This Week in Crime: Like 'To Catch a Predator,' Only With More Earth Tones

In unrelated cases, two Reston residents have been involved in some pretty unsavory behavior.

A Reston man has pleaded guilty to charges related to his courtship of a 14-year-old girl who turned out to be Woodstock police officer Derek Good.

Matthew Chilton, 25, pleaded guilty in Shenandoah County Circuit Court on Wednesday to charges of using a computer to commit sex offenses, carnal knowledge of a 14-year-old without force and taking indecent liberties with a child under 15, according to online court records. He will return to court for sentencing June 18.

Chilton was arrested last year following a series of chats he had with Good in a Yahoo chat room.

The officer was portraying a 14-year-old girl from Woodstock as part of a covert operation to identify and apprehend child predators online, a criminal complaint states.

Chilton contacted Good and asked the officer to view his webcam.

After accepting, Good observed what appeared to be a white male masturbating, the complaint states. The chat turned sexual in nature after Good said he was a 14-year-old girl and Chilton admitted he was 24 and from Reston, it states.

"I'm from Reston." Quite a pickup line, there.

Meanwhile, another Reston resident was charged with not reporting an inappropriate cell phone photo of an underage girl.

Freedom High School Assistant Principal Ting-Yi Oei was charged with a misdemeanor by the Sheriff’s Office and placed on paid administrative leave by Loudoun County Public Schools for not following state laws requiring notification.

Oei, a 59-year-old Reston educator who joined the school in 2005, obtained the photo from a student at the South Riding school on March 14 and did not report the incident to the girl’s parents. Deputies learned of the incident about three weeks later from another source, according to a Loudoun County sheriff’s statement.

Someone call Dateline NBC.

Meet Your Neighbors: Why Does Reston Hate America?

It's somewhat shocking that a community that had its roots in the free-thinking 1960s would attract people who would dare protest the 5th birthday of our Glorious Reworking of the Middle East by standing in front of such glorious beacons of democracy as the Pizzeria Unos and the (appropriately named?) Banana Republic.

The irony? While the protesters were carrying around signs saying "it's all about the oil," their lovely stucco-and-cardboard residences sit on land developed by an evil oil company, whose name -- and here comes the double irony! -- refers to the sandy region we've worked so hard to liberate and/or bomb, all because -- and here comes the triple, hat-trick irony! -- oil was so darned cheap back then that said evil oil conglomerate chose to invest in real estate to make more money! Oil cheap and real estate hot? Talk about a crazy, upside down world!

Anyway, if these folks truly had the courage of their convictions, they'd move to a community that wasn't created from whole cloth by a TexxonHalliburton conglomerate, like... say, Ashburn. Which, come to think of it, actually looks like a development created by an oil company. Go figure.

Turns out there are worse things than IB....

...like gay penguins. That's what's keeping folks busy in the school system next door, anyway.

In Russia, sites blog you!

It's not often that our brilliant musings get discussed in Russia, but our recent excursion to Ashburn has apparently raised some eyebrows (scroll to the bottom of the page, assuming you can a) read Cyrillic and b) have absolutely nothing better to peruse online).

Unfortunately, those six years of Swahili immersion do us no good here. Thanks to babelfish, though, here's a translation of their observations:

These are remarkable place somewhere during the scaffolding, three days on the deer to the nearest place of the accumulation of work and exactly on the way of those taking off and sitting down themselves dzhambo of jet?

What a country!

Reston Explained: Loudoun, the Other White Meat

Occasion had it that we had to travel into the wilds of Loudoun County, to a subdivision of elegant brick townhouses surrounded by… piles of dirt.

To be fair, this particular subdivision was nicer than most of the particleboard and vinyl shantytowns that pass for development in eastern Loudoun County. It even borrowed a few stray notes from the whole New Urbanism concept. The garages were relegated to outbuildings in the back, tastefully hidden from sight and leading into alleys that were actually called alleys. (How edgy! How urban!) You could conceivably walk to the massive strip mall under construction a short ways down the road, except that no businesses have opened there yet. A block in the heart of the subdivision had been left undeveloped and adorned with playground equipment, creating an effect vaguely suggestive of a New England village green.

It was a beautiful sunny day, unseasonably warm, and while walking down the narrow streets to the green space, you could almost imagine you were strolling down a tree-lined street of row houses in Georgetown. Except for a) the palpable lack of trees, b) the shabby, indifferent way the electric meters were bolted at eye level to the front of each home, and c) the nonstop sound of earthmovers carving out space for identical townhomes just blocks away. And then there was the complete, utter absence of people. We walked the length of the subdivision and sat in the green space for a half-hour during the late afternoon, and didn’t see a soul. Of course, this being Loudoun County, there were tons of cars parked everywhere in sight.

What was lacking in human activity was made up for by For Sale signs--dozens of them, each more desperate looking than the next. “Buy Me!” one said plaintively. Many added the ominous word “Foreclosure” to the cat-bird spot at the top of the sign usually reserved for such teasers as “I’m Beautiful Inside!” or, in happier times, “Under Contract.” A sign taped to the window of one home for sale warned that it had already been winterproofed, urging Realtors not to turn on the water or flush the toilet on the off chance they had someone to show the home to before spring rolls around.

Then, as we were sitting in the deserted green space, we finally saw movement. Two Loudoun County sheriff department cars pulling up to a townhouse whose furniture had been disgorged to the curb. An honest to goodness foreclosure! Of course, neither the foreclosers nor the foreclosees were anywhere to be seen, so the deputies settled for getting out of their cars and milling around for a few minutes before driving away. No lights, no sirens. Just another day as part of Loudoun’s Special Foreclosures Unit, we guess.

Then it was time to walk back through the deserted, faux-urban streets to our car and drive home. For some reason, the phrase “nuclear winter” kept flitting through our heads. Somehow, it fit.

It’s true: There are worse things than mauve earth tones and DRB regulations.

You've Got... Relocated!

Well, that's one less reason to pay $9.60 to drive to Loudoun County.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls...

It looks like it's going to get a bit more expensive to drive to Ashburn. We're struggling to figure out what exactly in Loudoun County would be worth spending as much as $9.60 round trip to visit. I mean, if you want to see soul-crushing particleboard townhouses, there's always Centreville, Herndon, or Chantilly. There's this, I suppose, but it's only open one month of the year.

Don't panic, though -- the state commission overseeing the private consortium which owns the Greenway (which includes Kellogg, Brown & Root, known for their selfless penny-pinching efforts in Iraq and elsewhere) -- did point out that the company could choose to lower tolls at any time they like. It could happen, right?

On the bright side, if your travels take you the other direction on the Toll Road and you've gotten a ticket in the mail, there's a chance it just might be one of the 8,000 violations being summarily dismissed. Apparently, transitioning from a system where scofflaws were punished by hearing a jarring, presumably guilt-inducing bell -- and absolutely nothing else -- to actually installing cameras that actually prosecute violators has been a bit of a chore. The Toll Road opened in 1984, but they didn't get around to that until late 2006. One key glitch? Apparently forgetting that the toll collectors periodically have to leave "for emergencies or bathroom breaks or what have you."

Maybe they're all trying to get out to Ashburn.