Clyde Sampson decided to become a cop while playing American football – not because of the game, but because of his teammates.

It was April 1991, and four men accused of murdering police officers Damian Eyre and Steven Tynan in Walsh Street in 1988 had just been acquitted.

Some of Sampson’s teammates were police officers. He sensed their anger forged in solidarity. “I could feel their pain, and I decided to join,” he says.

He graduated in 1992, aged 24, with a plan to join search and rescue, but a back injury closed that path.

Sampson worked his way to becoming a detective before joining the e-crime squad, not necessarily to pursue techno-tycoons but for a pragmatic reason. A mate was in the squad, and he saw how he could catch serious crooks while maintaining a family life. “I had just become a parent and I wanted a job without night shift,” Sampson says. “I was not a geek.”

He taught himself the fundamentals of computer technology to use it against the offenders who hide their offending inside the web.

Teenager Carly Ryan was groomed and murdered by an online predator.

When most of us think of e-crimes, we think of money laundering and international scammers who send millions of emails to hook the vulnerable.

But the internet has become the single greatest weapon in the criminal world. Victoria Police plans to develop a standalone command to sit next to the crime department.

The old and the young are most vulnerable. The reality is that regardless of increased awareness, royal commissions, improved police training and retrospective investigations, our children have never been in more danger.

Despite improved home security and CCTV, every house is exposed to online attacks at any time. A computer is the modern-day version of a skeleton key that can open any lock.

Which is why Sampson wants to tell his story. It is about one case in which he says he was a bit player.

On March 3, 2007, Sampson was on call when he was told to head to Rosebud police station to carry out an arrest warrant from South Australia. It was for the murder of a 15-year-old girl killed on a beach at Horseshoe Bay, about 80 kilometres from Adelaide.

Sampson knew it well. His family had owned a holiday house there, and he spent most summers on that beach.

When police raided the unit, Garry Francis Newman was in his lounge room chatting online to a 14-year-old........

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