Social Media Monsters: Internet Killers (True Crimes Collection RJPP Book 16)

by RJ Parker

  On April 18, 2009, the detectives traced the emails from ‘Andy’ to Philip Markoff, who was living in an apartment building in Quincy, Massachusetts. Using Facebook, the police found Philip through a page Megan had set up for their wedding. They discovered that he was a medical student at Boston University. The police compared the picture on his student I.D. to the pictures from the security cameras and put him on a twenty-four-hour surveillance watch. At a supermarket, police picked up items touched by Philip and sent his fingerprints for analysis. The two surviving victims, Trish and Cynthia, identified Philip as the man who attacked him.

  On April 20, 2009, Philip and his fiancée Megan decided to take a trip to Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. On the way there, police pulled over the car and arrested Philip for the murder of Julissa Brisman. Both Philip and Megan were taken in for questioning. Megan was convinced that they had the wrong man and fully cooperated with the police because she felt there was nothing to hide. On the other hand, Philip was being difficult during the interrogation.

  Megan didn’t believe that the man she was going to marry was actually a killer until the police searched their apartment and found more evidence. Inside a hollowed out copy of the book Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body, police found a gun. Philip had purchased the gun using a driver’s license with the name ‘Andrew Miller,’ the same name he used with his victims. Investigators also found bullets that matched the ones used in the murder of Julissa. Moreover, they found plastic zip-ties, duct tape, unused disposable TracFone cell phones purchased in February of the same year, and sixteen pairs of panties under the mattress, including the two stolen from Trish. They also found on his laptop some fragments of communication with Julissa.

  It was also discovered that Philip was using a Yahoo email address (sexaddict5385@yahoo.com) in the Spring of 2008 to exchange sexually explicit photos and messages with strangers until January 2009. He had also registered in a BDSM website for alternative lifestyles under the transvestitism category and he listed himself as preferring a submissive sexual role.

  On April 21, Philip was charged with the murder of Julissa Brisman, among other weapons and burglary charges. He was sent to Nashua Street Jail and ordered held without bail. Philip pleaded not guilty. Two days later, he tried to commit suicide using his shoelaces. He was put on suicide watch.

  On April 29, Megan visited Philip in jail and broke off their engagement. The next day, Philip tried to kill himself again. He used a sharpened metal spoon to try and cut his wrists, but he was unable to cause serious harm to himself. By June, he seemed to be feeling better and was mixing with other inmates. However, when Megan visited one more time and told him that she was going through with her plans to go to med-school in the Caribbean and she was unlikely to ever see him again, Philip attempted suicide again by taking an overdose of antianxiety pills prescribed to him by the prison’s psychiatrist. He was again put on suicide watch.

  On August 15, 2010, one day after what would have been his first anniversary with Megan, Philip finally succeeded in killing himself. In his cell, he spread out pictures of his ex-fiancée on the table. With his blood, he wrote the words “Megan” and “Pocket” (the nickname he used to call her when they were together) above the doorway. Then, Philip slashed major arteries on his legs and ankles, and his carotid artery in his neck. He also placed a plastic bag over his head to suffocate himself after swallowing toilet paper so he could not be resuscitated. Then, he covered himself with blankets and lay down on his bed to die.

  On September 16, 2010, the prosecutors were forced to legally drop the charges, as the defendant was deceased. The case was considered closed, and on March 31, 2011, they released 120 pieces of evidence against him to the public. The evidence included the brown leather shoes he was wearing when he was arrested, which were splattered with the blood of Julissa Brisman.

  Chapter 23: David Kelsey Sparre

  Like many criminals profiled in this book, David Kelsey Sparre led a troubled childhood. His father was sent to prison when he was just a young child and his mother married seven different times, jumping from relationship to relationship, always putting her men before her son. He suffered physical and emotional abuse at a young age and turned to drugs and alcohol before he had even reached his teenage years. He joined the ROTC in high school, but dropped out before he graduated.

  An active user of online dating sites, David had profiles on woome.com, lavalife.com, and datehookup.com. In his dating profiles, he claimed to enjoy working out, loved children, and was seeking “a good hookup.” David also frequented the Craigslist personal ads, looking for women to date.

