A Race against Time

With hundreds of thousands of images of child abuse discovered on McCartney’s devices, the race is on to get him remanded into custody. McCartney is rearrested in the early hours of the morning, at which time police discover McCartney’s phone on his bedside table, where his final victim was abused on Snapchat just hours before.

The US Department of Homeland Security notify the police in Northern Ireland of two more catfishing victims, this time in the United States, and a multiagency international investigation is triggered.

As McCartney is remanded into custody, police across the world work together to identify and safeguard the thousands of victims discovered on McCartney’s devices. Police are especially keen to identify and locate a 14-year-old girl in Oregon, whose images McCartney used to catfish hundreds of other children.

With McCartney due in court to plead guilty to charges of making indecent of images of children and blackmail, the case takes a different turn when Homeland Security finds an obituary page for Cimarron Thomas, one of his victims in West Virginia.