Weatherman Says He Was Framed By False Claims
Second Part Of Bill Kamal's Exclusive Local 10 Interviews
POSTED: 6:51 am EDT May 10,
2005
UPDATED: 7:55 am EDT May 11,
2005
MIAMI -- In the second part of an exclusive four-part Local 10 interview, former TV weatherman Bill Kamal answers the questions all of South Florida has been asking. (Click here for part 3)
What led him to Fort Pierce, Fla. to meet someone he thought was a 14-year-old boy? Was he going to have sex with a child? Has he done something like this before?Local 10 spent nearly two hours with Kamal in a Massachusetts prison. Sunday night he talked about his life behind bars.
Now the questions turn to: What was he doing? What was he thinking?Kamal: "Who the hell would have thought that being alone in my house in the confines of my secure home I was a committing a felony -- that this could happen to me."
Discuss: React To This Interview In Our Online Forum (Tuesday night posts will be added to the discussion board starting Wednesday at 5:30 a.m. EST.)
SLIDESHOW: TV Weatherman Sentenced For Seeking Sex With '14-Year-Old Boy'
Vote: Do You Believe Him?
Read Part 1 -- Life Behind Bars
Read Part 3 -- Regrets, Legal Miscalculations
Bill Kamal's life changed when he turned on his home computer. It was late October. He was taking a break after an exhausting month, working on the air for days at a time warning viewers about the four hurricanes that hit Florida. He says he was tired, bored and just started playing around on his computer. He entered a chatroom. The police say it was called "boysformen." Kamal says that's not true…Kamal: "It was not boysformen. It was dadsandsons, or sonsanddads, and I said, 'Well, this is an odd chatroom. I don't remember seeing this chatroom.' I was sick that day. I had some kind of poisoning -- food or bacterial -- was in a bad frame of mind. Bored, alone at home and was just playing on the computer, and I went into this chatroom, and I wondered if it's like somebody you can be a big brother to. That's what first got me into the chatroom. And I'm thinking, 'If AOL allows this chatroom and they have parental control then everybody in here should be an adult, 18 years or older.' And so, I'm playing around and I see this e-mail -- this screen name that I e-mail. I know that I instigated the e-mail -- that's in the record -- and the guy says that he's 14, I'm thinking, 'Yeah, right.' I'm 48 and I lie about my age too on the computer. Millions of people do that, so I started playing around. Bored and nosey and just playing on the computer and I'm so damn naïve that I don't even think that this could be a possible felony because I'm talking to somebody who could be under 18."Kamal admits the conversation on that first day was at times inappropriate. Transcripts released after his arrest shows some of those conversations, according to the arrest affidavit, Kamal, who said his name was "Billy," wrote: "Have you been with a guy before? … "I love to kiss." … "I could kiss you and you kiss me." "I'm really looking for a real son, not just to trade pics and never speak again."… "I'm not just looking again for quick sex."The conversation got even more graphic with language unfit for televisionBut Kamal says that's all misleading. He said those sexually explicit conversations only happened on that first day when he says he was playing games and didn't really believe he was talking to a 14 year old.Kamal: "I thought I was talking to somebody in their 30s or 40s or 50s. I was fooling around on the computer."But then that game playing became more serious. Kamal still didn't know whether he was talking to a teenager, but one exchange made him wonder.Kamal: "Here's how it happened in my mind. First, I'm thinking this guy could be an old person or it could be an old lady. Who knows -- you can be anything you want to be on the Internet.""Then I'm thinking because he starts to tell me about his dad dying in a car accident, and my dad's 10th anniversary of his death was coming up. I was already on that emotional rollercoaster. My mom had died the previous Christmas -- just died Christmas 2003. Their 58th anniversary was a week later, so I was on high emotions. So, he says his dad died and the mom's new boyfriend was just using his mother for sex and doesn't care about him and abandons him and verbally abuses him, and I'm thinking, 'Well, wait a minute…'"Kamal gave the person on the other end of the chatroom his cell phone number and from then on claims he received relentless phone calls from the detective disguising his voice as a child. click here for part 3 of the interview.He says he's made mistakes in his life, such as drunk driving, but as far as this case is concerned, Kamal says the only thing he did wrong was fooling around on a computer. It may have been immoral, he says, but it wasn't a crime.
Bill Kamal's life changed when he turned on his home computer. It was late October. He was taking a break after an exhausting month, working on the air for days at a time warning viewers about the four hurricanes that hit Florida. He says he was tired, bored and just started playing around on his computer. He entered a chatroom. The police say it was called "boysformen." Kamal says that's not true…Kamal: "It was not boysformen. It was dadsandsons, or sonsanddads, and I said, 'Well, this is an odd chatroom. I don't remember seeing this chatroom.' I was sick that day. I had some kind of poisoning -- food or bacterial -- was in a bad frame of mind. Bored, alone at home and was just playing on the computer, and I went into this chatroom, and I wondered if it's like somebody you can be a big brother to. That's what first got me into the chatroom. And I'm thinking, 'If AOL allows this chatroom and they have parental control then everybody in here should be an adult, 18 years or older.' And so, I'm playing around and I see this e-mail -- this screen name that I e-mail. I know that I instigated the e-mail -- that's in the record -- and the guy says that he's 14, I'm thinking, 'Yeah, right.' I'm 48 and I lie about my age too on the computer. Millions of people do that, so I started playing around. Bored and nosey and just playing on the computer and I'm so damn naïve that I don't even think that this could be a possible felony because I'm talking to somebody who could be under 18."Kamal admits the conversation on that first day was at times inappropriate. Transcripts released after his arrest shows some of those conversations, according to the arrest affidavit, Kamal, who said his name was "Billy," wrote: "Have you been with a guy before? … "I love to kiss." … "I could kiss you and you kiss me." "I'm really looking for a real son, not just to trade pics and never speak again."… "I'm not just looking again for quick sex."The conversation got even more graphic with language unfit for televisionBut Kamal says that's all misleading. He said those sexually explicit conversations only happened on that first day when he says he was playing games and didn't really believe he was talking to a 14 year old.Kamal: "I thought I was talking to somebody in their 30s or 40s or 50s. I was fooling around on the computer."But then that game playing became more serious. Kamal still didn't know whether he was talking to a teenager, but one exchange made him wonder.Kamal: "Here's how it happened in my mind. First, I'm thinking this guy could be an old person or it could be an old lady. Who knows -- you can be anything you want to be on the Internet.""Then I'm thinking because he starts to tell me about his dad dying in a car accident, and my dad's 10th anniversary of his death was coming up. I was already on that emotional rollercoaster. My mom had died the previous Christmas -- just died Christmas 2003. Their 58th anniversary was a week later, so I was on high emotions. So, he says his dad died and the mom's new boyfriend was just using his mother for sex and doesn't care about him and abandons him and verbally abuses him, and I'm thinking, 'Well, wait a minute…'"Kamal gave the person on the other end of the chatroom his cell phone number and from then on claims he received relentless phone calls from the detective disguising his voice as a child. click here for part 3 of the interview.He says he's made mistakes in his life, such as drunk driving, but as far as this case is concerned, Kamal says the only thing he did wrong was fooling around on a computer. It may have been immoral, he says, but it wasn't a crime.
Copyright 2005 by Local10.com.
All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten
or redistributed.










