Murder.com

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  After listening attentively to both sides, the judge handed down what he could: 30 years in a state prison on manslaughter and sexual assault charges. It was also made known that in September of the previous year Dos Reis had received a 25-year federal sentence on two charges of travelling in interstate commerce to engage in illegal sex with a minor.

  Ten years of the federal sentence was to be served consecutively with the state sentence – a total of 40 years behind bars.

  There was one niggling issue, however, and that was whether or not US District Court Judge Stefan Underhill was unreasonable in the matter of Dos Reis’s sentencing, when he handed down a term that did not quite adhere to the usual sentencing guidelines. Under these guidelines Dos Reis’s offences would have called for a sentence of a little more than seven years.

  Later, in the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals, James Lenihan, Dos Reis’s lawyer, argued that the sentence was ‘unlawful’ and should be sent back to the District Court to be ‘substantiated’.

  Lenihan also said that the District Court ‘mistakenly noted that age was a factor to be considered’ under the guidelines, but in fact the guidelines did not make reference to the victim’s age.

  Although Christina’s death was not an element of the federal charge, the federal judge took the killing into consideration during the penalty phase. Kevin O’Connor, the state attorney for Connecticut, argued that Judge Underhill did not make a legal error. O’Connor said the departure was justified because the defendant ‘knowingly risked the life of his victim when he choked her’. He said the sentence was reasonable ‘in light of the horrific circumstances of the defendant’s strangulation of Christina, dumping of her dead body, and efforts to cover up his involvement’.

  Christina’s death received national attention and sparked a push in Congress for a kids-only domain on the internet. On 27 May 2003, it was announced that legislation allowing Connecticut Police to more swiftly investigate internet sex crimes like the one that led to the death of Christina Long had failed because state lawmakers were concerned about violating civil liberties.

  So, while officials praised the quickness of the FBI in tracking down Dos Reis, state experts and local police felt that Connecticut’s reliance on federal agencies was unwise, given the rapid spread of internet sex crime. ‘Everybody has their own job to do,’ said Danbury Detective Captain Mitchell Weston, ‘and we were lucky in this case that the FBI wasn’t in the middle of something.’

  It seemed unlikely that the killing could have been prevented. FBI spokeswoman Lisa Bull said the FBI learned of previous contact between the girl and the older Dos Reis only during the investigation into her killing.

  Laws proposed in the General Assembly would have helped track down the perpetrators in cases where police have knowledge of illegal internet contact between adults and children. The bureau – comprising only state police – responsible for dealing with internet crime have written bills empowering state authorities to more easily obtain internet users’ identities and communications logs.

  These bills would, in theory, have encompassed not only the use of internet messages to lure someone to a potentially indecent encounter, but also the murkier depths of the provision of indecent imagery of children. Unfortunately, they did not survive the legislative committee process.

  Griswold’s Democrat representative, Steven Mikutel, a co-sponsor of one of the bills, said the Legislature did not have the political will to make it law. ‘There is a group out there that doesn’t want to put any restrictions on the internet,’ he said, adding, ‘They don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. But public safety factors have to come into consideration here.’

  Danbury Police Chief Robert Paquette offered this: ‘You’re getting into civil liberties now. I don’t think either the federal government or the state can go that far.’

  Later, another man who had had sex with the clearly underage Christina was put out of commission. On 15 March 2004, 24-year-old Carlos Estanqueiro, also a former resident of Danbury, was sentenced to 46 months for the offence. He had pleaded guilty the previous December to using the internet for the purposes of ‘persuading a minor to engage in sex’.

  Estanqueiro, it materialised, had met Christina over the internet in February 2002. The pair had subsequently engaged in sexual activities several times.

  New Haven US District Judge Janet B Arterton ensured that, in addition to the prison time Estanqueiro would serve, there would be a further three years of supervised release. It was further stipulated that Estanqueiro register as a convicted sex offender on his release. Arterton also ordered that he undergo mental-health counselling, not frequent locations where children are known to congregate and not use a computer except for work-related purposes. Estanqueiro was also an illegal alien. As such, he could be subject to deportation after serving his time.

