Thursday, February 2, 2023
  • Crime, The Law & Your Rights
No Result
View All Result
Crime Traveller
 
  • Home
  • Research

    How Your Brainwaves Could Be Used In Criminal Trials

    R. Kelly: Aided By A Network of Complicity Enabling His Crimes

    How Social Media Turns Online Arguments Between Teens Into Real-World Violence

    Kathleen Folbigg’s Children Likely Died Of Natural Causes, Not Murder. Here’s The Evidence My Team Found

    Do criminals freely decide to commit offences? How the courts decide

    We might not be able to understand free will with science. Here’s why

    Trending Tags

    • Neuroscience
    • Mental Health
    • Criminal Brain
    • Juvenile Crime
  • Psychology
    Image: Shutterstock

    Psychopaths – Born Or Made?

    The Question of Why: Did Ted Bundy have Dissociative Identity Disorder?

    Teenage psychopathy

    What Should We Do With Teenage Psychopaths?

    A Criminal Disorder? Advances in Neurocriminology Are Leading The Way

    Mark Safarik

    An Interview With Former FBI Profiler Mark Safarik on Violent Offending and Criminal Behavioral Analysis

    The Criminal Mind: An Interview With Forensic Psychologist and Author Katherine Ramsland

    Trending Tags

    • Narcissism
    • Psychopathy
    • Profiling
    • Mental Health
    • Psychology
  • Family Violence

    Reckless Speculation about Jeffrey MacDonald

    O. J. Simpson Trial: 26 Years Later

    O. J. Simpson: Murder in the First Degree

    Reasonable Doubt: The Hendricks Family Murders

    Melanie McGuire

    A Convicted Killer, Two Criminologists, and One Podcast: Direct Appeal Investigates ‘Suitcase Killer’ Melanie McGuire Case

    Family Annihilation: The Crimes and Psychology of Familicide

    Trending Tags

    • True Crime
      Chandler Halderson and his parents

      Double Murder, Dismemberment, and Lies: The Twisted Web of Chandler Halderson

      Jean Claude Romand: From Fake Doctor to Family Annihilator

      Fate Is Not Kind: The True Crime Case of David Lamson

      Who killed Marilyn Sheppard cover image

      Who Killed Marilyn Sheppard? Ohio’s Most Enduring Murder Mystery [Part Two]

      Who killed Marilyn Sheppard?

      Who Killed Marilyn Sheppard? Ohio’s Most Enduring Murder Mystery [Part One]

      The JFK Assassination … Case Still Closed

      Trending Tags

      • Unsolved
      • Serial Murder
      • Documentaries
      • Guest Posts
    • Book Reviews
      Strangled book review cover

      Strangled: A Courageous Fight Against The Darkest Corners of Humanity

      The Girl I Never Knew - Who Killed Melissa Witt?

      The Girl I Never Knew: Melissa Ann Witt Deserves Justice

      Befriending A Serial Killer: An Interview With Mark Austin

      The Husband Poisoner: Lethal Ladies and Dangerously Tasty Recipes

      Details are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Café Society Murder

      Operation Jacknap: A True Story of Kidnapping, Extortion, Ransom and Rescue

      Trending Tags

      • Interviews
      • Historical Crime Books
    • Crime Spotlight
      • All
      • Crime, The Law & Your Rights
      Medical Malpractice

      When Does Medical Malpractice Become a Criminal Case?

      Picture: Richard Bell, Upsplash

      Can A Crime Turn Into A Personal Injury Lawsuit?

      Korean Zodiac Killer case

      A Tale of Two Zodiacs

      5 Tell-Tale Signs Of An Abusive Person

      6 Pros And Cons Of Hiring A Private Criminal Lawyer

      There Were Two Killers in 10 Rillington Place: An Interview With Peter Thorley

      • Crime, The Law & Your Rights
    No Result
    View All Result
    Crime Traveller
    • Home
    • Research

      How Your Brainwaves Could Be Used In Criminal Trials

      R. Kelly: Aided By A Network of Complicity Enabling His Crimes

      How Social Media Turns Online Arguments Between Teens Into Real-World Violence

      Kathleen Folbigg’s Children Likely Died Of Natural Causes, Not Murder. Here’s The Evidence My Team Found

      Do criminals freely decide to commit offences? How the courts decide

      We might not be able to understand free will with science. Here’s why

      Trending Tags

      • Neuroscience
      • Mental Health
      • Criminal Brain
      • Juvenile Crime
    • Psychology
      Image: Shutterstock

      Psychopaths – Born Or Made?

