Cass County CLOSE-UPS

Name: Cody Sartor

Chief Criminal Investigator

Cass County Criminal District Attorney’s Office

By Kate Stow

There are many types of law enforcement officers, but it takes a different caliber of human being to take on the task of bringing justice for children who have been criminally abused. Those officers are required to plumb the depths of human depravity and see things no one should ever have to see.

In Cass County, that officer is Cody Sartor, Chief Criminal Investigator for the District Attorney. He also manages the county Cyber Crime Lab and represents the US Secret Service North Texas Cyber Fraud Taskforce and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

After graduating from McLeod High School in 2004 Cody went to work for a contractor remodeling Wal Mart in Atlanta. A coworker had a second job at the jail and it seemed like a good gig, so in March 2005 he applied and became a jailer at the age of 18. Up to that point, he thought he would follow his father, Troy Sartor, into the oil field.

While working at the jail he was persuaded to enter the police academy by Terry Russell, a member of the Narcotics Task Force. Cody took night classes then went to work for Linden Police Department at the age of 20. Between 2007 and 2015 he worked for the Atlanta PD before becoming the Chief Investigator for the DA office.

“To say that Investigator Sartor is an asset to Cass County and the surrounding counties would be an understatement. He goes above and beyond in every investigation in the pursuit of justice, assisting other law enforcement agencies whenever requested,” said District Attorney Courtney Shelton. “The Cass County District Attorney’s Office is truly fortunate to have Investigator Sartor as a part of the team.”

Cody isn’t just part of a good team at work, he has one at home, too. His wife, Sabrina Sartor, is an investigator for the Cass County Sheriff ’s Office, and brother Ethan is a DPS state trooper. His grandmother, Barbara Riddle, worked for Atlanta ISD until her retirement; and mother, Donna Riddle Sartor, has worked for Atlanta ISD for many years.

“As chief investigator it means I’m assigned to the district court. Predominately I work crimes against persons and major crimes,” Cody explained. “Crimes against persons includes murders, major assaults, sex abuse cases, human trafficking – those types of things.”

While most people tend to think of trafficking in the sense of someone being kidnapped and taken somewhere else to perform sex acts, the term covers a broad range of crimes involving the use of force, fraud or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. The most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation, with Texas ranking second in the nation, just under California.

A study by the University of Texas School of Social Work found approximately 79,000 minor and youth victims of sex trafficking in Texas at any given time. “We don’t have a huge number of human trafficking cases in Cass County that we catch, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t occurring. We have some cases in which human trafficking can be filed, but for whatever reason we file it another way for a higher penalty. For instance, if you have a continuance event, like child abuse, it has a 20-99 or life with no eligibility for parole, which is a higher penalty than the trafficking. A lot of times our trafficking gets consolidated into other offences to get more bang for our buck.”

With Highway 59 coming straight to us from Mexico, DPS troopers are the largest traffic enforcement and narcotics catching entity. “They are trained for years and years to look for indicators of criminalistic activity,” Cody explained. “Only in the last two or three years has there been any training on how to detect and articulate these cases, so we are now seeing some of the benefits of that training.”

As a father of four teenagers, Cody has little tolerance for those who harm children. Since joining the DA’s office six years ago, he has risen to meet the challenges that more advanced technology poses in the realm of sex crimes against children.

In 2016 Cody reached out to our local Secret Service Field Officer Todd House about getting into the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI). While House had never before nominated anyone for the elite training, he gave Cody the nod. Cody was one of only 25 officers from all over the nation chosen for one of the eight classes held each year at the Secret Service headquarters in Hoover, Alabama.

“The first course I completed was Basic Investigation of Computer and Electronic Crimes – BICEP,” he said. “It was a week-long school and it inspired me to go through all the rest of the classes.”

The Secret Service not only trained Cody on what to look for and how to find it, but they also provided the actual equipment he uses daily – the workstations and laptops, as well as paying the bill for two years of the software needed to get the job done. All of this is provided at no cost to the county. As the only NCFI certified and trained officer in Northeast Texas, he also uses the equipment for cases in six surrounding counties.

“Every time I use the systems, I fill out a Forensics Partner Report (FPR) that shows what skills were used. The more FPR’s I send, the more likely they will keep funding our program,” said Cody. “They use these numbers when they speak to the Senate and House on how the NCFI is affecting local law enforcement.”

“This equipment helps develop a solid piece of evidence that you can use to corroborate what a child said happened to them,” said Cody. “It makes a world of difference in the case whenever a kid is able to relate what is on the walls of the room and songs that were playing on the radio, or what games they were playing prior to the event, or text messages between them and their offender leading up to the event – all of those things can be used to validate a child’s story.”

Once the electronic device is scanned and evidence is found, charges are assessed and, barring a plea agreement, the case will go to trial. Under these circumstances, no scenario is ideal.

“No matter what, that kid is going to have to take the stand. There’s no shielding them from that. You have the right to face your accuser,” Cody explains.

“It’s very difficult. Some of the youngest I’ve had go up were five. So, you walk a five-year old little girl up to the stand and she describes what happened, and the defense cross examines her. Generally, the defense is not as rough on kids as they could be, but they still ask hard hitting questions. So, when you can get rid of the “he said, she said” and actually provide some evidence to corroborate their testimony it makes a lot of difference in our case.”

The digital evidence cannot be denied. Data on computers and cell phones exists forever until it’s overwritten. Even if deleted, there are still artifacts to support that they existed.

“We’ve gone to all the area schools and given presentations. But kids do dumb things because they have kid brains,” he said. “There has been a paradigm shift – parents aren’t parents anymore, they’re friends. They don’t look at what their kids are doing, they don’t monitor. Some people will argue it’s an invasion of privacy. As a parent myself, it’s my duty to protect my kids from themselves.”

During the COVID pandemic, one would think sex crimes would have been lower than usual. However, the numbers spiked. In fact, Cody crunched 10 Terabytes of data last year.

“The sad truth of it is that our victims were locked up with their offenders, and had no opportunity to outcry,” Cody said. “In Cass County our schools and churches are, a lot of the time, outlets for these children to make their outcries. Those numbers went down. However, we saw a spike in online offenses, and a spike whenever the school year kicked back off again and children were talking to their teachers and friends again.”

Cody admits there are days when it wipes him out emotionally but staying focused on justice as the end-result gives him the encouragement to keep on going. He is driven by the need to put the offender in prison. He counts his membership in the Hughes Springs Masonic Lodge as a source of inspiration to keep him grounded.

“I’ve found that a lot of what I do can be summed up in two sayings, and I’m well aware they are very cliché: “If not me, then who?” and “If not now, then when?” he explains. “If I’m not doing those things and not dealing with these scenarios, then someone else will. And if we don’t do something now, then when will we?”

Cody displays a tenacity and fortitude that offenders find intimidating. On the other hand, his countenance gives young victims a sense of protection and security.

It’s easy to feel safe in his presence. But he will adamantly deny that he is a hero or martyr.

“I work with one hell of a team and together we get the work done,” Cody said. “I most certainly could not get anything done on my own.”