by RJ Parker
On March 13, the FBI task force, along with the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation, stopped the 2001 Volvo George was driving at a Citgo Station near Exit 42 off Interstate 77. They had been looking for Bonnie’s car and when they ran the license plate on the one George had been driving, they learned it belonged to a Ford Contour owned by Bernard Lamp. They were able to arrest George on charges he had violated his probation. The car contained evidence and blood, which led them to a house on Weathers Creek Road, in Troutman, North Carolina. In the backyard, the authorities found a shallow grave, which contained Bonnie’s body.
On March 22, 2008, George was charged with one count of a first-degree murder and one count of a first degree kidnapping. He would wait six long years for his trial. In January 2014, the trial for the murder of Bonnie began. Jury selection started on January 13, and testimony began one week later, on January 20. The defense had one small victory when the kidnapping charges were dropped.
The medical examiner presented evidence George had strangled the victim. Although there were no scratches on her neck, she had injuries indicating she had been struck in the face several times and manually strangled. There were no ligature marks, which indicated her murderer gripped his hands tight around her throat as she tried to free herself. Bonnie was likely rendered unconscious in as few as ten seconds, but it took her several minutes to actually die.
Four professionals testified about the evidence found on women’s clothing that was found in the garage of the house where Bonnie had been buried. Stephen Shawn, a hair and fiber expert, testified that a hair sample he examined was similar to Bonnie’s but no definite conclusion about the test could be reached. Jennifer Ramirez, a nuclear DNA expert, and Megan Peterson, a serologist (the scientific study of plasma serum and other bodily fluids), both testified that the testing of the blood found on the clothing was positive, but the confirmation tests were negative or there wasn’t enough evidence to be tested. Dr. Susan Croup, an expert in mitochondrial DNA, explained to the jury that the mitochondrial DNA inherited from the mother is not unique for each individual; there was not any item submitted for the test which had a positive match for Bonnie or George, however, they cannot be excluded. Among the tested items were two head hairs—one retrieved from the tape on the plastic bag that contained the victim’s body and another retrieved from a black purse located in the trash can at the house of George’s brother.
Moreover, the owner of the home where the body of the victim was found, Leslie Belkin, was a friend of George’s. Neighbors testified about seeing him at the residence, burning things in the backyard where the corpse was discovered. In addition, neighbors also testified about seeing him driving a 2001 Volvo (the victim’s car), and someone saw him take out something out of the trunk of the car. In total, thirty-eight witnesses testified and 270 pieces of evidence were presented.
George was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Bonnie Lou Irvine on February 5, 2014. The jury deliberated for just three hours and forty minutes before reaching a verdict at the Iredell County Superior Court. On February 19, the jury recommended the death penalty.
Chapter 16: Hiroshi Maeue
Suicide chat rooms are a popular way for those suffering from depression to find comfort with our people who are going through something similar. Unfortunately, as we have learned, those people can also become easy prey to the sick minds lurking online, searching for a victim. By sharing information about themselves and their situation, they may be unknowingly opening themselves up to a murderer.
Hiroshi Maeue was born in Japan on August 8, 1968. As a bright man in his twenties, Hiroshi attended the Kanazawa Institute of Technology. However, around 1988, he tried to strangle one of his male friends, which resulted in him dropping out of the institute. Later in 1995, Hiroshi was arrested after he attacked and attempted to strangle a work associate. The case was settled out of court, but Hiroshi was later fired from his job. Some years later, in 2001, he was arrested again for trying to strangle two women. This time, he was sentenced to spend one year in prison, with a three-year suspended sentence. A short time later, Hiroshi was released on good behavior. Not long after his release, in 2002, he was arrested once more for trying to strangle a boy in junior high school. He again received a sentence of twenty-two months in prison.
Hiroshi later claimed that, as a child, he read a mystery novel that affected him deeply and that was what triggered his later deadly crimes. He claimed to become sexually excited by killing people.
After he was released from prison in 2005, he began logging into online suicide chat rooms. It was there he was able to meet and lure his victims. He killed his first victim in February of 2005. Hiroshi had been emailing twenty-five-year-old Toyonaka resident Michiko Nagamoto for some time. Michiko was severely depressed. They made a pact to commit suicide together by sitting in a sealed car with a charcoal burner, peacefully dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. The two met up on February 19, 2005, in a car that Hiroshi had rented. After having a brief conversation, Hiroshi suffocated the woman using his bare hands. According to later testimony, he used his hands to hold her nose and mouth shut. On February 23, police found her body and were able to identify her using her fingerprints. Hiroshi had buried her corpse along a river in a mountainous area in Kawachinagano, Osaka Prefecture.
A couple of months later, in May 2005, Hiroshi lured out his second victim. Using the same method, he was able to murder a fourteen-year-old boy from Kobe. A month later, in June 2005, Hiroshi claimed another victim. He killed a twenty-one-year-old college student. Both of these bodies were abandoned in two separate areas in the mountains of southern Osaka Prefecture.
Meanwhile, investigators were trying to track down the killer. They were able to identify Hiroshi as the murder when they traced emails he had exchanged with his first victim, Michiko Nagamoto. They also looked into the car rental contract. Hiroshi was arrested on August 5, 2005 for the murder of Michiko. After his arrest, he confessed to have killed two other victims (the junior high boy and the college student). The police checked missing persons reports and were able to confirm his other victims.
It is believed that Hiroshi had posted on many other suicide websites. The reason behind his murders was sexual. He suffered from paraphilia and a psychosexual disorder and claimed he was not able to reach a sexual release and have sexual pleasure unless he could perform an act of strangulation. He enjoyed watching his victims suffocate in agony.
During his trial, the prosecutors went after the death penalty. They argued that Hiroshi would remain a threat because he would not be able to resist the sexual urges that made him commit the crimes in the first place. On March 28, 2007, the Osaka District Court sentenced Hiroshi to death. The judge talked about how Hiroshi’s condition was untreatable, saying, “the crime was cruel, harsh and outrageous.”When asked if he would commit these crimes again on the condition he was released, Hiroshi replied, “I have worries.” The defense team tried to file an appeal, but on July 5, 2007, it was retracted. Hiroshi accepted his fate and was willing to pay for the crimes he committed. On July 28, 2009, Hiroshi was hanged in Osaka.
Chapter 17: John Katehis
John Katehis committed his first and only murder when he was just sixteen years old. And he found his victim through Craigslist.
John Katehis, an American student, was born in the year 1992. Not much is publicly known about his childhood and his early teenage years. However, it is noted that, as any other teenager, he used the internet and had many different accounts on various sites including a MySpace account and even an illegal XTube account (because this website is the equivalent YouTube for pornography and all users must be eighteen years of age to have an account, John was pretending to be eighteen at the time).
On his profiles, he wrote his age (but not on XTube) and where he lived in New York. He also stated his hobbies (riding bikes, hopping roofs, hanging out, listening to music on his iPod, and Parkour exercises), how he liked doing wild things and taking risks, an
d was open into having conversations with others. He also said that he was a LaVeyan Satanist and a sadomasochist.
The road to murder was pretty easy for John. Looking to make easy and fast money, he responded to an ad on Craigslist on March 18, 2009. The ad was posted by George Weber, a forty-seven-year-old radio reporter working as a freelance anchor for ABC News Radio. George was advertising for a sexual erotic encounter, rough sex, and he was looking for someone to smother him. For $60, John agreed to meet George and bind his feet with some duct tape and smother him as a part of the act required. They agreed to meet on March 20, 2009.
That day, one of George’s neighbors saw a young man, believed to be John, speaking on his cellphone outside the building in which George lived. Around 6:00 p.m., George invited John in. We only have John’s account of what happened next that day.