      The Question of Why: Did Ted Bundy have Dissociative Identity Disorder?

      Teenage psychopathy

      What Should We Do With Teenage Psychopaths?

      A Criminal Disorder? Advances in Neurocriminology Are Leading The Way

      Mark Safarik

      An Interview With Former FBI Profiler Mark Safarik on Violent Offending and Criminal Behavioral Analysis

      The Criminal Mind: An Interview With Forensic Psychologist and Author Katherine Ramsland

      Trending Tags

      • Narcissism
      • Psychopathy
      • Profiling
      • Mental Health
      • Psychology
    • Family Violence

      Reckless Speculation about Jeffrey MacDonald

      O. J. Simpson Trial: 26 Years Later

      O. J. Simpson: Murder in the First Degree

      Reasonable Doubt: The Hendricks Family Murders

      Melanie McGuire

      A Convicted Killer, Two Criminologists, and One Podcast: Direct Appeal Investigates ‘Suitcase Killer’ Melanie McGuire Case

      Family Annihilation: The Crimes and Psychology of Familicide

      Trending Tags

      • True Crime
        Chandler Halderson and his parents

        Double Murder, Dismemberment, and Lies: The Twisted Web of Chandler Halderson

        Jean Claude Romand: From Fake Doctor to Family Annihilator

        Fate Is Not Kind: The True Crime Case of David Lamson

        Who killed Marilyn Sheppard cover image

        Who Killed Marilyn Sheppard? Ohio’s Most Enduring Murder Mystery [Part Two]

        Who killed Marilyn Sheppard?

        Who Killed Marilyn Sheppard? Ohio’s Most Enduring Murder Mystery [Part One]

        The JFK Assassination … Case Still Closed

        Trending Tags

        • Unsolved
        • Serial Murder
        • Documentaries
        • Guest Posts
      • Book Reviews
        Strangled book review cover

        Strangled: A Courageous Fight Against The Darkest Corners of Humanity

        The Girl I Never Knew - Who Killed Melissa Witt?

        The Girl I Never Knew: Melissa Ann Witt Deserves Justice

        Befriending A Serial Killer: An Interview With Mark Austin

        The Husband Poisoner: Lethal Ladies and Dangerously Tasty Recipes

        Details are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Café Society Murder

        Operation Jacknap: A True Story of Kidnapping, Extortion, Ransom and Rescue

        Trending Tags

        • Interviews
        • Historical Crime Books
      • Crime Spotlight
        • All
        • Crime, The Law & Your Rights
        Medical Malpractice

        When Does Medical Malpractice Become a Criminal Case?

        Picture: Richard Bell, Upsplash

        Can A Crime Turn Into A Personal Injury Lawsuit?

        Korean Zodiac Killer case

        A Tale of Two Zodiacs

        5 Tell-Tale Signs Of An Abusive Person

        6 Pros And Cons Of Hiring A Private Criminal Lawyer

        There Were Two Killers in 10 Rillington Place: An Interview With Peter Thorley

        • Crime, The Law & Your Rights
      Crime Traveller
      No Result
      View All Result
      • Home
      • Research
      • Psychology
      • Family Violence
      • True Crime
      • Book Reviews
      • Crime Spotlight

      Home » Crime Spotlight » The Criminal Face of Facebook: When Murder Goes Viral

      The Criminal Face of Facebook: When Murder Goes Viral

      Facebook has a dark side. A side where it is used to share details of crimes, impersonate someone else for sinister intentions, stalk a victim, bully a victim and in some cases, murder a victim

      by Fiona Guy
      19 June, 2022
      in Crime Spotlight
      Reading Time: 10 mins read
      A A
      Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare
      When you open up a platform for people to share their lives, their actions, thoughts, intentions, and behaviors, you don’t always get good things. Twitter has a character limit, no good for sharing the details of murder and getting people’s attention. Instagram is image based, not as useful for having a rant and challenging someone directly into a confrontation.

      Unsurprisingly research has found links between those with high numbers of friends on Facebook, who post large numbers of selfies, update their status all the time and ‘tag’ themselves everywhere, score highly on the narcissistic personality scale. Furthermore, according to a report in the Mail Online in 2012 “a crime linked to Facebook is reported to police every 40 minutes” with harassment and intimidation topping the list.

      Perverted individuals use the site to befriend children in the hopes of meeting them in person and in other cases arguments played out on the virtual platform spill over into real life and violence presents itself.

      Brian Lewis of New Tredegar in South Wales killed his wife Hayley Jones after she changed her Facebook profile from ‘married’ to ‘single’ and started spending hours on the site back in 2009. 17-year- old Ashley Hall from Darlington, County Durham was murdered after she was groomed online via Facebook by 35-year-old Peter Chapman who posed as a 17-year-old boy to get her attention and her agreement to meet him also in 2009.

      Camille Mathurasingh was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Paul Bristol in East London in 2010 after he flew 4’000 miles from Trinidad to England to kill her in response to seeing her with another man on her Facebook page. The list of horrible violent crimes played out on this viral social platform is endless and that’s just in the UK.

      A recent feature added to Facebook is their ‘Live’ button, where users can film themselves in real-time and stream it to their news feeds.  While intended for harmless fun videos people could make of themselves singing or playing with their pets, it has quickly been used by criminals who cannot help themselves pressing the button and streaming their criminal acts live to an audience while they are happening.  Child abuse, rape, and violent assaults have all been streamed live on the site watched by Facebook users shocked at what they are witnessing while scrolling through their news feeds.

      Called ‘performance crimes’ by Ray Surette, a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida, the lure of a huge audience and the opportunity to gain instant feedback through ‘likes’, comments and shares are just too much of an attraction for some people. Surette notes two types of performance crimes, one where those involved know they are being recorded and are performing for the camera and two where those involved don’t know they are being recorded, they have not given their consent and their actions and behaviour or what is happening to them is being captured and broadcast whether they like it or not.

      He links the desire to broadcast to the world and have viral attention to the celebrity culture and highlights people’s pre and post-crime confessions on Facebook as being linked to this culture.  Such activity, of course, does leave a digital trail for police to follow and most often secures a conviction when the person themselves have provided a public confession with full details of their crime available for all to see.

      Confessing To Murder On Facebook

      In September 2016 a father from North Carolina used Facebook Live to confess to the shooting of his ex-wife and young son. “I loved my wife, but she deserved what she had coming” Earl Valentine tells the camera in a shaky and dark live stream video. His ex-wife, who had a restraining order against Valentine, survived the attack but their son died in hospital shortly afterward.  After telling the world via Facebook what he had done and why ensuring they knew he had no remorse, he spoke with police detectives before leaving for Columbia, South Carolina where he took his own life by shooting himself in a motel room.

      In British Columbia, Canada a year earlier another father utilized Facebook’s online reach to confess to the murder of his wife, daughter, and sister. “I have done some of the worst things I could have ever imagined a person doing. First, to do with my dear, sweet, loving daughter Emily…” he wrote in a Facebook post on 7 May 2015 before going on to explain how he killed his daughter to free her from the crippling migraines that were making her depressed.

      Randy Janzen wrote that he killed his wife to save her from the pain of her daughter’s death and took his sister’s life so she did not have to live with the shame of what he had done.  After posting his confession as a status update, complete with emoticons and signed “Daddio”, Janzen set his house on fire and pointed a long-barrel gun at himself. When the coroners’ report was released it was discovered he most likely murdered his daughter and his wife 10 days before he confessed online and his sister two days beforehand, setting his house on fire and then killing himself within hours of posting his confession.

      Related: Family Murder: Familicide and The Family Annihilator

      In recent years we have seen an increasing number of criminals, including murderers, use Facebook as their personal platform to tell the world of the dark twisted acts they have just carried out. ‘Chilling Social Media Confessions To Murder‘ is a list available on ListVerse, along with a disturbing list of ‘Murderers Who Posted Their Kills On Facebook‘ on ThoughtCatalog.

      In our modern age, the ability to share our lives with friends and family from anywhere in the world at the click of a button whether on a desktop computer or out and about on your mobile is indeed a marvel in technology.  What comes with the ability to share everything and anything, tag friends and highlight photos and events on their ‘walls’, is the opportunity to use such features for bullying, for deception and for making the lives of a chosen victim a complete and utter misery.  While the news has been populated with many stories of school children being bullied by so-called friends over Facebook, what has not made the news as often is the extreme cases, where Facebook has been used to lure an individual into a trap and a trap in which they do not emerge alive.

