Detective Ricky Lynn 25:52

The the agreement was he'd sleep on the couch, and he convinced them that it was too busy downstairs. And uh he mom allowed him to move a bed into one of the girls' rooms.

unknown 26:07

Wow.

David 26:07

You know, he probably couldn't sit down and bullet point and write all the vulnerability factors, but like a like I use the word predator, they were in here. They were in his brain. And they they it's almost like intuitively they can they can see that picture, and that's when he knows to make a move.

Wendy 26:23

Uh and so social services basically dropped the ball.

Detective Ricky Lynn 26:27

Well, I don't want I don't want to say that because there were so many kids involved. Greensburg, Kentucky had no foster homes. Like, where do you put these kids?

Wendy 26:37

Were there extended family, grandparent?

Detective Ricky Lynn 26:40

Nothing the extended family lived like out in Utah. So so there was nobody close. Uh and like if you got a family of five, there is no beds anywhere for social services now. Uh, I saw in the news the other day one of the social services had kept kids in their office for like three days because they had no place to put them. They had people stay with them, but it wasn't even a hotel room. It was in their office.

Adults And The Force Fraud Coercion Test

David 27:11

Yeah, and I'm gonna because it's possible, but at the same time, I keep reminding because police deal with the same thing: limited resources, limited training. We got to remember that. Somebody could drop the ball, but sometimes you do what you can do. And the other thing I thought about when we were talking about it too was that uh uh you take all of those things, and it might be a while before any industry except those as risk factors, to where if I put them together, I could say, uh, you know, because like even with early childcare, and as you know, there are signs that kids can exhibit in early childcare that would make you believe something really is gone sideways at home. So, in defense of the industry, is it might be a while, just like policing took forever to quit treating it just like a criminal act, to be able to look and say these things. But I I keep falling back to lacks of resources. I I I know that people can drop the ball, cops have dropped the ball, but man, you know, the government, there are certain parts of government that are not funded correctly, and you've seen it and I've seen it. And uh sometimes they write those up and they do the best they can. I mean, it uh but I've I've I've been in homes like that.

Next Part Teaser And Where To Listen

Detective Ricky Lynn 28:16

So and then with adults, it's the same law as kids that that commercial set trade of something of value, but you need force fraud or coercion. Now, force when we talk about force, we in 2020 uh the attorney general's office did a new version of what force is and serious physical injury, and it's when it comes to human trafficking, it's financial, reputational, went through all the how you would be forced to do a sexual act. And then when we talk about coercion, it could be any kind of drug use. If you're we're a boyfriend and girlfriend in a hotel room, and the boyfriend needs to pay for the room the next day, he's gonna have the girl uh do a sexual act to pay for the room. The girl gets the flu, she doesn't want to do it, so he makes her a little dope sick. So she pays for the room, so he gives her a little bit more dope. That goes on every every night at hotels. Uh, and it usually comes in as like a domestic violence fight or people arguing or something like that.

Wendy 29:31

But if you think about Hey, you know there's more to the story, so go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David 29:40

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolice Podcast.com, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters, and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store, where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast Swag. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are here impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars in a written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts. Make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends.