True Crime Online

by HITCHCOCK J. A.

  At one point, the girls said if they were going to get in trouble, then “Steve-O” needed to be arrested, too. The next morning, Schumaker was apprehended and arrested at his parents’ home for his part in the ordeal. Ashley was arrested on July 12.

  When officers interviewed Nichols’s grandmother, Mary Nichols, she told them she didn’t know about the fight until later that same night, when Nichols made it sound as if it had been just a little tiff. After talking with Nichols’s mother, she found out how vicious the fight was, saw the video, and turned it over to the sheriff’s office.

  Nichols’s mother, Christina Garcia, told the officers that the girls didn’t like Tori and were upset because she had reportedly posted nasty comments about them on Myspace.

  “She said she was going to kick their you-know-what’s,” Garcia said, adding that Tori had reportedly called them “slutty,” though no such comment was ever found on Myspace or elsewhere.

  What Garcia didn’t tell officers was that she had taken her daughter’s cell phone and some other items out of the house. When officers found out about this, they called her and explained that if she was hiding the cell phone from the police, she was actually withholding evidence, which was a crime. She needed to turn the phone over to the sheriff’s office immediately.

  Garcia refused to cooperate and even swore at the police. When the officer told her that she could be arrested for tampering with evidence, she promptly hung up on him.

  Apparently, Garcia soon had a change of heart. She called the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and turned the cell phone in to them later that day.

  On April 8, Nichols’s home computer was seized as evidence, as well as the other suspects’ cell phones. The police also contacted Myspace, and the accounts of all eight suspects, along with Tori’s, were frozen so authorities could review them and use any posts as evidence in the case.

  The beating changed Tori in many ways: She had a concussion and suffered permanent hearing loss in her left ear, blurred vision in her left eye, and frequent nightmares.

  All eight suspects were charged with felony battery and felony false imprisonment. Hardcastle, Mayes, and Nichols were also charged with felony kidnapping for forcing Tori into the car, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

  During a press conference in June 2008, Nichols’s lawyer James Holz asked, “Why is my client facing life in prison when the victim got two black eyes?”

  Nichols’s woes escalated in August 2008 when she was arrested on multiple counts of aggravated stalking, aggravated assault, and battery, charges unrelated to Tori’s case. Nichols’s ex-boyfriend, Jacob Johns, claimed that between October 31, 2007, and March 28, 2008, she allegedly stalked him online and in person, and stabbed him with a pen. She was booked into Polk County Jail and charged with two counts of felony aggravated stalking, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and three counts of misdemeanor battery. She was denied bail.

  On January 20, 2009, Mayes pled guilty to one charge of misdemeanor battery in Tori’s case. She received a year of probation and was required to complete 50 hours of community service.

  On March 6, Nichols pled guilty to battery charges and tampering with a witness in Tori’s beating case, and she also pled guilty to the charges of battery, assault, and violation of an injunction in the stalking of her ex-boyfriend. She received 3 years’ probation and 100 hours of community service. She was also required to write a letter of apology to Tori and pay $17,000 in restitution to Tori’s family. Under the terms of the final verdict, she could never contact Tori or her family, and she could not have an account on any social networking sites, including Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube, during her probation period.

  On March 11, Cooper pled guilty to two counts of misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to 2 years’ probation in Tori’s case. Hassell pled guilty to one count of misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to a year of probation. In addition, both girls had to write a letter of apology to Tori, could never contact Tori or her family, and could not have profiles on social networking sites during their probations. They were also ordered to pay Tori’s family $1,752.35, though terms of the case didn’t disclose the details of this payment.

  On March 20, Hardcastle pled guilty to false imprisonment and battery and was sentenced to 15 days in jail minus time served (10 days), and 3 years’ probation. The reason for the stiffer sentence is that on the video she was clearly the one who hit Tori the most. Before she was sentenced, Hardcastle said, “I am very sorry for what I did and nothing will ever excuse it. Me and her didn’t get along, but she didn’t deserve what she got.”

  Charges against Murphy, Schumaker, and Ashley were eventually dropped due to lack of sufficient evidence. Tori’s parents took her out of high school, and she was homeschooled after the ordeal.

  “These websites are creating a space for criminal activity, beating, fights,” Tori’s father said. “Myspace,YouTube, MTV’s Jackass—they are enticing our children and desensitizing our children. Now, if they create the best shock video, they are the heroes. They think it is top dollar.”

  Three minutes of the half-hour video actually ended up on YouTube (you can see it there to this day at www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHmnzzUJVRA), released by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. While the six girls ultimately got their wish to have the video posted on YouTube, they could never have foreseen it being shown as a cautionary tale for parents and teens.

  “Our goal is not only to deal with this issue, but to try to educate parents across the state and across the nation that this is what your children are watching,” Polk County sheriff Grady Judd said about releasing the video. “This is what some children are participating in. And we as a society have got to say, ‘This has to stop,’ because if we desensitize our children to this today, then what’s next tomorrow?”