      Facebook Deception

      The case of 19-year-old Catherine ‘Katie’ Wynter in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire is one such tragic example. A fun-loving, polite and popular teenager who was studying Art and Design at college was deceived and lured to her death by 19-year-old Tony Bushby who after meeting her, used Facebook to convince her he too had friends, was popular and was a normal teenage lad. These Facebook friends, in fact, did not exist, they were accounts created by Bushby himself who then used them to connect with Katie via her Facebook profile saying they were friends with him so she would think it was okay.  In a creepy and sinister organized world, he had created, Bushby interacted with Katie through Facebook as himself, and as three other personas deceiving unsuspecting and trusting Katie Wynter into innocently believing she was talking with new friends.

      On Boxing Day in 2011, Bushby turned up at Katie’s sister’s house where she was babysitting and stabbed her 23 times.  Katie was left to die alone on the kitchen floor where she was found by her 3 and 4-year-old nephew and niece the following morning. This was a horrific crime on an innocent young girl. Bushby had told Katie to keep their blossoming relationship secret which she duly did, no doubt wishing to see where it went before announcing it to her friends.  Friends and family were aware of a boy on the scene but didn’t know his name.

      When talking with friends and family after the murder and looking at Katie’s social media activity, police quickly found out about Bushby and began looking at him more closely.  When questioned about her murder he claimed ‘Dan Tress’ had killed Katie, a person who did not exist and was one of the created personas Bushby had made up to trick Katie on Facebook. When police determined that these friends he was referring to who ‘knew Katie and were probably involved in her murder’ were in fact figments of his own imagination brought to life via fake Facebook accounts, they began to treat him as a suspect in her murder.

      He was brought to trial and pleaded not guilty to murder in July 2012 at St Alban’s Crown Court in Hertfordshire. Found guilty he was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison with the judge stating he believed the murder was ‘planned and pre-meditated’ and that Tony Bushby was “a very real danger to women”.

      As cases of these Facebook functions being abused have emerged, Facebook has taken measures to provide some protection.  Users can choose to ‘approve’ any posts made by someone else on their own wall before they are published, they can block people from their accounts and they can report a person who is being abusive which may result in their account being suspended.  Facebook has a policy that accounts must be created in your own name, however, this is a policy almost impossible to implement.

      Facebook and its creators and managers certainly have challenges in how they keep control of the site and tackle abuse ranging from inappropriate images to posts and updates. There are indeed many positive things to say about Facebook and its global success at connecting people and retaining it’s 1.5 billion members all over the world.  It is a social media platform used multiple times a day by over 1 billion users, the majority of whom are sharing happy moments and engaging in light conversation with a friend in an entirely harmless way.

      In fact, for many people, their use of Facebook and the connectivity it provides them enriches their lives and provides a social outlet regardless of where they are. However, not all people are good and when dark minds have platforms such as this available to them they will take advantage and it is surprising the lengths they will go to do so.

      Facebook is not the only social media platform to see its services abused. Twitter has seen many cases of outright abuse where individuals use those 140 characters along with the trusted hashtag to slander others.  We have all read and seen the celebrity cases of this happening and it is not just celebrities, it is ordinary people who find themselves at the other end of an onslaught that they are almost powerless to stop.

      This is the criminal side of modern social media and why the frantic stampede of modern technology towards being connected to everybody everywhere is not always a good thing. Whenever there is progress there are always individuals in this world who will find a use that was not intended and find ways around safety measures that are put in place. Unfortunately, as history has shown us they will find methods to hurt other people or to get their own message out no matter how haunting it is and clearly the use of social media, we are discovering, is no different.


      References
      1. Agence France-Presse (2015) Man Confesses on Facebook to Killing His Wife, Daughter and Sister. The Telegraph
      2. Cohen, C. (2014) Twitter Trolls: The Celebrities Who’ve Been Driven Off Social Media By Abuse. The Telegraph
      3. Dodd, V. (2010) Facebook Murderer Jailed for 22 Years. The Guardian
      4. Doyle, J. (2012) A Facebook Crime Every 40 Minutes: From Killings To Grooming as 12,300 Cases Are Linked To The Site. The Mail Online
      5. Fahey, J. (2012) Tony Bushby Jailed For Boxing Day Murder of Girlfriend Catherine Wynter. The Independent
      6. Green, C. (2015) What Happens When You ‘Report Abuse’? The Secretive Facebook Censors Who Decide What Is – And What Isn’t Abuse. The Independent
      7. Hough, A. (2009) Family of Facebook Killer’s Victim Tell of Devastation After He Is Jailed For Life. The Telegraph
      8. Omand, G. (2016) Randy Janzen Killed Himself 10 Days After Shooting Daughter, Wife: B.C. Coroner. Huffington Post Canada
      9. Pearse, D. (2012) Facebook’s ‘dark side’: Study Finds Link To Socially Aggressive Narcissism. The Guardian
      10. Reuters. (2017) Facebook Dismissive of Censorship, Abuse Concerns, Rights Groups Allege. The Express Tribune
      11. Stokes. P (2010) Ashleigh Hall: ‘One Mistake’ Case Teenager Her Life. The Telegraph
      12. Surette, R. (2016) How Social Media is Changing The Way People Commit Crimes and Police Fight Them. London School of Economics and Political Science. US Centre Blog
      13. Worley, W. (2016) Father Uses Facebook Live to Confess Shooting of Ex-Wife and Son. The Independent
      Cite This Article

