Human Trafficking with Detective Ricky Lynn | Part 3 of 4

People picture trafficking as a stranger and a van, but the reality is usually quieter and harder to spot: a need gets filled, then used as a leash. We sit down with Detective Ricky Lynn to talk about human trafficking and sex trafficking in Kentucky, and why the most important evidence often starts with understanding vulnerability instead of judging behavior.

We dig into how traffickers use addiction, withdrawal, and the promise of a bed or a hotel room to control adults and minors, and why that cycle can look like “choice” from the outside. Ricky explains the method he uses to prove cases by “writing the vulnerability backwards,” showing what a victim lacked and how the trafficker exploited it. We also talk about runaway teens, missing kids, and why the danger grows fast once basic needs like food, showers, and a safe place to sleep disappear.

The conversation gets practical for law enforcement and for anyone supporting survivors: trauma-informed interviewing, why “I believe you” can open the door to truth, and how strong investigations can reduce the burden on victims in court. We cover Kentucky’s tougher human trafficking penalties, the victims fund, and the Tim Nolan case as an example of networks that recruit through access and enticement. We also confront modern grooming where it actually happens: porn culture, regular-web escort ads, Snapchat, OnlyFans money pathways, and even payment apps being used to normalize transactions with kids.

If you care about real prevention, better reporting, and accountability that doesn’t retraumatize victims, this is a tough but necessary listen. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people find it.

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Transcript

Why Victims Stay Silent

Detective Ricky Lynn 0:00

We have, and you know what? There's a lot of people that don't want to be victims. Like, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to be classified as a victim. I don't want to. There's a lot of people that know what happened there. And I want to tell you if you came forward and told what happened there, you'd be eaten up by the media.

Content Warning And Listener Care

Wendy 0:26

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

Announcer 0:36

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

David 0:49

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.

Addiction As The Control Tool

Detective Ricky Lynn 2:03

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. Now we have human trafficking. Most people will go, that's prostitution, it's her fault.

David 2:57

Yeah, she voluntarily entered into the agreement and made the exchange. Exactly. Traditionally, that would be it.

Detective Ricky Lynn 3:02

And instead, in the traffickers' mind is she needs a place to stay, she needs to buy dope, she needs to buy alcohol.

Wendy 3:12

It's just supplying her need.

Detective Ricky Lynn 3:13

Yes. I'm filling her vulnerability.

Wendy 3:15

She's the one who needs it.

Detective Ricky Lynn 3:16

Yes. And so what probably the hardest thing that ever got me to the point where uh it was funny that somebody four or five years ago said, You're the subject matter expert in Kentucky on human trafficking. And I'm going, No. They said, tell me another person that will write backwards the vulnerability in a case. And I didn't do that because I'm the smartest or the sharpest tool in the shed. I did it out of necessity to prove human trafficking cases. Right. And it was just how human, like I've read the law enough to what it takes to make an arrest. And when we start talking about that, human trafficking is pretty easy to spot, obviously, that way. But to charge the charge of human trafficking, I got to get everybody else to see what I'm looking at. So you have to right now, like that family, all the vulnerabilities. Like when I go into a human trafficking case, what are the vulnerabilities in this case and what are they fulfilling? And how is that person twisting the victim to get what they want? Because anymore a trafficker, it's a the person's commodity. Sure.

Announcer 4:37

Yeah.

Detective Ricky Lynn 4:38

And like it doesn't matter what they do to them. Uh a girl in a hotel room, two girls in a hotel room, let's say they're both minors, is about $9,000 a day for a trafficker. So I don't need somebody for a year.

David 5:01

And that leads to the word disposable, doesn't it?

Detective Ricky Lynn 5:04

Yes. Yeah. So are these kids just so 10 days from now they run away, I've made $90,000.

Proving Trafficking Through Vulnerability

Wendy 5:12

And the families aren't missing these children?

Detective Ricky Lynn 5:15

We have so many kids that are run away across the United States. Uh we have so many, you know, kids don't run away. You know, most kids we find. I don't want to scare anybody. Like most kids we find. But if you're gone a week, how are they eating? How are they taking a shower? How are they, you know, I you don't know the amount of kids that have slept in vacant buildings as a trafficker? That's an easy one. I'll just put you in a hotel room.

