Listen guys, if you’re going to commit crimes, it’s best not to discuss them online on any forum, okay? DUH!
I say this because I just read a Vanity Fair piece someone sent me that was published online today about these two gamers in Canada who carried out a rape and murder fantasy on a female friend of theirs, two goth kids who went to great length to try to cover up the crime, but who, in the words of VF scribe David Kushner, acted “as though the words they write and pictures they post and texts they send vanish into the ether.” And apparently this isn’t uncommon among the members of the most tech-savvy generation in world history!
For cases involving teens, the online world is “more valuable than ever,” says Corporal Darren Lagan, spokesperson for the British Columbia Island District R.C.M.P. “People tend to be freer online, especially young people—they don’t feel any repercussions or anyone watching. It’s like when we used to try to get a booth in a coffee shop next to a person we were surveilling. We don’t have to do that anymore.”
God lord are kids these days THAT f*cking stupid?
Kushner’s harrowing piece centers around two teenage boys, Kruse Wellwood and Cameron Moffat, from Langford, British Columbia who both happen to be two of the sickest f*cks around — dudes whose ultimate sexual fantasy involves raping and murdering girls. So after the two friends discovered that they shared a fondness for murder and rape (Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall for that conversation?), they decided to target a mutual friend from school, Kim Proctor, to be their first victim. So the two lured Proctor to Kruse’s house (his parents were out of town) and after doing unspeakable things to her and taking her life, the boys stuffed her body into a hockey bag, hopped on a bus and burned up the remains under a rural bridge. Then they got chatty about it in World of Warcraft chats.
Investigators kept close watch as Kim’s friends and family took to Facebook, including setting up a public memorial page in her honor. Visitors began trading clues and theories about who might have killed her. Investigators closely monitored this page, culling potential witnesses there as well as on other publicly available Facebook pages—none of which necessitated a warrant. (“You’d be amazed at how many people don’t have a single privacy [setting] on there,” Lagan said.)
With Kim’s death consuming the town and the local news, Kruse became increasingly paranoid about leaving any more evidence online. But he couldn’t resist the urge to share his story with someone he trusted. He was afraid of using MSN, but he thought the chat logs in World of Warcraft were less likely to be saved. On March 23, five days after Kim’s murder, he told his gamer girlfriend in Halifax on MSN that he had something urgent to tell her, but that he wanted to do it over World of Warcraft chat instead. Once inside World of Warcraft, he confessed to the crime. Back on MSN, he sent her links to the news reports as backup. The girl was shocked, but she eventually replied in the way he no doubt expected. “I’ll always be here, no matter what you do,” she wrote.
Score one for the “video games make you stupid” crowd. After all, you can always come back with “but gamers cured AIDS!”