At first, their email exchanges covered the usual topics about the kids and the dog, but then Stephanie noticed a decidedly different tone in Mark’s responses. He wrote that she “would be better off without ‘this’ hanging over them all, forever.” A few minutes later, he wrote, “You’ll have a better life if I’m not around … I love you.” The last email he sent asked her to send someone to check on their son and their dog.
Stephanie called her father, who rushed to Mark and Stephanie’s Soho apartment at 7:27 AM. When he entered the home, he found his 46-year-old son-in-law hanging from a steel pole supporting a lighting rack mounted on the living room ceiling. Mark had used his dog’s leash as a noose.
Mark’s father was Bernie Madoff, who pled guilty to 11 federal felonies for defrauding a seemingly endless list of unsuspecting investors. Bernie admitted that his longtime business was actually a giant Ponzi scheme—a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors not from any actual profit earned by the organization but from their own investments and those of subsequent investors. As most Americans are aware, Bernie’s scheme eventually imploded, but before everything came crashing down it’s unlikely he ever imagined the toll his financial improprieties would take on his family. He certainly could not have foreseen his son’s tragic suicide.
Bernie thought his scam was so solid that no one would find out how much money he stole from his clients. But in December 2008, he was arrested on fraud charges, and by the following March he had admitted to having bilked his clients out of $50 billion. On June 29, Bernie received the maximum sentence for his crimes: 150 years in federal prison. The earliest he can be released is November 14, 2139.
This sentence wasn’t quite stiff enough for some of his clients. Irving Picard, for instance, who was the trustee in charge of locating assets for Bernie’s victims, filed a suit that included Bernie’s sons, Mark and Andrew Madoff, who had both worked for their father. Most observers of the case assumed at the time that the sons had also taken tens of millions of dollars to support their lavish lifestyles. Neither was criminally charged, but both were under investigation, as was their uncle, Peter Madoff. Picard filed another suit that included Mark’s four children, including two from a previous relationship.
As Mark scoured the internet for information about the legal case, he became distraught by the vitriol that was being directed toward him online, both anonymously and with attribution.
“Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to 2 years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo,” said Mark’s attorney, Martin Flumenbaum, after learning of his client’s death. “We are all deeply saddened by this shocking turn of events.”
An unnamed law enforcement source later said about Mark, “The son knew he was in the cross hairs. At first he thought he would somehow skate, but once [the trustee recovering assets for investors] detailed the family theft, he knew his time was limited.”
Although it will never be known to what extent Mark knew about his father’s criminal activity, he knew he would eventually have to go to court to testify. Friends speculated that this impending court ordeal was most likely what put him over the edge.
***
In another case, an Arizona teen’s hatred of his father also took a deadly turn. Fifteen-year-old Hughstan Schlicker took family matters into his own hands on February 6, 2008. When the call came in to the 911 dispatcher that day, the voice on the other end was anguished.
“I hate my dad, I couldn’t take it anymore!” wailed Schlicker, who was calling from his home in Mesa. He then told the dispatcher that he had just shot his father with a 12-gauge shotgun. His father was dead, lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen.
When police arrived on the scene, Schlicker said he had been mad at his father for taking away his internet privileges. His father had seen Schlicker’s suicide threats posted on Myspace, a site the young teen frequented. After he punished the boy by refusing to let him online, Schlicker said he couldn’t deal with the loss of access to his Myspace account.
“It felt like I was stabbed with a knife and it went straight through and … no matter how hard I pulled, I couldn’t pull out the knife,” Schlicker said during a police interview.
Schlicker told police that earlier in the day he had pretended to be his father and called out sick to school. He wandered around the house for a while, went to the garage, and found the shotgun. He took the shotgun to his bedroom and had planned on killing himself in front of his father, but then he changed his mind. Instead, he decided to kill his father first, then himself.