  The battle to protect children from internet stalkers continues. On one website visited by the authors, it is clear that help is available:

  ‘The freedom that makes the internet so useful also makes it dangerous. In teen chatrooms, sexual predators can hunt for their victims online, 24 hours a day,’ it warns. The existence of links such as ‘Wise up to Internet Predators’, ‘Protecting Kids From Internet Porn’ and ‘Children, Sex and the Web’ makes it clear that at least we are on the right track.

  A lawyer and expert in the field of internet abuse, Parry Aftab, says, ‘Internet predators attempt to lure thousands of children every year to offline meetings.’

  These are her guidelines:

  Who’s at risk?

  What’s the profile of an internet child molester?

  How often does this happen?

  Why do the children meet strangers offline?

  What can you do to protect your children?

  What’s being done to find these predators before they hurt a child?

  Whom do you call if you suspect someone is involved with targeting children online?

  A survey of 10,800 teenage girls conducted in 1998 showed that 12 per cent of the sample admitted to meeting up with strangers with whom they had first made contact via the internet. Two years later, Family PC reported that, in a survey of both sexes, 24 per cent of the teenage girls polled and 14 per cent of the teenage boys were meeting internet strangers offline.

  It is truly a shame that Christina Long did not benefit from the various safety precautions now available on the internet. It took her death, among so many others, to bring home to us the dangers of the internet. Had her online activities been more closely monitored through this kind of education, she may never have had the opportunity to come into contact with her dysfunctional killer. Dos Reis was then, and in all likelihood still is, a very dangerous man.

  As an obscene postscript to this terrible crime, it was recently discovered that Dos Reis was up to his old tricks again, this time inside prison. In search of female correspondents, he had set up a web page, although this now appears to have been removed. He included a photograph of himself, this time smiling and sporting a tuxedo. Above the ad he had selected the heading ‘The Right One’.

  On his web page, Dos Reis went on to describe his perfect penpal as ‘A woman with a good heart that loves to write and that is not afraid of being herself’, adding, ‘I also look for a person that knows what she wants out of life.’

  His readers could learn that: ‘I have many qualities which make me unique. I’m romantic, always funny, I always have a positive attitude and have many hidden things as well. I enjoy writing and being silly and funny’ and ‘I also always carry on interesting things to talk about. I’m not just another boring penpal…’

  He decided to inform his prospective lonely hearts that he had been convicted of second-degree assault. So, with just a slight deviation from the truth yet again, the ‘Outgoing Heterosexual Male’ made it apparent that he ‘prefers female correspondents but will reply to all letters’. He also claimed to be ‘very good at telling stories which can and will have you sh
iver’.

  Christina’s aunt, Shelly Riling, was shocked by the web page, denouncing it as a prime example of ‘predatory behaviour’. However, Dos Reis’s defence attorney, Peter Tilem, argued that his client’s web page is understandable. ‘This is someone who is going to spend the next 30 years in prison and he’s lonely and scared,’ he said. ‘We can’t imagine how lonely he feels, so I can understand.’

  According to inmate.com, prisoners can place an ad for four months for $60 and $15 for each subsequent month. The website designs and posts the ad for the subscriber. Purchasers of premium advertisements, such as Dos Reis, are given a personal email box that allows people to respond to the ad via email. Once a week the service forwards the email responses to the inmate in a letter. And what a nice little earner this is for the site’s owners. For seed money outlay, they rake in $37,000 a year by making it possible for people such as Dos Reis to involve other people in their sickening fantasies from behind bars.

  Christina’s aunt did not share Tilem’s assessment. ‘I can’t believe he has a website. It shows that he has a disease and is incurable. He hasn’t learned anything.’

