Chicopee man charged with felony in Vermont for attempting to lure a child
Editor's note: This article includes sexually explicit conversations between an adult man and a police officer posing as an underage girl.
CHICOPEE — Explicit text messages between a Chicopee man and an undercover cop pretending to be a teenage girl led to the man's arrest and a felony charge in Vermont.
Thomas Ndissi, 38, of Chicopee, was arrested Monday and arraigned Tuesday morning in Windham County for allegedly luring a child to a Super 8 Motel in Hartford, Vermont.
A Vermont Superior Court judge presiding over the arraignment ordered Ndissi, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, to be held on a $5,000 bond.
Ndissi began messaging the person he assumed was a 13-year-old girl via a text messaging app called Kik in September, according to an affidavit from Eric Clifford, the Hartford police officer who went undercover as the teen.
The messages from Ndissi soon became sexually explicit.
Ndissi allegedly asked the undercover cop if she was a virgin, her favorite sexual position, and he asked her to share a picture of herself.
"You are beautiful ... (didn't) wanna say it to not sound inappropriate since u 13 ... get it?" the message from Ndissi said, according to police.
Ndissi also asked the minor where she was located and how far her home was from Springfield, where he said he was from.
Over the course of some days, Ndissi and the officer texted on Kik and by cellphone about the girl being homeschooled and her interest in sports.
The text messages from the affidavit show that Ndissi asked the girl to meet up with him if the New York Yankees won a baseball game against the Boston Red Sox.
In the messages between Ndissi and the undercover officer in the days that followed, Ndissi asked the girl if he was going to be the first to engage in sexual intercourse with her. He then sent sexually explicit videos and pictures both of himself and of other people, the affidavit said.
There were also text messages between the two that showed Ndissi asking what would happen if her mom found out about the two texting.
"If we (expletive) u sure nobody will know? What happens when your mom finds out? Will she get me arrested? ... I never done this before, so I hope this is even real not a prank to get arrested SMH (shake my head)," one text from Ndissi said, police say.
He continued to text the officer as the days went on. Ndissi also asked to speak with her over the phone, the affidavit said.
Another Hartford police officer posed as the 13-year-old girl in a phone call with Ndissi on Oct. 21. The phone call was 6 minutes long, according to the affidavit. The police said that Ndissi spoke about making lunch for his clients at work; the cop spoke about playing soccer.
The following day, the man texted "the girl" about meeting at the Super 8 Motel in Vermont on Nov. 3, the affidavit said.
On Oct. 30, Ndissi wrote again to the girl: "Please dont (sic) get me in trouble. I can get arrested do jail time and loose (sic) my kids. ... My life will be ruined and over." The undercover cop posing as the girl said she didn't want to get in trouble either, or she could lose her phone and be grounded.
Clifford, the Hartford police officer, approached Ndissi as he arrived at a room at the motel in Hartford on Monday. Ndissi proceeded to talk to the police about his interactions with the undercover officer.
Ndissi told Clifford that he thought the interaction with the girl had been a prank, and he wanted to "see how it went," the affidavit said.
"I advised Ndissi that it did not make sense to go through all this travel and booking just to see if it was a prank," which Ndissi allegedly agreed to, Clifford said.
Ndissi allegedly traveled to Hartford from Springfield on a bus. The trip took 3 hours, he said. He told police he'd been working as a personal care assistant in Northampton for about a decade.
The man told police he'd previously been married and has four children. He also allegedly said he has an alcohol problem and reported "being lonely and need(ing) someone to talk to, which happened to be a 13-year-old," the affidavit said.
Ndissi has a previous criminal record, according to the affidavit. In January, Ndissi pleaded guilty to a second offense of drunken driving. In March, Ndissi was the suspect in an alleged rape in Chicopee. The victim who made the complaint did not want to move forward with the charges.
Ndissi additionally told police he was "talking to another 13-year-old from North Adams, Massachusetts," and said those conversations also had been sexual in nature.
He allegedly swore to police that "he has never had sex with a 13-year-old kid, and that he would swear on his children's lives" to that. Sending sexually explicit photographs and videos of himself to the undercover police officer pretending to be the underage girl, Ndissi said, was him being "dumb and stupid."
"Despite the conversations with other underage females, Ndissi denied having a sexual interest in children," the affidavit said.
The investigation was conducted by the Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the Hartford Police Department.
Amelia Vath, senior advisor to the Vermont attorney general, said in an email to The Republican that further hearings for Ndissi had not yet been set.
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