David 5:47

Yeah. It's and that's that we've talked about because uh David Hester came and did a really good piece on missing people. And and we talked about how difficult it is for a police department to triage all of that. Because when do you move from the kid that tied the little sack to the stick and left home, you know, ho ho ho, you know what kind of weird vision? And and that's where most of them are. They get pissed off, they come back, they they are they are found before they're entered in NCIC. But then you talk too about uh I've always said that uh like right now there seems to be a proliferation of missing teenagers on social media that don't qualify for amber alerts, and there's a whole thing about that. And it's like, I get it, but we could desensitize the population to what it means to be missing. But I will never take away, here's the other devil edge of the sword, is again, like you said, the longer they're gone, Ricky, they're vulnerable. And and so that when they start to not having those those needs met, that's where the hump is in that. That that's it, is that uh that's you know, look at how many times you see or read stories where they they they go out to the west coast and just get completely consumed and never seen again.

Detective Ricky Lynn 6:50

So there's an organization in Kentucky called uh the the Institute for Survival Care. And it used to be in Baltimore, and it moved to LaGrange, Kentucky. Uh, and they deal with all the shelters. It used to be shelter care, now it's survivor care, and they they deal with all the shelters around the country, and they do a lot of uh research into different things. Well, the last they've come out this year with new research. So I have been told since 2010, never arrest anybody for prostitution. Never, never, never, never, never. And we've kind of preached that across the state, and and that has taken a hold because all the advocates said that. So they just did this study and they went and interviewed all these human trafficking victims uh across Kentucky. They went to like all the jails to have people do surveys and and places. And the number one way of getting out of human trafficking for adults is jail. So we have stopped locking people up for prostitute, but it gets them away from the trafficker, it gets them away from the dope, it gets them clean where people can talk to them to provide services to them to get them out of the life. So this year, like my my teaching has all changed that we need to make avenues for kids that are being sexually assaulted, rape victims, domestic violence, people are human trafficking. We need to make avenues to make it easier to report and not blame. The biggest thing you can tell somebody is and and this is crazy, whether you've been sexually assaulted, whether it's domestic violence, is I believe you.

David 8:49

Right.

Detective Ricky Lynn 8:50

Those words right there, you if you want to build rapport with somebody that's a victim of a crime, you sit down with them in the first words, and you have to mean it. It's not words, but I believe you. I can tell you right now, in my career now, I've investigated all sorts of crimes with kids. And I gotta say that I have not had one kid lie to me at all. For the fact is, I go in with attitude to prove them right instead of proving them wrong. Some I know that the old police 1960, 1970, they walked into an interview and thinking somebody's gonna lie to them. Because we do so many interrogations where people lie to you, where this is an interview with a victim of a crime, and the the if you go in to prove that they're telling the truth, could we have a victim or two lie? Yes. But my j that it will sort itself out as the investigation goes forward.

David 10:01

Agreed. I and you'll use the powerful words trauma-informed. That's another evolution. Retired detective Jim Root teaches that quite a bit into law enforcement about changing that attitude, especially when you go to something like a sexual assault, is uh that approach is a whole lot different than it would have been back in the day. Uh take a little misogyny, add a little chauvinism, and add into it the idea that you're not doing an interrogation. And you make a good point, too, that uh if you if you trust and there's a problem with it, uh a good investigation in the justice system stops short of maybe somebody being criminally charged. And because that's the real risk, right? Is that uh if somebody manufactures something, they manufacture it. And of course, our job as truth seekers is to not let it get to the point where somebody's actually charged or housed on a false accusation. Uh that's why I think all of the complaints deserve to be examined. And I'm kind of like with you, is that if you have a low hip rate, I'm I'm being lied to in a case like that, roll, just go. Um because by the I would and let me leave it with this. I think by the time law enforcement is involved in this, usually there's such a preponderance of believable stuff in it. Is that do you follow the it it's like it's there?

Detective Ricky Lynn 11:13

My job is a fact finder. That's it. And I pr present facts. Right. Which means I have proven the statement.

Wendy 11:22

Well my question would be with some of these children, especially the ones that are homeless or in bad spots, where do they go once you break this case open? Who's good? They obviously can't go back home because that's why they left, most likely.