  Meanwhile, twenty-one-year-old Tiara Pool lived in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband, Michael, and two sons, Kenyon and Kaeden. Michael worked as a technician for gas turbine systems at the Mayport Naval Station and was often deployed for duty out on the ships for extended periods of time. In 2010, Tiara and her husband were trying to keep a struggling marriage alive. Her two children, ages one and three, were living with their grandparents while she tried to finish up school. She was hoping to graduate in September of 2010 and was planning to join the Navy Reserves.

  While her husband was out at sea, she posted an ad on Craigslist looking for a companion. David, then a nineteen-year-old living in Georgia at the time, responded to the ad and the two began communicating via text messages. They chatted for nearly a week before they finally decided to meet in Tiara’s town in Jacksonville, Florida. David told her that he was headed to St. Vincent’s Medical Center to drop his grandmother off for heart surgery (which was actually a true story) and that’s where the two decided to meet.

  On July 8, 2010, David drove his grandmother to the hospital. Surveillance video shows David walking around the hospital before Tiara arrived. After the two met, they eventually left the hospital together and headed back to Tiara’s home in her car.

  At some point, the two became intimate. Afterwards, David stabbed her eighty-nine times in her neck, back, and head, leaving her body on her bedroom floor naked. The medical examiner later found the tip of the knife embedded into her skull. The blade had been bent from the violent attack. Tiara actually survived most of the attack and only died once the deep cuts into her back were made.

  David stayed in the home for some time after the murder, cleaning up the scene and looking for things to steal. He then drove back to the hospital in Tiara’s vehicle and sent two text messages to her phone saying, “don’t bother coming I can’t leave,” and “guess you’re mad at me.”

  After not hearing from her friend for four days, Michelle Edwards arrived at Tiara’s home to check on her welfare. She entered the house and looked around. According to Michelle’s later testimony, when she opened the door to the bedroom, she saw Tiara’s hand on the floor. She spun around immediately and ran out of the house.

  Police later located Tiara’s car near the hospital and found surveillance video of her meeting up with David. Computer and phone records led them straight to him. He was arrested on July 24, just a few weeks after the murder took place, when police located him at a family member’s home in Charleston, South Carolina. According to police, David confessed to the murder after he was arrested, but he declined to say why he had brutally killed Tiara.

  During the trial, David’s defense team tried to convince the jury that after the two had consensual sex, Tiara had revealed to him that she was married with two children. His lawyers claimed that he had blacked out with rage upon hearing this news and when he came to, Tiara’s body lay in a crumpled mess of blood and mangled flesh on the bedroom floor. The prosecution disputed that evidence wholeheartedly, saying that David had stabbed Tiara dozens of times with the biggest knife he could find in her kitchen, and then remained in the apartment for some time, cleaning up the crime scene. He later bragged to others that he was an expert on forensic investigations and knew how to clean up a crime scene from watching TV shows. He also stole several things from Tiara’s home before leaving, including her husba
nd’s PlayStation 3 console, which he sold to a pawnshop when he returned to Georgia.

  The jury spent just twenty-five minutes in deliberation before rejecting the defense’s argument of second-degree murder. Instead, they convicted him of first-degree murder.

  During the penalty phase, David went against the advice of his attorneys and waived his right for witnesses to testify in his defense during the sentencing phase. Because of this, he lost out on the possibility of showing mitigating factors that may have contributed to his violent acts, such as abuse he allegedly suffered at a young age, his early exposure to drugs and alcohol, and any medical conditions. It only took the jury an hour to agree upon giving twenty-year-old David Sparre the death penalty. According to reports from those in the courtroom, David smiled widely when he heard their recommendation.

