Defence pushes back in 'Creeper Hunter' intimidation trial
Jason Nassr can’t take back the words he said during a testy cross-examination two years ago.
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Jason Nassr can’t take back the words he said during a testy cross-examination two years ago.
But Superior Court Justice James Stribopoulos must decide at Nassr’s trial this week if the 45-year-old self-styled child predator vigilante suddenly invoked the name of an assistant Crown attorney’s child at his 2023 trial to strike fear in the prosecutor and interfere with his ability to do his job.
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In closing arguments Tuesday, assistant Crown attorney Thomas Mack argued Nassr knew what he was doing, while defence lawyer Ingrid Grant suggested Nassr spoke in anger without having a chance to complete his point and give context to his comment.
Nassr, creator of the now-defunct Creeper Hunter TV website, went on trial Monday for intimidating a justice participant – namely, the assistant Crown attorney who prosecuted him two years ago.
In a heated cross-examination after Nassr testified in his own defence, the prosecutor suggested part of Nassr’s motivation to have highly sexualized text conversations with adult strangers – while pretending to be a young girl – was sexual gratification.
“I know you have a kid named (child’s name),” Nassr said to the prosecutor, adding, “And I know . . .” before he was cut off by Justice Alissa Mitchell, who sent the jury out, admonished him for his comment and conduct, and suggested he could face a contempt charge if he kept it up.
That exchange came at Nassr’s first trial in early 2023 over his activities as an online vigilante who claimed to ferret out suspected child predators by posing as a young woman on adult dating sites, then after piquing someone’s interest he shifted the highly sexual conversation to texts, in which he would claim to be a 12- or 13-year-old girl.
All this activity was recorded by Nassr. The ultimate goal was to set up a face-to-face meeting where Nassr would film the “gotcha” moment, then edit together a website episode, including the names, ages and hometowns of the targets.
His text exchanges with a 49-year-old London-area man, 10 months after Nassr first had a text conversation with the man, sparked a police probe.
The man denied sending the texts, telling Nassr his phone had been stolen. But police were called to investigate and the man took his own life soon after.
After a five-week trial, a jury convicted Nassr of extortion, harassment by telecommunications and two counts of child pornography through written materials. He received a two-year conditional sentence, including 18 months of house arrest, followed by two years of probation.
Nassr has appealed the verdicts and sentence.
His trial this week is expected to end Wednesday.
The Crown called only the prosecutor and Nassr opted not to call any evidence.
Mack argued that evidence points to one conclusion: “Mr. Nassr intended to create a state of fear in (the prosecutor) . . . to impede him in this line of cross examination that Mr. Nassr found particularly objectionable.”
In the exchange before the comment, Nassr, who Mack said already had a perceived beef with the prosecutor from previous dealings, was seething that the prosecutor would call his sexuality into question.
The prosecutor testified Nassr lowered his voice, looked him in the eye “in almost a cold and calculating manner” before invoking his child’s name.
The Crown doesn’t think Nassr was trying to derail the trial or force the prosecutor off the case, but wanted to “create a state of fear” to stop the line of cross-examination, Mack said.
There was no explanation why Nassr knew the child’s name and the prosecutor knew Nassr was “extremely adept at locating targets, . . . able to intrude digitally into people’s lives and . . . went to significant lengths to extort, harass and shame targets.”
The prosecutor testified he was stunned by the comment, needed time to compose himself and invoked security protocols for his family.
“I think (the prosecutor’s) reaction is the natural consequence of somebody looking a parent in the eye during an acrimonious proceeding moments after yelling at them, . . . and telling them that they know your child’s name for no apparent reason,” Mack said.
But Grant argued there’s no way of knowing what Nassr meant because the judge cut him off.
“We know exactly what Mr. Nassr said, but . . . we don’t know what he was going to say. He did not finish his sentence,” she said.
He was making a point, she said, likely “something about him being accused of being what I’m going to call ‘pedophile adjacent’ and that he in some way is turned on sexually by pretending to be a child and getting adult men to engage sexually with him.”
The follow-up might have been the prosecutor wouldn’t stand for being accused of sexual impropriety involving children, Grant said. It might have been an innocent follow-up.
“But he is expressing something and we cannot infer this sort of sinister intent when we have only this partial statement,” she said.
Nassr was “speaking off the cuff,” Grant said. “We’re talking about cross-examination. We’re talking about a person who is upset, who’s not contemplating the niceties of what he’s going to say.”
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