Detective Ricky Lynn 11:37

So the ideal thing is finding a family member with them. If not, they go into the system and into a and and and I gotta say, I

Runaways And Fast Exploitation Risks

Detective Ricky Lynn 11:50

I have run across a few bad foster homes. For the majority of the foster homes, they're absolutely incredible. There's some people in it just for the money, but the majority, uh I got two kids in a foster home, and they're adopting the kids, and they're the most amazing parents in the world, and they couldn't have kids. And the, you know, usually I I don't the kids were older, like eight or nine, and uh, you know, I know most people want little babies, but these parents have adopted these two kids into their lives, and they're they consider them family, and it's just absolutely phenomenal what the kids went through to what where go talk to them now, and it's like you want to sit on the floor and and break out now, they're like 10 and 13. You want to break out a monopoly game and play play board games with them that they're they're just remarkable. Kids kids heal quickly.

Wendy 12:51

Yeah.

Detective Ricky Lynn 12:52

But uh but back to the the uh like like like we're saying that uh we're fact finders.

David 13:02

Exactly.

Detective Ricky Lynn 13:02

Yeah. Uh I don't need to bring my opinion into cases, and the ideal case is finding enough evidence, nobody has to testify. There's enough there that and if you dig and dig and dig and build a case like it should, I rarely go to court.

David 13:21

Right. Well, again, uh one strong case work, and uh I think if you can get this the casework strong enough, the nasty of it, right, is is uh I think a lot of people quietly like I talked about before, the the media doesn't get into it maybe for good, maybe we don't need to be exposed to it in detail, but you get to a point where the offender would really like to see it go away when it can't go away, and the way you do that is you quietly take a plea, maybe, and uh probably a stiff sentence, just so that you don't take your family through all of that again.

Detective Ricky Lynn 13:55

So in 2020, we changed uh so if you are convicted of human trafficking now, it's 20 years, you have to serve 85 percent, which is 18 and a half years, which is everybody says I want him in jail

Jail As A Way Out

Detective Ricky Lynn 14:10

forever, but you're not gonna have that.

David 14:11

Right.

Detective Ricky Lynn 14:12

Uh, and there's a $10,000 fine that they have to pay into the human trafficking victims fund, and that fund is run by the attorney general, and it goes for training and education and law enforcement, like it's broken down how much money goes to each uh place. But uh that's a long time, you know. If uh Tim Nolan got was a judge in northern Kentucky, and uh he took a plea deal. There was a lot of victims, uh, but he was 70 years old. Now think about 70 years old going into the jail, got to serve 18 and a half years.

Wendy 14:54

Did the judge got prosecuted?

Detective Ricky Lynn 14:57

So so he yes, he he so he was a judge, uh district court judge in northern Kentucky, and uh he wasn't close enough to kids, so he left that and joined a school board and uh bought four pink four-wheels for his farm, and him and his attorney friends would trade adults and kids uh on his farm, uh, and he would give the kids alcohol and marijuana uh and do bad things to them. Uh, he had a friend named Robert Poole that we needed for a witness, and uh he refused to testify against Tim Nolan. So after we put Tim Nolan uh and uh Barbara Whalen did this from the attorney general's office, she prosecuted it. Once she put uh Tim Nolan into jail, we went after Robert Poole, and he's in in jail now, too. And he was an attorney in northern Kentucky, but uh there was a lot of people involved getting these kids to come to this farm under the pretense that they're gonna get alcohol and pot.

Wendy 16:10

I guess they were teenagers maybe.

Detective Ricky Lynn 16:12

Uh teenagers and and addicts. Uh it it all started. Tim Nolan bought a bar with a trailer next to it. And you know, the bartender or manager would run the bar. Well, he put a woman that was an addict in as the bartender that had like a 14-year-old daughter. So when she couldn't pay rent, he took rent from her using the 14-year-old daughter, and that all started this. Uh he decided he liked kids, and that's what started the the human trafficking part of this. That uh but uh so he paid into the victims fund. That's how we started the victims fund, and uh it went from there. But like I said, uh human trafficking right now, the the largest industry in the

Trauma Informed Policing Starts Here

Detective Ricky Lynn 17:10

world is the porn industry. So I know a couple years ago they had two different states, Utah and another state, that tried changing the age of consent to 14.

David 17:24

Isn't that terrifying?

Detective Ricky Lynn 17:25

Uh well the Victorian runway show moved to Paris so they could put uh Victorian Secret wanted to put kids on stage in their pink gear. Uh Sports Illustrated uh in their swimsuit edition has young girls in it that you can see through their bathing suits because they went to an island that is allows that. Uh, but sex sells. Uh uh, so uh it's just one of those things that if we talk about grooming, we talk about people grooming people, but that industry is grooming our kids across the board. Uh there's a uh new video game called Cyberpunk.

