among the hardest to prove

Speaking to nearly 100 students and faculty at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Gary Phillips highlighted the importance of understanding the global child exploitation epidemic and shared his some of his experiences as a sexual predator hunter that briefly touched JonBenet's case back in 2006-

Federal official: It's students' job to know about global sexual exploitation of children
By SARA GIBONEY
04/08/2009

"KEARNEY — “This is where they bled, this is where they cried, this is where they were tortured,” he said.

Gary Phillips, section chief for the Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement, presented a photo of Michael Pepe’s bed.

Pepe, a retired U.S. Marine Corps captain and founder of a nongovernmental organization in Cambodia, was arrested for violently sexually abusing young girls there. Phillips discussed crime scene investigations, evidence he finds at crime scenes, interviewing victims, giving medical exams to victims of sexual abuse and dealing with emotional abuse. He showed photographs of abused children and crime scenes and shared e-mail messages between sexual predators and himself posing as a procurer of children...

“The hardest thing to do as an investigator is to prove the child crimes,” he said...

Phillips also described the cases of Walter Schirra, a man who was looking for boys and also is the son of Apollo 7 astronaut Wally Schirra; Thomas Lang, a German who was planning a trip to Asia to have sex with 9- to 12-year-old girls; Karl Kaechele, who kept a detailed diary of all the girls he raped; and John Mark Karr, a teacher who falsely confessed to killing 6-year old JonBenet Ramsey..."