Schlicker formulated his game plan in the morning: If his father came home after 4:00 PM, he wouldn’t do it. He was going to let fate determine his decision. So he simply sat on the staircase in the house and waited.
Schlicker said he heard the door open about 2:00 PM; his father had come home early. When his father went into the kitchen, Schlicker snuck up behind him and shot his father in the back of the head. Then, instead of killing himself, Schlicker said he called a friend and told her what he had done. She convinced him to call 911.
His mother opened the door to a grisly scene just before the police arrived. In a transcript from police interviews, Schlicker’s mother unconditionally supported her son. “I know, I know it happened,” she said. “We have to get past this. It’s not going to change anything between you and me. You’re still my son and I love you no matter what, OK? I’ll be there whenever you need me.”
Schlicker expressed remorse in the police interview. “I wish I didn’t do this,” he said. “I miss Dad.”
Although he was just 15 at the time of the murder, Schlicker was tried as an adult and charged with first degree murder. He pled guilty to a charge of second degree murder on May 27, 2009, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on July 10. After his sentencing, Schlicker said, “I’d like to say I’m sorry and I’m scared. I wish my father was still alive and I feel terrible for all this to happen. He didn’t deserve this.”
***
For some people, the internet offers a way to use and abuse others. A case in point is an Australian man who became known as the “Facebook Killer.”
Ramazan Acar posted a status update on his Facebook page on November 18, 2010: “bout to kill ma kid.”
The 24-year-old Acar, at home in Melbourne, Australia, violated a court order and appeared at the front door of his estranged girlfriend’s house. Acar wanted to take Yazmina (Mimi), his 2-year-old daughter, for a chocolate treat at the local ice cream shop. Her mom, Rachelle D’Argent, couldn’t refuse the request.
“If you saw her face when she saw her dad that afternoon, she had stars in her eyes when she ran up to him,” D’Argent said. “That’s why I let her go with him. I did it for Mimi.”
D’Argent grew uneasy when they didn’t return 10 minutes later, as promised. When she called Acar on his cell phone, he said he was taking Mimi to McDonald’s for another treat and promised to bring her home soon. Instead, he called D’Argent back a few minutes later and taunted her, saying, “How does it feel to not have your child when I did not have mine for three months?” He added, “I loved you, Rachelle, and look what you’ve made me do.”
Acar told D’Argent that he was going to stab Mimi, but she said she didn’t believe him, thinking he was just trying to scare her. He was doing a good job of it.
At 7:23 PM, Acar posted another status update on Facebook that he was going to kill his little daughter. Eleven minutes later, he updated his Facebook page again, posting “Pay bk u slut.” After Acar’s last message, D’Argent finally called the police.
When Acar called D’Argent again at 8:47 PM, he told her that he had done the unthinkable: “She’s just lying there next to me in her leggings and her top covered in blood. I killed her to get back at you. Even if I go behind bars I know that you are suffering.” He texted D’Argent a few minutes later: “It’s ova, I did it.”
At 11:20 PM, Acar updated his Faceboo
k page again. “I lv u mimi.” Police arrived 10 minutes later to apprehend Acar. Police didn’t find Mimi until hours later; her body had been dumped in a grassy area next to a fence near the Greenvale Reservoir. She had been stabbed to death. The coroner’s office later reported that the child had suffered a long and slow death. Acar had missed vital organs when he stabbed her, leaving her to die slowly.
D’Argent never explained why she neglected to call police after Acar’s first threatening Facebook postings, phone calls, and texts appeared. On May 4, 2011, Acar pled guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison on May 18.
Melbourne Magistrates Court justice Elizabeth Curtain stated that life in prison was the only appropriate sentence for Acar, who pled guilty to his crime.
“More than that, the victim was your infant daughter, and she was killed by the one man in the world whose duty it was to love, nurture, and protect her,” Curtain said. “As such, your conduct was a fundamental breach of the trust that reposes between parent and child, a fundamental breach of a parent’s most fundamental obligation. Further, you committed this murder for the worst possible motives—revenge and spite. You killed your daughter to get back at her mother. You used your daughter, an innocent victim, as the instrument of your overarching desire to inflict pain on your former partner.”
