Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26400131-20150709042421

Do you feel safe on the internet? Do you really? Safe typing and reading the very words upon the screen? Protected by that buffer of wires and circuits only separate you from the treacherous murderer or pedophile. I believed that if I could disconnect from all of these websites and social media outlets that I can be totally free from those people. How was I supposed to know that the real world and cyberspace can collide in the deep web. I didn't and it took the deaths of many innocent people to figure that out. It all began in January 2012. Snapchat had been released just last year and I was appointed to the cyber crime division of the police department in Palo Alto, a city in the Bay Area near San Jose. My name? You can just call me Fredrick. Detective Fredrick. Most of the cases I received were petty crimes started by low level hackers, but on occasion you got the big fish. Like some guy trying to hack into the police files via internet. However, so far nothing to result in murder until I received case file 47-k Knowing that I had a perfect record in solving crimes the city of San Jose called me over to investigate a crime involving a girl and social media. It was the most gruesome yet. Apparently, this murdered individual (name withheld) was a teenage girl using the popular message service "snapchat". Scanning through other social media outlets proved that she was receiving threats from an unknown snapchat account mostly gruesome threats with the picture of a glove covered hand grasping a bloody kitchen knife. The snap would read "ready to cut you" and many other snaps with the same knife would appear. Reading over the case file again brought open more evidence of stalker mentality inscribed here on the report and autopsy: Case file: (name withheld)Gender: FemaleBirth: (withheld) Age: (withheld) Summary:"Victim was teenage female. Death had occurred around 4:00 a.m. according to autopsy . Victim was found near bed with phone in one hand, other hand with puncture wound. Death was caused by blood force trauma to the head caused by unknown object. Heavy scratch marks on the eyes. Slit wrists were found of the subject causing severe loss of blood.  Scratch marks and gashed eyes look to be caused by kitchen knife specifically (brand name) knives......" The rest of the investigation was pictures and more details about the murdered victim. As I looked deeper into the investigation it brought up more questions than answers. Why would he kill her in the manner? Why was the phone still in hand? Any connections? It baffled me as I decided it was best to look at the phone in the victims hand. It was a really girly iPhone in a medium sized evidence bag with a pink case covered in flowers. The case was slightly cracked I examined the phone within the plastic casing before putting gloves on and taking the phone out. Upon inspection I turned the phone on and the little apple with a bite mark appeared I guess signaling it was on. After a minute of the screen I slid to the wallpaper and opened the phone up. Nothing was special about this phone. No encrypted messages, no evidence of  the phone being tampered with. This frustrated me as nothing was showing on how this guy got into the account. I then proceeded to where the odd behavior was coming from: snapchat. Upon looking through I found a snapchat user by the name mrslaughter27315 which apparently sent 46 snapchats over a 13 to 14 hour period. I finally put the phone back on the home screen and looked through all the various social media accounts: Snapchat, facebook, Instagram, even MySpace. This girl was really into social media and made a life out of posting on boards such as 4chan and even some smaller known sites. I looked on her twitter with her posting odd sounds from outside and death threats from some user she befriended just days before the murder. She said the snaps were anything from basic questions to death threats. These threads abruptly stopped at around the time of death at around 3:54 A.M. When she said shuffling was in the kitchen and called 911. After that nothing. I contacted the parents about the girls obsession of texting and social media who obviously didn't know she was just adding strangers to her snapchat. They said she always was in her room blogging and tweeting. The most horrifying thing they told me though is that the alarm they had in the house was armed when the killings took place saying the door didn't open until 4:18 A.M when the authorities arrived. I then contacted Snapchats headquarters and asked for access to the snaps taken. Upon asking they said that snaps are not saved to their hard drive but if still on the phone or unopened they can retrieve some of the snaps if found in a manageable amount of time. After a dozen warrants and searching for snaps on the phone I was able to get 7 of the 46 snaps scattered across different time frames. These snaps, going from 2:45 p.m to 3:47 a.m were the only evidence I had to the crime. This is how it goes: 1) 2:45 p.m-gonna be a nice night-picture of knife 2) 2:47 p.m-enjoying today?