According to John, once he was inside the apartment, George offered him cocaine. Everything was going according to the plan and John bound George’s ankles, like he asked. After that, George pulled out a knife and attacked John. They wrestled and both struggled for the knife and suddenly the knife went through George’s neck, piercing his jugular vein. John claimed when he pulled the knife out of George’s neck, he cut his hand. He said it was his first time trying cocaine and he became extremely paranoid as everything happened so fast. Then, John changed his clothes, which were now stained with blood, and left the apartment. Around 9:13 p.m. someone spotted John on a northbound G train, bleeding from his hand. At the station, Emergency Medical Services met him and took him to Elmhurst Hospital Center. There, he was treated and released. John told the doctors that he received the cut on his left hand by a broken bottle. The body of the victim was not found until two days later in his apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
Police were able to identify John down through the emails he had exchanged with the victim after connecting on Craigslist. Although John had no criminal record, the police still suspected him. After the murder, John had gone to one of his friend’s home, but the detectives were able to track him down with the help of John’s father, who convinced his son to meet him at a bus depot in Middletown, New York on March 24, 2009. As John arrived at the depot, the police closed in on him.
Once John began talking, his story of self-defense was a bit hard to believe. First of all, the police couldn’t find any traces of drugs in George’s apartment. Secondly, according to the medical examiner, George wasn’t stabbed just once; he was stabbed around fifty times in the neck, shoulders, hands, chest, and rear torso as well. The victim was left to bleed to death. Furthermore, the weapon used to stab George was never found. Finally, during the forty-minute confession he gave police, John sounded at ease, laughing every once in a while and eating a doughnut.
John claimed that he only stabbed the victim once and when he left the apartment after taking the $60 from his pocket, George was still moving. However, the prosecutor argued that the murder was not a result of an accident or a struggle and that George was no threat to John. On the other hand, the defense countered that the victim was indeed a sexual predator and stated that John had been “used by an older gentleman.”
Although John committed the murder when he was sixteen years old, he was charged as an adult with second-degree murder. He was also charged with illegal possession of a weapon. After the jury wasn’t able to reach a verdict, a second jury was formed and John was found guilty in November of 2011. On December 13, John was sentenced to twenty-five years to life, the maximum sentence.
Chapter 18: Peter Chapman
In 2009, online safety became a prominent theme in the UK media. In October of that year, a tragedy struck the Hall family. Their seventeen-year-old daughter, Ashleigh, was taken away from them after she had met a man on Facebook posing as a teenage boy. The case caused many to criticize Facebook for not providing a pedophile ‘panic button,’ like other social media sites in the UK that allows users who believe they are being targeted by a pedophile to directly connect to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre’s website. There, trained people help the individual deal with the situation they are facing and give them the opportunity to report the case to the police if necessary. Ashleigh’s family believes if Facebook had signed up to implement the panic button, their daughter might still be alive today.
Peter Chapman was born in January 1977 in Darlington, County Durham, in the northeast region of England. He grew up in Stockton with his grandparents. At the age of twenty-six, Peter moved to Liverpool. In 2007, he returned to County Durham, and then to Merseyside.
Way before all this moving around, Peter was charged with multiple sexual assaults. His long history of being investigated for sexual offenses began when he was just fifteen years old. At age nineteen, he was sent to spend seven years in prison after raping two prostitutes at knifepoint. Peter was released in 2001. He was supposed to be monitored by the police, but he somehow fell off their radar.