      Guy, F. (2017, Apr 10) The Criminal Face of Facebook: When Murder Goes Viral. Crime Traveller. Retrieved from https://www.crimetraveller.org/2017/04/criminal-face-of-facebook-when-murder-goes-viral/

      Tags: Juvenile CrimePsychology
      Share34Tweet21Pin11
      Previous Post

      A Crime of Passion or Pre-Meditated Murder?

      Next Post

      How Slow Motion Footage of Crimes Encourages Juries To Convict

      Related Posts

      When Does Medical Malpractice Become a Criminal Case?

      21 August, 2022
      Medical Malpractice

      While there are some instances in which medical malpractice may cross the line into criminal behavior, it is important to understand that not all cases...

      Read more

      Can A Crime Turn Into A Personal Injury Lawsuit?

      21 August, 2022
      Picture: Richard Bell, Upsplash

      If you’re curious about whether a crime can turn into a personal injury lawsuit, you can learn more in this article.

      Read more

      A Tale of Two Zodiacs

      13 June, 2022
      Korean Zodiac Killer case

      This Zodiac case did not happen in California. It occurred 5,700 miles away and is known as the "Korean Zodiac Killer case.”

      Read more
      Load More
      Next Post

      How Slow Motion Footage of Crimes Encourages Juries To Convict

      Can Robots Commit Crime? We Could Soon Face A Robot Crimewave

      The Serial Widow: When Does A Tragic Accident Become A Murder?

      What's New?

      Strangled book review cover
      Book Reviews

      Strangled: A Courageous Fight Against The Darkest Corners of Humanity

      15 December, 2022
      True Crime & Justice

      Jean Claude Romand: From Fake Doctor to Family Annihilator

      25 November, 2022
      True Crime & Justice

      Fate Is Not Kind: The True Crime Case of David Lamson

      11 October, 2022
      Load More

      Stay Connected

      Search

      No Result
      View All Result

      Categories

      You Might Also Like

      Crime Research

      How Your Brainwaves Could Be Used In Criminal Trials

      22 August, 2022
      True Crime & Justice

      CrimeCon Is Coming BACK To The UK: June 2022

      26 December, 2021
      Book Reviews

      The Lucifer Effect And The Stanford Prison Experiment – Right or Wrong?

      13 November, 2020
      True Crime & Justice

      The Granny Killer of Sydney: John Wayne Glover

      7 July, 2018

      RECENT

      Chandler Halderson and his parents

      Double Murder, Dismemberment, and Lies: The Twisted Web of Chandler Halderson

      27 January, 2023

      Strangled: A Courageous Fight Against The Darkest Corners of Humanity

      15 December, 2022

      Jean Claude Romand: From Fake Doctor to Family Annihilator

      25 November, 2022

      POPULAR

      How Your Brainwaves Could Be Used In Criminal Trials

      CrimeCon Is Coming BACK To The UK: June 2022

      The Lucifer Effect And The Stanford Prison Experiment – Right or Wrong?

      The Granny Killer of Sydney: John Wayne Glover

      Site Links

      • About Crime Traveller
      • Contact Page
      • True Crime & Justice
      • Crime Research
      • Family Violence & Homicide
      • Psychology of Murder
      No Result
      View All Result
      • Terms
      • Privacy
      • Disclaimers
      • Cookies
      • DMCA
      • Newsletter

      Copyright © 2016 - 2023 Crime Traveller, a website owned and operated by Alythium | All Rights Reserved.

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Home
      • About
      • Contact
      • Crime Research
      • Psychology of Murder
      • Family Violence & Homicide
      • True Crime & Justice
      • Crime Spotlight
      • Book Reviews
      • Request A Book Review
      • Newsletter

      Copyright © 2016 - 2023 Crime Traveller, a website owned and operated by Alythium | All Rights Reserved.

      error: Content is protected !!
      This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.