  Investigators involved with the Dos Reis case were at a loss to find a motive for the murder. Indeed, even the killer himself was unable to cast much light on his reason for strangling the young woman. However, we know from experience that many people who spend long periods of time in chatrooms become of another world. Susan Gray, discussed later in this book, is a graphic example of the phenomenon.

  These individuals find themselves becoming addicted to the chatrooms and perceive themselves as engaging in very real relationships with other visitors. They are people who have in most cases reinvented themselves to compensate for their own psychological and/or physical shortcomings. For those addicted to the chatrooms, it becomes a meeting of ‘loners’ who bring all of their psychological inadequacies along with them.

  These people actually fall in ‘cyber love’ – in much the same way as couples do in the real world. Saul Dos Reis seems, for whatever reason, to have fallen in love with Christina Long in this way. He had become ‘fantasy-driven’. After years of rejection, he imagined he had found his ideal partner, even though she was underage. Christina was promiscuous and her sexual appetite, coupled with her pretty looks, no doubt further increased his need for her companionship. Nevertheless, after she had had sex with him a few times, the feisty girl wanted to dump him and move on. Rejected, and scorned again, Dos Reis killed her.

  This scenario of a cyber crime passionnel is not quite as crazy as it first appears, as the following cases testify.

  On 15 February 2004, a man was found trying to commit suicide at his home in Wuhan, China. Afterwards, he admitted that he had killed his cyber lover on Valentine’s Day evening.

  The man, using the net name ‘Flying Dust’, got to know ‘Rain Drop’, a 25-year-old flower-shop keeper, at the end of 2003. They met in a chatroom, but Rain Drop’s parents disapproved of her having such an intimate online relationship. So, on Valentine’s Day, she told Flying Dust that she had to break up with him. He flew into a rage and strangled her to death, and then tried to cut the arteries on his neck and wrists. ‘I love her, I want to be with her for ever,’ he said later, when asked why he had done it.

  On Saturday, 17 April 2004, a man’s body was found in a hotel room in Dengshikou, Beijing. Zhang Yang had been killed by his cyber lover, Liang Yixia, because he refused to marry her. Liang was arrested when she came back to get her mobile phone charger.

  According to Liang, in May 2003 she had been raped by three men she met on the internet, and they also took her money. After her ordeal, Zhang, a seemingly gentle and rich man, renewed her trust in cyber love. But, once they had had sex, he told her that for him to marry a cyber lover was impossible. Liang felt so humiliated that she fed him sleeping pills before strangling him with adhesive tape.

  At the police station, Liang said she felt no regret for what she had done. ‘He deserved this punishment I gave him,’ she said repeatedly.

  In 2001, a West Australian Supreme Court jury found a woman guilty of murdering her internet lover, after he tried to dump her when he discovered that she was married to a biker. The woman was caught on the home-security video of the man she murdered and is now serving a mandatory life sentence for the crime.

  Thirty-four-year-old Margaret Hinchcliffe met Michael Ian Wright, aged 30, in an internet chatroom and the two soon began a sexual relationship. In November 1999, Hinchcliffe’s husband, Mark, found out about the affair and inflicted a series of punishments on his wife, driving her to seek help at a women’s refuge on two occasions. A worker from the refuge told the court that Margaret had been badly beaten by her husband and that he had ordered her to shave her head. He also ordered her to have a tattoo done on her waistline that read ‘Property of Mark Hinchcliffe’.

  Mark Hinchcliffe, a member of a bikers’ gang who called themselves the Coffin Cheaters’ Club, visited Wright and threatened him after beating him up. He then ordered his wife to kill Wright, an order she carried out on Sunday, 25 February 2000.

  Margaret Hinchcliffe went to the home of Wright’s parents, and when Wright opened the door she shot him at point-blank range, unaware of the fact that the video security system had captured the act on film.