  Shortly after the jury recommended a death sentence, a letter David wrote to his ex-girlfriend from prison leaked to the media. In it, he claimed he had planned the murder at least a week before he began looking for a victim. He knew he was going to be in Jacksonville that week and had purposely looked online for a victim in that area. He claimed he killed Tiara “for the rush” and not only did he enjoy it, but he hoped to one day do it again. He also claimed to be a member of the Crips, a rival gang of the Bloods, and his very first murder was an initiation shooting of a member in the rival gang. Any truth behind these claims has yet to be proven. The prosecution successfully admitted the letter into evidence before Circuit Judge Elizabeth Senterfitt made her ruling decision to determine his fate. On March 30, 2012, she sentenced him to death.

  In December of 2013, David’s lawyers filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court, asking his death sentence be thrown out on the grounds that the state should have allowed the court to hear testimony about mitigating factors in his case, even though the defendant waived that right. The appeal has potential to change the way death penalty cases are handled in Florida—should a court hear testimony on mitigating factors even after the defendant waives his or her right? At the time of this writing, no decision had been made by the Florida Supreme Court.

  Chapter 24: Chris Dean

  Some people use the internet to run scams and steal money from others online. But when the victims strike back, things can turn deadly. In 1998, such a case made national headlines in the United States.

  Chris Dean grew up in Michigan. In his late twenties, he earned his commercial driver’s license and started working in hauling steel. A few years later, he moved to Pierceton, Indiana with his second wife, Diane. For a while, he had a job at Little Bighorn, a golf club in Pierceton. In 1995, he began working with the Sprint North Supply Company, driving a flatbed truck carrying spools of telephone cables for delivery.

  In Pierceton, he was known at the Little Bighorn Golf Club as competitive, but good humored. His neighbors remembered him as obsessively neat, always washing his cars, taking care of his lawn, and keeping the house clean. Dean also was interested in radios and often frequented the CB shops in the area. He was a licensed ham (amateur radio) operator, and was always considerate on air. Dean also liked to hunt. At an academy at Pierceton, he took taekwondo lessons.

  Online, Chris Dean encountered seventeen-year-old Chris Marquis, a high school dropout. Marquis had used different identities online, such as ‘Psycho’ or ‘Taz’ or ‘PhantomOp,’ but this time he pretended to be a twenty-seven-year-old married father and owner of an online company, the CB Shack. In reality, Marquis was living with his mother and had a condition that made his eyesight so weak he couldn’t see at night. Using an online identity made Marquis feel invincible. He used these identities that he created to make deals with people online looking to trade different types of radios. However, when the people sent him the items, Marquis would either not send anything back or he would send some old or broken items. Marquis was unlucky enough to cross paths with Chris Dean.

  Dean and Marquis made a deal—Dean would send a Ranger RCI 2990, which was worth at least $800, and in return Marquis would send back a Cobra 2000 CB radio, which was only worth about $400. Although the deal was shady from the beginning, since Dean would receive something of half of the value of what he was sending (there were some claims that Dean actually stole the equipment from a CB shop owner in Pierceton), Marquis went along with the deal, knowing he would benefit from it. Dean was honest with the plan and sent Marquis the 2990. However, Marquis sent him back a Realistic mobile radio that was broken and did not even work. When Dean received this radio, he began calling Marquis to threaten him and he also sent hostile emails. He also warned him that he would come to Vermont to find Marquis and get his money back. Even with all the threats, Marquis was sure that his mother would protect him, as she had always done before. After all, Marquis’ mother would do anything for him.

  Meanwhile, Dean began planning his revenge. He had talked with a friend, who would later help with the police investigation by cooperating, about whether he would pay Marquis a threatening visit or send him a surprise package. The friend did not know exactly what Dean would send; in actuality, everyone was surprised to find out.

  On March 19, 1998, a UPS driver delivered a package to Marquis’ house in Fair Haven, Vermont. Marquis was talking with his girlfriend, Cyndi McDonald, using the radio Dean had sent him, so his mother intercepted the package. She brought the package up to Marquis’ room. Neither of them recognized the return address or the name on the box: Samantha Brown, 1863 South High Street, Bucyrus, Ohio. As Marquis opened the package with his jackknife, he found a smaller box inside which was made of Styrofoam. Suddenly, there was an explosion and both Marquis and his mother were knocked to the floor. Marquis died on his way to the hospital and his mother was seriously injured. The bomb severely injured her legs and she spent over a year in a wheelchair.