David 18:07

Never heard of it?

Detective Ricky Lynn 18:08

Uh I've never seen it, never played it. I got a friend, uh one of our friends in common uh play it. Um, but they just have made it so you can take as a caricature in the game, you can take your clothes off and have they have a room that you can go have sex in as your caricature in the game. Uh but but if we look across the board, uh Instagram now allows nudity.

David 18:36

Right.

Detective Ricky Lynn 18:36

Uh uh one of the worst apps out there for kids is Snapchat. The OnlyFans uh website sits on the Snapchat server so they can move the money and the QR codes back and forth. So our kids are getting inundated now with Snapchat ads and stuff like that. There's over a hundred websites in Kentucky, uh two of them being like skip thegames.com, megapersonal.com. This isn't dark web on the regular web. You can buy people. Uh there's about 9,000 ads a day posted in Kentucky.

David 19:20

Wow. Never knew that was on there.

Detective Ricky Lynn 19:22

So uh and so we talk about money. Money doesn't apply a lot to this. What have we given our kids? No, on their phones. Since we're giving elementary school kids phones, now we are giving kids Vimmo, and parents are sending Venmo. So now traffickers are using that Vinmo account for money to groom kids too.

David 19:49

Crazy. Wow. It's like evil finds a way.

Detective Ricky Lynn 19:52

Well, technology, you know, uh as Aston Crutcher said to Congress, technology can be good or bad, no matter how you use it. That if an airplane's technology, as he said, and if you fly it into a building, it's a bad thing. Yeah. If you you use it for mass transit, it's a good thing. That no matter what technology comes out, there's going to be evil people that do evil things.

David 20:15

For sure, for sure. You know, you talked about that network of uh the judge and and those people in the pink four-wheelers and all that kind of stuff like that. Um, a hot topic today, right now, that when we're recording this, is the the infamous Epstein files. And of course, his name has been on everybody's tongue for eons now. Um when you and without trying to rabbit hole the whole thing, because I refuse to go too deep on it because it's just voluminous. And you talk about misinformation. We are living in a world of there's a misinformation campaign on most of that, so I don't trust it. But that said, when people talk about human trafficking and uh and Epstein, what do you think the misunderstandings are or the facts? And I'm not trying to get you to nail down we don't have to name names like people do and everything, but what do you what do you think that where that curiosity comes from with people?

Detective Ricky Lynn 21:06

No, I I would hate to name names because as we talked earlier, that if somebody called me today and I could fly on their private jet to a resort on an island that all these famous people were gonna be at, I'd probably be the first one on the plane.

David 21:25

I think that's a lot of what this is. I really do.

Detective Ricky Lynn 21:28

Now, did bad things occur on the island? Yes, horrible things. Uh is everybody that went to the island guilty? I don't think so.

David 21:40

I'd have a hard time with that too.

Detective Ricky Lynn 21:42

Uh I think if you had money and you were a uh somebody that was a horrible person and you liked horrible things, they provided horrible things to you if you had the money. Uh but looking at the island, first of all, it's it was in international waters, so it would be the world court that would have to prosecute you. Uh second is like we said, we're fact finders. Right. All these pictures, because somebody's in a swimming pool, even if I'm in a swimming pool with two kids, doesn't would maybe it was their kids. Maybe it was, I mean, w there was a lot of movie stars that were young that were taken there, but there's a lot of movie stars that were young that were taken there that said nothing happened.

David 22:42

Right.

Detective Ricky Lynn 22:42

So I don't want to accuse anybody.

Wendy 22:45

I think you know,

After Rescue Foster Care Reality

Wendy 22:46

it I hadn't thought of it, Ricky, the way you put it. If you're famous and somebody's offering you to go, and as you were talking, the only thing I could think was back in the day, and we don't have these anymore, and I'm not saying that things happen. So let me preface this. I'm not saying this. But it's like the Anita Madden Derby party. All the famous people went there. It's just something you did every year. If you were famous and you were wealthy, it was a big show event, and it was broadcast on TV and movie stars, and all these famous people went there. So you just went because of the notoriety and the fame. And I and I hadn't thought about that until you put it like that. I was like, well, maybe it's kind of similar, and people are thinking, well, I'm gonna go to this famous island.