  Tori is just one victim whose beating was videotaped for a few minutes of glory in the spotlight.

  ***

  In Thomasville, North Carolina, Daniel Lee Hopkins, 49, thought it would be fun to take part in a video of his 17-year-old son and a 15-year-old boy fighting. All three were arrested on June 10, 2010.

  Police had received an anonymous call on June 3 from someone claiming that a video called Dump Fight had been posted on YouTube. It appeared to depict two minors fighting while other people stood around and urged them on.

  “We got a tip and went to YouTube and watched it,” sheriff David Grice said. “From there we were able to issue a warrant. We’ve got video of the dad there encouraging [the fight].”

  Hopkins was charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and one count of disorderly conduct. His son and the other boy were charged with one count of simple affray and one count of disorderly conduct.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Grice.

  It’s not just happening in the U.S., either. In 2010, two teen boys from a high school in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, were shown in a video being egged on to fight each other. The video was discovered in May 2011 when someone sent the YouTube link to Hampton Park Secondary College principal Sue Glenn. The video had been posted in January 2011.

  “I was completely unaware of this incident or video. However, on now seeing it, I am totally appalled,” said Glenn. “This is not the behavior we accept at Hampton Park Secondary, which has 1,300 students who are well behaved and great kids. I will be taking this matter extremely seriously and definitely investigating this incident and then taking the appropriate action.”

  Although the two students fighting in the video no longer attended the school, the onlookers were investigated concerning their involvement. In the video, the witnesses encourage the two boys with shouts of “Go crazy at him” and “Do it, do it” along with a lot of “ooohs” and “whoas,” getting louder when one boy’s nose starts to bleed.

  Victoria’s minister for education Martin Dixon noted that having the videos of schoolyard fights and bullying posted made it mor
e difficult to dole out the proper discipline.

  “We still have a real issue out there in our schools and we still need to be doing more in terms of educating our children and teachers and parents,” said Dixon. “It shows an abject ignorance to what bullying and violence is doing to victims.”

  By May 2011, the damaging consequences of this incident and others like it triggered the approval of a $14.5 million Australian anti-bullying program that is designed to prevent such behavior from ever starting.

  Defendants charged in the videotaped beating of Tori Lindsay: [Top row, from left] April Cooper, Brittini Hardcastle, Kayla Hassell, Britney Mayes; [Bottom row, from left] Cara Murphy, Mercades Nichols, Zachary Ashley, Stephen Schumaker) [Courtesy of Polk County Sheriff’s Office]

  Daniel Lee Hopkins, who videotaped his sons fighting [Courtesy of Davidson County Sheriff’s Office]

  They’ll Be Watching You … Online

  When Keri McMullen and her fiancé managed to get tickets to a much-coveted concert in March 2010, she was so excited that she decided to share the good news with her friends.

  “I posted that on my Facebook page,” Keri said, “who the band was, where we were going. The band started at 8.” And so did the robbery. Keri came home to a near-empty house; more than $10,000 worth of items had been stolen. What the burglars didn’t know was that Keri’s fiancé had recently installed security cameras. He wanted to keep tabs on the house, which was on the market, after someone broke a wineglass during an open house for realtors. No one confessed to breaking the glass, so he installed the cameras.

  This technology was definitely lucky for Keri but not so lucky for the burglars. She posted the video on Facebook of the burglars going through the house, rummaging through her purse and drawers, and dumping the laundry out of a basket so they could use it to transport the smaller items. Included in the heist were a plasma TV, a PlayStation, Xbox, laptop, and DVDs.

  As fate would have it, one of Keri’s 500 Facebook friends actually recognized one of the burglars on the videotape, who turned out to be someone Keri hadn’t seen in more than 20 years. Keri had added him to her Facebook friends list just 6 months before.

  “I will never ever again put that I’m going anywhere on Facebook,” Keri said. “You really don’t know who your friends are.”

  Think you know all of your friends on your friends list and all of your followers? Think again. Criminals are watching what is being posted on walls, feeds, and blogs, and they are just waiting for the perfect opportunity to stop by your place when they know you’re not at home.

  Just ask Matt Chapman, who tweeted that he was going camping in July 2009 and then posted the news on Facebook. He returned to find that his home had been robbed.

  “I never considered the dangers or the ramifications until we were burglarized,” he said.

  He posted about the experience on his blog:

  Although it is a new trend to communicate “what you are doing” on twitter, or updating your status on facebook, I have a message of caution for everyone who enjoys using social networking sites … The robber broke into our house through a side window away from our street. Once inside, this jerk stole our Playstation 2 stuff, Game Cube stuff, Amies jewelry, some of my editing software, and worse of all … my Macbook Pro. My Macbook was loaded with several video projects including everything pertinent to my new business that is still in development called GurillaTV. Luckily I was able to recover everything missing, but it was a real setback. Not to mention the $8,000 of things taken away from us.