  In Columbus, Ohio, Rickie Mandes slipped his old .45-calibre handgun into his pocket before taking one last moment in his lonely apartment to think about his two daughters. Within a few hours, those two girls, aged nine and 15, would be fatherless. Their lives would be shaken by a nightmare of violence, jealousy and revenge. Mandes would be dead, and so would Robert J Fry, the man he believed had stolen his wife’s affection over the internet.

  Mandes felt his daughters needed some kind of explanation. And so, in a hastily scrawled note to them, he tried to provide one, writing that the pain and stress he felt after his wife, Rebecca, had left him for a man she had met over the internet was ‘too much for me to take. I am sorry for what I am about to do.’

  Authorities said the 45-year-old Mandes confronted his wife and her new lover in the parking lot of the mail-order store where Fry worked and gunned him down, then turned the weapon on himself.

  Acquaintances of the Mandeses, who had known the couple in happier days, closed ranks and have refused to discuss the events that led to the brutal murder and suicide. ‘They want their privacy,’ said long-time friend Tammy Campbell of the surviving members of the family.

  According to police, the slaying was sparked by an internet romance that had blossomed over two and half months between 34-year-old Rebecca Mandes and 40-year-old Fry.

  A little more than a month and a half after the whirlwind online romance began, Fry suddenly quit his job of 22 years at the Orient Correctional Facility in Ohio. He left his wife and children, and moved with Rebecca Mandes and her two girls into a house in the pleasant waterfront community of Westerly. Two weeks before the shooting, he took a job in the receiving department of Paragon Gifts store.

  By all accounts, Rebecca’s decision to move out of the apartment she and her husband shared in Pawcatuck was equally abrupt.

  There were a few domestic loose ends to be tied up, which provided Mandes with the opportunity he needed to exact his revenge on the man he believed had stolen his wife, so he and his wife had arranged to meet in the parking lot of Paragon Gifts about noon to exchange some items belonging to the daughters.

  For a while they stood just outside the office window of Paragon Gifts’ president Stephen Rowley, waiting for Fry to leave work for his lunch break. About a dozen employees were milling about, and a little after 12.30pm Fry approached the pair.

  With that, witnesses told police, Mandes pulled out the gun, said something to the effect of ‘This is what you get for messing with my wife’ and opened fire.

  Stephen Rowley heard ‘what I’d call a pop, several of them close together’, he said. ‘Then there was a moment of silence, and another pop,’ which he later learned w
as the sound of the final bullet that crashed into Mandes’s skull, killing the jilted husband instantly.

  Rebecca Mandes was not injured in the attack.

  The broken-hearted man had left a short suicide note, simply saying, ‘I guess she’s doing all right.’

  JANE LONGHURST: VICTIM OF A NECROPHILIAC

  ‘In seeking perverted sexual gratification by way of your sordid and evil fantasies, you have taken her life and devastated the lives of those she loved and of those who loved her.’

  JUDGE RICHARD BROWN TO GRAHAM COUTTS

  ‘The case of Jane Longhurst and her killer, Graham Coutts, may become a landmark issue that could – if there is the political will – have far-reaching consequences on the future of violent pornography sites in the years to come.

  CHRISTOPHER BERRY-DEE

  When Jane Longhurst, a 31-year-old special-needs teacher from the English seaside town of Brighton, vanished without a trace on Friday, 14 March 2003, it was immediately flagged as suspicious. This conscientious, caring young woman would not just up and leave without telling anybody.

  Originally from Reading, Jane had moved to the Sussex coast, where, in addition to her teaching, she was a skilled viola player in a local orchestra. She was a bubbly lady with chestnut hair and an effervescent smile. There was a gentle aura surrounding Jane which everyone she came into contact with would attest to.

  Jane was described as stable, reliable and dependable and, when suddenly she wasn’t there any more, people took notice. There was no word to her family, friends or her employers. And what of the kids with learning disabilities at Uplands School, who were very close to Jane and relied on the kind and patient teacher to help them with their studies?