David 23:31

It's one of those things we can have two truths running parallel. You can have Jeffrey Epstein, a deviant, perverted individual convicted. You know, I mean, we we know that. But on the other side, Jerry Jeffrey Epstein, the socialite. And and it's a known thing that, you know, a part of the whole game in fame and fortune is is meeting people and networking and hobnobbing and and uh and again, you made a good point, a private jet down to a resort in a Caribbean island, uh, absent anything else, uh, people would go. And there's and uh so I'm with you. It's I think I think that we without rabbit hole in this too much, is we live in a world where people want to think the worst of everybody that they don't like and and informally indict people. But coming back to it again, part of that is that I think that the thing that there's a thread on there that interests people who don't want to just do conjecture is links to human trafficking. How we're if on those bad things, and we have to agree that's that stuff was going on, how they provided the quote unquote the product, which would be uh children or adults that uh were coerced into that.

Detective Ricky Lynn 24:35

Probably the the thing that bothers me the most is I watched a news article with a person getting off a plane coming back, and the person says, not for me,

Strong Cases Pleas And New Penalties

Detective Ricky Lynn 24:50

way too young, never go back. And that was pretty much their statement at that point that I mean that's on YouTube now. It was a news agency that was interviewing the person. At that point, it should have raised a lot of eyebrows, like what's going on. Yeah. Uh we have, and you know what, there's a lot of people that don't want to be victims. Like, I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to be classified as a victim. I don't want to there's a lot of people that know what happened there. And I want to tell you, if you came forward and told what happened there, you'd be eaten up by the media.

David 25:40

Oh, for sure.

Detective Ricky Lynn 25:41

Like like consumed, consumed. And then you'd be called a liar, and I I fully understand how victims aren't coming forward out of the woodwork with this, but but just going there looking at like and I've and I've only seen like the stuff everybody else has seen. Like, like I don't know anything uh that anybody else doesn't. But working human trafficking every day, you would think I would be consumed with that. And I realized early that it's a hundred percent what you said that that I I think it was a resort. You know, think about the prettiest resort you've ever gone to, and now you add all these music stars and movie stars and all these social lights, and uh that sounds fun to me.

David 26:40

Yeah, it and you look at this the names on the list now. I don't think it's a secret. I mean, it's just everybody in her mother's dog was going. And and to me, that was that too. I could I guess the reason I don't dig into it a lot right now is what we're left with right right now, is very naive, unprofessional people synthesizing thousands of pages of files on the internet. And there's no

Porn Tech And Online Grooming

David 27:03

way I'm gonna go follow people down that rabbit hole because it's it's it's just wrong. Uh, we talked about uh children, right trafficking, and I and I liked how you hit about the visual image of the the van, the abduction, uh kidnappings of children or uh and abductions of children don't always wind up in a trafficking event. You know, we've we've both worked cases in this community where children were murdered and they were taken and moved to somewhere else when it wasn't trafficking. Let's go into the adult world and and launch into that because it it uh uh I think it's probably just as nebulous, but I think that the dynamics could be different a little bit there.

Wendy 27:40

It's uh Yeah, you said 78, and I was thinking, how'd that happen?

David 27:46

Yeah, exactly. When we when we briefly How'd they even get her? Well, and the other look even with 78, it anytime you I think when you get to the moral majority of age is that self-control and self-destination, right? I mean, that we anticipate that as we get older that we develop and we have the ability to do things like say no or not go places, and uh, and but we still have people that are coerced, manipulated, threatened everything you said, and uh probably just guessing trafficked on a higher rate per capita than children.

Detective Ricky Lynn 28:18

So this we were teaching a uh human trafficking class in Ashland, and it was all law enforcement. We sent law enforcement guys out at noon on Wednesday to go take some pictures of places in town where trafficking may occur. Just we wanted them to get it in their head like this does happen here. And it doesn't mean all the pictures they took were trafficking, maybe no trafficking was going on, but uh it gave them a break in a classroom to go out and do some real investigation. And we had three guys that pull up to this homeless lady pushing a shopping cart down, it was a main street in Ashland, and uh they said uh we're here in this class, we're kind of stumped where to go. Uh explained what trafficking was to this lady, and the uh the the lady's response was Hey, you know there's more to this story, so go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David 29:29

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 window. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please

Epstein Claims Facts And Curiosity

David 30:15

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Announcer 30:29

Lock it down, Judy.