  ***

  A webcam came in handy for 12-year-old Hallie Pritchard, who thought her sisters were taking items from her bedroom in November 2011. To catch the thief in the act, she tucked her laptop under the pillows on her bed, positioning the webcam so it would film the entire room.

  Hours later when Hallie watched the video, she was shocked. The video showed an unidentified man rifling through her dresser drawers. The video had captured the surprising events when no one had been at home. The man had gained access to her parents’ house in Orinda, California, which had been up for sale. With the video as proof, she showed the footage to her parents, and they immediately contacted police. It didn’t take long for the police to apprehend the suspect. Douglas John Calandrella, a former real estate agent, was arrested for stealing jewelry from Hallie’s residence. But this wasn’t the first time Calandrella had been arrested for such a scheme. The year before, he had taken the keys from several real estate lockboxes, stolen more than 50 items from a number of different houses on the market, and then sold the goods on eBay.

  ***

  In England, Gordon Rayner, a milkman, was convinced that Google Street View helped criminals target his house in a robbery from April 2010. Google Street View included a photo of Gordon’s home with the garage door wide open. The image was clear enough that you could see a washing machine and a mountain bike inside.

  “When you look at the photograph, my face is blacked out, the windows of my house are blacked out, but because the garage door was left open, you can clearly see everything in there,” Gordon said. “I would argue that they should have blacked that out. It is just an invitation for any criminal to take what they like.”

  The first time the thieves came, they took Gordon’s mountain bike. Two days later, the thieves returned but couldn’t get into the garage due to a newly installed lock. Gordon has since taken everything out of his garage for safekeeping, except his car.

  ***

  The internet has become a new playground for criminals, who can be some of your so-called friends and fans.

  “I’m amazed at how many people get on there and say they’re going on vacation,” said Lee Struble, head of security at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. “Some of these people you haven’t seen in 20 or 30 years. But they know where you live or can find out pretty easily; they can do a Google Maps search and can get directions to your house, and you’re telling them that you’re going to be gone.”

  The “Digital Criminal Report,” which Michael Fraser prepared and released in late 2009, points to social networking and other parts of the internet as vehicles that criminals are using for quick access to easy offerings. Fraser, himself a former thief and now the star of BBC’s Beat the Burglar, wasn’t surprised by any of the findings in the report.

  “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that burglars are using social networks to identify likely targets,” Fraser said.

  The report surveyed 2,000 social network users and found that nearly two-fifths of the respondents had posted details of holiday/vacation plans, and nearly two-thirds of the 16- to 24-year-old group reportedly posted plenty of details, too. Almost half the respondents reported that they were unconcerned about social networking security. As an experiment, 100 friend requests were issued to random strangers. Nine in 10 Twitter users accepted the stranger as a friend, and more than one in 10 Facebook users did the same, all without asking if they really knew this new person.

  “[The criminals] gain confidence by learning more about them, what they are likely to own and when they are likely to be out of the house. I call it ‘internet shopping for burglars,’” said Fraser. “It is incredibly easy to use social networking sites to target people, and then scope out more information on their actual home using other internet sites like Google Street View, all from the comfort of the sofa.”

  Web security firms that have been tracking criminal activity via Twitter and Facebook agree about the correlation between burglaries and social media. “Our research shows that 41 percent of people are divulging personal and private information to complete strangers on Facebook, such as their date of birth, where they worked, where they lived and what they were doing,” according to Graham Cluely, senior technology consultant at Sophos, a web security firm. “People are boasting about how they are having a fantastic time on a beach in Mexico on a webpage that has their home address.”

  ***

  The FBI has also posted a w
arning on its website about a new scam that involves momentarily monopolizing phone lines and stealing money from personal bank accounts in the process. These criminals are patient and usually launch the scam weeks or sometimes months before the actual “pounce.” There are three primary ways they can gain useful information about a user’s financial institution: one, by making phone calls posing as an employee of the institution; two, when the user replies to a phishing email (a typical message advises the user that he must respond to avoid account closure); and three, when the user posts sensitive information in his online profiles.

  Equipped with account information and a phone number (business, home, or cell), a savvy thief is able to launch an automatic dialing program that immobilizes the user’s phone line, making it appear to be constantly busy. The user suddenly gets a series of unexplained phone calls, or sometimes dead air, or a seemingly random recorded message.

  While the target is busy answering these random phone calls, the scammer will either contact the user’s financial institution pretending to be the user or access the user’s bank account online in order to transfer the money elsewhere. A thief will sometimes log in to an account, change the phone number to the one they’re using (most likely for a throwaway cell phone), and then wait for the financial institution to call them to verify the transfer.

  In 2009, a Florida periodontist lost nearly $400,000 from his retirement account through such a scam. Robert Thousand Jr. of St. Augustine began receiving hundreds of phone calls from a sex hotline every day for almost a month on his office, home, and cell phone lines in a ploy called a targeted denial of service (TDOS).

  “If you are gay, press 1. If you are a lesbian, press 2,” a sultry voice said, continuing with other options to choose from for 30 seconds.