  The investigation about the bombing began immediately. FBI agents became involved. While searching Marquis’ room, the agents found a piece of paper with Dean’s phone number and address. In Marquis’ wallet, they found a UPS receipt with the date March 5, 1998, the details of the shipment of the radio to Indiana (the same address written on the paper found earlier), and the tracking number, which let them know that the package was sent through UPS from Rutland on March 5 and it was delivered to Pierceton on March 11 at 1:56 p.m. The name and the address written on the package containing the bomb were a dead end—the person and the street did not exist. However, the FBI discovered that the bomb was dropped off around noon on March 18 in a counter facility in Mansfield, Ohio and it was shipped the next day.

  According to Dean’s employer, Dean’s truck route included Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Moreover, around noon on March 18, Dean had been delivering goods to a warehouse in Mansfield, Ohio, which would have enabled him to pass through Bucyrus, Ohio and drop off the package. Dean’s unidentified friend told Special Agent John Hersh that Dean was very interested in CB radios and that he had been having some trouble with a guy in Vermont with whom he exchanged radios. It was also found that Dean had looked up instructions online to help him construct a pipe bomb.

  On March 20, 1998, Chris Dean was arrested for sending the bomb that killed Chris Marquis. The entire investigation, including the arrest, took no more than thirty hours. Friends and neighbors could not believe that Dean was capable of doing such a thing, especially since he did not have a previous criminal record. He was charged with interstate transportation of an explosive device with the intention to kill and injure Chris Marquis, and endangering the lives of people aboard the aircraft that transported the package.

  On March 25, it was ruled that there was enough evidence to extradite Dean to Vermont where he would be tried. On April 2, he was placed in a maximum-security facility. On June 22, Dean pleaded not guilty. However, the evidence against him was stacking up. Investigators found a Styrofoam container found at his house that matched the material used in the bomb. Moreover, hex nuts and fishing lines were also found, which were similar to the ones used in the bomb. In his backyard, t
here was a blast hole, which led the investigators to believe that he had built a prototype bomb and detonated it. Chris Dean was held without bail as he waited for his trial. In February 2000, Dean changed his plea to guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole. After his guilty plea, the prosecution agreed not to pursue the death penalty. He is currently serving his sentence in a federal prison in western Virginia. While the evidence against Dean is vast, some question his innocence. Could Chris Dean have really learned how to construct a pipe bomb within a period of seven days? And, as a smart man, why did Dean leave a trail leading to him? Did police investigate and arrest their suspect too quickly? Couldn’t another enemy (and there were plenty) have killed Chris Marquis?

  In 2006, Chris Dean, acting as his own lawyer, filed an appeal attempting to vacate his sentence, which was denied. In response, Chris Marquis’ mother, Sheila Rockwell, sent him a card in prison. It simply read, “Congratulations, you didn’t make it.”

  Chapter 25: Lacey Spears

  Social media monsters don’t just use the internet to locate and lure their victims; they also have been known to use it to exploit their victims for their own personal gain or entertainment. In the case of Lacey Spears, it is alleged she did just that—and her victim was her young son.

  Lacey Spears was born on October 16, 1987, the youngest of three children to Terry and Tina Spears. She was twenty-one years old when she began a romantic relationship with Chris Hill. The two lived in the same apartment building in Decatur, Alabama in 2008. When Lacey became pregnant, the two talked about baby names and even marriage. Then one day Lacey told him that the child she was carrying was not his. She began telling friends and family that the child’s father was a man named Blake—a police officer who had tragically died in a car accident. But none of Lacey’s friends or family had ever met Blake, nor had they ever heard any mention of him until then. Many of them now believe that Blake is a figment of Lacey’s imagination and she made up the entire story to gain sympathy. She later created a blog devoted entirely to Blake and wrote about the impact his death had on her life. Lacey pushed Chris away and even threatened to call the police on him if he came near her. Reluctantly, Chris backed off.