***
For some criminals, cyberspace offers a prime opportunity to carry out the ultimate revenge for comments posted online.
In early September 2011, motorists in the northern Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo encountered a horrific site. Two mutilated bodies, a man and a woman, were hanging from a pedestrian footbridge.
The killers left their calling cards on the victims explaining their deeds. A sign attached to the man’s leg read [translated into English], “This happened for snitching on Frontera Al Rojo Vivo,” referring to an internet forum created to inform about cartel activity.
The sign attached to the woman’s body read, “This will happen to all the internet snitches (Frontera al Rojo Vivo, Blog Del Narco, or Denuncia Ciudadano) Be warned, we’ve got our eye on you.”
Both were signed with a “Z,” which many believe to be the Los Zetas gang, which allegedly controls Nuevo Laredo.
Both victims were in their 20s. The women’s bowels were draped down her body, her breasts exposed, and her hands and feet tied to the bridge; the male victim was hanging from the bridge by his hands. He had a gash so deep that his right shoulder was almost completely severed. Mexican authorities later said that both of the victims had been savagely tortured.
Since 2006, more than 40,000 people have been killed in the wake of the ongoing drug wars in Mexico. Authorities initially thought that using social networking sites as tools for people to report activity was a good idea, at least until these two victims were murdered.
Mexican bloggers were defiant in their posts and tweets in response to the murders, seemingly taunting whoever committed the brutal murders.
It didn’t take long for more retaliation to take place. On September 25, 2011, a female blogger was found decapitated in Nuevo Laredo on the side of a main road in town. Maria Elizabeth Macias (aka Marisol Marcias Castaneda), an advertising supervisor at Nuevo Laredo’s newspaper, Primera Hora, had been posting negative comments about the drug cartels on a local social networking website called Nuevo Laredo Live. The site offers tips for the Mexican army, navy, and police. In exchange for her postings, her decapitated head was placed upon a pile of stones near her body.
A sign had been left near her body in much the same way as with the two other victims: “Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites, I’m The Laredo Girl, and I’m here because of my reports, and yours,” according to the message found on Castaneda. “For those who don’t want to believe, this happened to me because of my actions, for believing in the army and the navy. Thank you for your attention, respectfully, Laredo Girl … ZZZZ.”
Her friends and family claim that she used an anonymous screen name to post her comments. So authorities believe it was someone she knew who revealed her real name to the killers who tracked her down and made her pay the ultimate price for posting her words online.
Bernie Madoff, whose son Mark committed suicide after being humiliated online in connection with his father’s crimes [Courtesy of U.S. Department of Justice]
Hughstan Schlicker, convicted of murdering his father for taking away his internet privileges [Courtesy of Mesa Police Department]
Craigslist Killers
When the deputy sheriff at Boston’s Nashua Street Jail entered Philip Markoff’s cell on August 14, 2009, he noticed that Markoff was unusually still under the blanket that covered him from head to toe. It was unusual too because it was August. Even Markoff’s chest wasn’t moving; he didn’t seem to be breathing.
The deputy sheriff pulled back the blanket to expose a disturbing scene underneath. The 23-year-old Markoff had tied a plastic bag over his head and wrapped plastic wrap around his arms where he had cut himself. Before he died he’d scrawled his ex-fiancée’s name, “Megan,” in blood on the cell wall above the door. The two were supposed to have been married that day; instead, it was his last.
Just months earlier Markoff had been leading what by all accounts was a charmed life. A graduate of the State University of New York–Albany as a premed student in 2007, the blond, blue-eyed youth with the engaging smile was in his second year at the Boston University School of Medicine. A member of the Young Republicans, Markoff was engaged to the equally blonde, blue-eyed, and attractive Megan McAllister, whom he’d met as a fellow volunteer at the Albany Medical Center Emergency Room. At the time, Megan was looking forward to starting medical school in 2009.
