Dan Larsen thwarted a pedophile.

It’s one of the private investigator’s most satisfying cases.

Larsen, a former undercover officer with the Council Bluffs, IA Police Department, took his skills to the private sector in 1987 and opened his own investigation firm, Evidence, Inc., two years later. Most of his work involves child custody cases, where he and his partner Cindy Sorensen search for evidence of parental incompetence.

In one such case, a father hired the detectives because he was concerned his young son was allowed to spend unsupervised time with his mother, who had a pedophilic stepson.

Larsen said the mother and victimized son were in counseling. A mole inside the counseling office fed the detective information about the diagnosis and treatment plan. The information indicated the mother was to take her son to the Pumpkin Patch to spend quality time.

Surveillance revealed they never made that trip. Instead they went to see relatives, who were barred from seeing the boy, and the mother took her son to the mall, where he played video games while she talked on the phone.

“Two days before the court date, we told her we’d had her under surveillance for about 18 months,” Larsen said.

Because she didn’t know what was on the tapes, it was enough to convince the mother to relinquish her son, he said.

“In these type cases, the children are our clients,” Larsen said.

And because of that, clients often don’t get their hoped-for results. Larsen said it is not unusual for an investigation to reveal that the child is better off being with the non-client parent.

“That’s why we ask for a $1,000 retainer up front,” he said.

Those funds help pay for surveillance equipment and other high-tech gadgets. He and Sorenson utilize specially designed vans with video and sound equipment. They also use a miniature camera that fits into a screw or nail, perfect for in-room spying.

While some of the equipment is “James Bond-esque,” Larsen said his profession is not.

“It isn’t Tom Selleck driving a red convertible with a blonde next to him, trailing some guy through the city with no lights turning red,” he said.

He led an effort to get “Snoops,” a 1999 David Kelly-produced T.V. series cancelled because of the way it portrayed his profession. Larsen said it was a “T and A, Charlie’s Angels-type show” that showed private investigators telling police what to do and staff stealing medical records. The show ended after its first season.

Larsen has related to the media in other ways, as well.

About a year and a half ago, a Midwest television station hired Evidence, Inc. to help identify an employee who had been sending threatening letters to management.

Sorensen, who is a criminal profiler, read several of the letters and developed a profile of the culprit. Larsen used the profile to target a suspect.

“We interviewed all the employees and took DNA samples and fingerprints,” Larsen said.

When the suspect came to be interviewed, Larsen confronted him about being the employee who sent the threatening letters.

After taking his prints and DNA, Larsen offered to plead for the man’s job if he would sign a confession right then and get help. He declined, but when Larsen returned the next day the company president told him the employee e-mailed his resignation.

Larsen said he has to be careful with some of the information he uncovers.

“I get calls from people wanting to locate an ex-wife,” he said.

He asks why they want the information and then has them sign a waiver. The waiver indicates if Larsen’s firm locates the missing person, it will either ask the missing person if it is OK to give his client his/her contact information or ask the missing person to call his client.

Larsen notes there have been instances where private investigators turned over missing information to clients only to have them use it to kill the person. He said in 1989, a man obsessed with actress Rebecca Schaeffer obtained her Hollywood address using a private detective. Using the information, the fan located Schaeffer and shot and killed her when she answered the door.

Evidence, Inc. hasn’t been involved in any known homicide cases, but was twice employed to investigate suspected foul play when someone died. Neither case resulted in any charges, but Larsen has a strong suspicion one of the deaths was a murder.

“An Omaha police officer told me Omaha has about 25 unsolved murders each year,” Larsen said. “That’s a lot of people getting away with murder.”

Larsen would like to reduce those figures.