In 2003, Peter picked up a prostitute in the Liverpool’s red light district, and they agreed on a £60 fee for sex. She was just twenty-six years old and a drug addict at that time. Peter took the woman to an apartment nearby, and once they were inside he told her to take off her clothes. When she demanded that he give her the money first, he attacked her. He placed duct tape on her mouth and also used it to tape her hands together. The woman begged him not to hurt her, but he held her down and raped her. The entire time, he held a twelve-inch-long knife and threatened to kill her if she refused to do what he said. After he was done, he apologized and told her that he did not mean to hurt her, but then raped her again. She was held captive for fifteen hours. After that, Peter forced the woman to get back into his car and he dropped her off close to the area where he had picked her up earlier. The woman reported what had happened to the police and gave them a description of the apartment where she had been taken. The investigators were able to use her description to locate Peter. He was charged with kidnapping and raping the woman.
Unfortunately, by the time the case finally went to trial, the woman could not face him. The case collapsed and Peter was allowed to walk out of the courtroom a free man. The woman expressed her regret later because, had she been brave enough, Peter wouldn’t have been free to kill Ashleigh Hall.
After that, Peter stayed in Liverpool where he began a relationship with Dyanne Littler, a twenty-five-year-old mother. However, when Dyanne found out that Peter was on the public register of sex offenders, she ended her relationship with him.
Peter liked using the internet because it allowed him to stay somewhat anonymous. Using the social media, Peter was able to contact 2,981 girls between the ages of thirteen and thirty-one. More than 800 comments were posted on his Facebook page. He was a balding thirty-three-year-old man with bad teeth, but on Facebook he pretended to be a handsome teenager named Pete Cartwright. For his birthday, he used the same month and day, but he selected a year to look so much younger. It was through Facebook where he met seventeen-year-old Ashleigh Hall. That same day, 100 other girls accepted his friend request. He sent Ashleigh a picture of a bare chested boy, which he claimed to be of himself. On October 21, 2009, Ashleigh agreed to meet with him. He told her that his dad would pick her up on the day they picked. Before meeting with Ashleigh, Peter also tried to lure another girl who was fifteen years old, but he was unsuccessful.
October 25, 2009 was a Sunday. Ashleigh told her mother that she was going to her friend’s house, but she was actually planning on meeting Peter. Peter headed to the place where they agreed to meet. He had two mobile phones; one was ‘Pete’s’ and the other was ‘Pete’s Dad’s.’ He sent a message to Ashleigh pretending to be Pete’s dad, asking if she doesn’t mind him picking her up and how Pete can’t wait to see her. She replied that she didn’t mind and that she trusted Pete and his father.
Peter then used the second mobile to text her, pretending to be Pete. His message was: “Me dad’s on his way babe. he says excuse the state of him lol He’s been at work lol he
doesn’t have to come in and meet your mum does he he’ll be a mess probably....hope you are wearing some sexy underwear for me hehe x.” When he arrived, he sent another message pretending to be Pete telling her that his dad was there.
Ashleigh got into the car with Peter. He drove her to a secluded area in Thorpe Arches, Durham. Using duct tape, he wrapped her head, legs and arms. He then made her perform a sex act before he raped her. Before he suffocated her, Peter made his poor victim get dressed. He then wrapped duct tape around her face and suffocated her. He dumped the body near a Little Chef restaurant in Sedgefield, County Durham. He knew if he let her live she would be able to tell police about his Facebook profile, his car, where he lived, and his mobile phone numbers. Letting her go alive was too risky for Peter.
Peter was on his way to meet with another woman when he decided to pass by the crime scene to make sure that the body of Ashleigh was not spotted. However, on his way there, a traffic cop became suspicious of him. He ran his license plate and found out that Peter was wanted for a motoring offense. The cop arrested Peter and brought him to the Middleborough police station. There, he confessed to the murder of Ashleigh Hall. He led the police to the junction of the A689 and A177 roads, and there they found the dressed corpse of Ashleigh. Since Peter was a registered sex offender, he was required to stay in Merseyside after he was released from prison but the police had failed to keep him on their radar. When it became obvious to the police that he was not actually staying in Merseyside in January of 2009, they circulated his description all over the country in September to locate him. Unfortunately, it took them nine months to issue that alert and Ashleigh paid the ultimate price.