Markoff seemed to be a “good student and just a really nice kid. Smart, wanting to succeed, nothing strange, nothing out of the ordinary,” according to his teachers. He kept his darkest secret buried: He was a killer.
Trisha Leffler discovered Markoff’s secret firsthand. On April 10, 2009, as the first signs of spring were sprouting up in the Boston area, the 29-year-old checked in to her room at the Westin Copley Place Hotel in Back Bay and logged on to her laptop. In Las Vegas, police were getting tougher on escort girls, so she decided to leave Vegas and try her luck in Boston. Her first step was to place an ad in the erotic services section on craigslist under “Sweet Blonde.”
Working alone was always risky, but Trisha knew the payoff was worth it. She could make thousands of dollars in a week as long as she was careful. She could pick and choose her clients, and it was safer than working the streets.
It didn’t take long for her cell phone to ring. She chatted with the caller and felt comfortable enough to give him her room number. At the appointed time, she opened her hotel door to her first client of the day and breathed a sigh of relief.
“He looked nice, he looked young,” she said. “Good looking, obviously.”
With a flash of his engaging smile, he shut the door and turned to face Trisha. That’s when she saw the gun in his hand.
“I backed up a little bit,” she said. “He just said, ‘If you do everything you’re asked, no harm’s gonna come to you.’ He said, ‘Lay down, put your hands behind your back.’ When he started to walk towards me, he put the gun back in his pocket.”
She thought for a moment that he might just be role-playing and wasn’t surprised when he pulled out a pair of black leather gloves and plastic zip ties from his pants pocket. He put the gloves on slowly.
He knelt down in front of her and shoved his knee between her legs. Then he pinned her down and demanded money. She realized he was serious, and she was scared.
Trisha told him that she had about $8,000 in cash, which he let her get and give to him. She also offered up her credit and debit cards. He shoved the bills into his pocket, along with the cards. He grabbed her cell phone, took off his gloves, and removed his phone number from her call list. He saw a pair of her panties on the floor, picked them up, and tucked them into his pocket.
&
nbsp; After he walked around the room for a few minutes, he headed to the bathroom and ordered her to come in. He tied her wrists to the doorknob, cut the telephone lines, and then put duct tape over her mouth. She realized at that point that he hadn’t put his gloves back on, so his fingerprints were on everything he had touched. Thankfully, he then left.
Trish broke free from the zip ties, but she was afraid to yell for help. She thought he might be waiting outside for her to make a move. When she carefully peered out of the peephole, she couldn’t see anyone, so she waited a minute or so, then slowly opened the door. The hallway was empty. She grabbed her room key, closed her door, ran to the next room, and pounded on the door.
When the man in the next room opened the door, Trisha pushed her way into the room. “Can I call security?” she asked. “I’ve just been robbed at gunpoint.”
At first, Trisha was worried that the Boston police wouldn’t believe her because she was an escort, but she was wrong. When they arrived at the hotel, the police listened to her story and told her they wanted to apprehend this guy. She went to the station to look at photos and pointed to a surveillance photo from the hotel. It was the man who had robbed her.
Four days later on April 14, Boston police rushed to the Copley Marriott in Boston. A hotel guest on the 20th floor had heard gunshots, run into the hallway, and found a woman staggering out of a room before collapsing on the floor. The guest called hotel security, who alerted local police. When the police arrived, Julissa Brisman’s body was lying in the doorway of the room. The 25-year-old had been shot and on her wrist was a zip tie. She was rushed to Boston Medical Center, where she later died from multiple gunshots to her torso. Officers at the scene recalled that these were the same type of zip ties used in Trisha’s case. They started looking for a connection between the cases and soon found it. Julissa had also placed an ad on craigslist, for massage services.
True Crime Online Page 14