-picture of nothing 3) 6:56 p.m-hOw are you?-picture of nothing 4) 8:34 p.m-I'll be at you're place -picture of unknown sidewalk 5) 2:34 a.m-on my way-waving knife while running through street 6) 3:34 a.m-I see you're room-picture of victims house with light on second floor on. 7) 3:47 a.m-come out-picture of victims kitchen. I looked in horror as some twisted monster figured out how to find her and it was obvious: location services. The victim must've had enough skills to track her through locations services which on this young women's phone was still on. The webcam also had use as if the person was able to hack the device and watch her. Combine this with constant sharing and tweeting this guy figured out her schedule no problem. What we were dealing with was not a petty hacker but someone with extreme knowledge of planning, social awareness, and routine study. However, weeks went by and still no clue. There was not enough evidence for this crime to be put forward. For one thing there was no DNA, prints, or anything related to the scene found other than blood from the victim. Also, the snapchats I recovered were too bleak to get any real solid proof. The only evidence was that this man had a knife and blunt object to kill this women. It also didn't help that snapchat didn't give us anything to work with saying "they don't save snaps". Also, the phone that we traced to the snapchat user mrslaughter27315 was from a man who had his id stolen a day before the murder but failed to realize it was stolen until after the murder. The phone with the murderous user was never found, as if this guy disappeared. As for tracing the phone no luck the line was disconnected and every time we tried looking for a location it always came at the victims house, but as usual no phone was recovered after an intensive search. The case went cold. Then, two months later another person began receiving these same snaps from another mysterious user just befriended. This time under the name glorioustrans. The user would send snaps of the then deceased victim from the previous murder before including a pile of blood. She called the police immediately after getting these photos and handed her phone to the authorities. Again, the user was disconnected and had no backdrop or any other lead to this girl. Again, the girl didn't have location services off and was obsessed with social media. This began to fire me up to catch this guy. I had failed once in trying to catch him, not again. Luckily the girl was able to take a screenshot of 4 of the 7 photos from the mystery man. 1) 2:30 p.m-coming over tonight-blank screen 2) 4:00 p.m-I'll be here soon -picture of girls house 3) 6:12 p.m-coming-blank screen 4) 7:30 p.m-I love you-clean kitchen knife Like I said we were able to only get a few photos. The girl said that the other two were of a man with a covered up face and the other was of a murdered victim in a pile of blood and guts, however the man photo was only 2 seconds long. The girl was placed in police protection until the case was solved. That's when we figured nothing productive after 4 months. And then another murder. The girl was on her mid 20s and had her jaw ripped wide open with knife marks cut up making it look like a smile. The time of death was around 230 p.m meaning this guy was in broad daylight. The place was an absolute mess and had a foul odor. Like the others she had locations services on and obsessed over social media. The name of the snap user was qventslaw46. The women who had been killed however left us a clue on what this man looked like as she called 911 minutes before being pulled from the line and killed. Here's the recovered 911 call-- Call received at 2:23 p.m Operator: Hello, 911 what is your emergency? Victim: Yes, I have a man that broke into my house. I saw him at the back door trying to get in. Operator: Stay calm.... Victim: (whispered voice) I can't........he's at the door I'm upstairs. He's waiting some kind of black hat and has somewhat long hair. He's wearing sunglasses and he has a rag covered in a black substance over his mouth. What do I do? Operator: Be quiet, do not engage... Victim: oh no!! He's here in the room!! I can see him please!!! Somebody!!!!!.......(muffles) Operator: Hello?....... Anyone? 5 minutes pass of unknown sounds, mostly muffled screams. Operator: Hello? Victim/ unknown: (footsteps) phone becomes unhooked......-- The victim, who lived alone in a house deep in the Altamont pass region between Livermore and Tracy. Her corpse found in the bedroom. She lived on a long windy road very hard to get too in time and was pronounced dead at 3:45 p.m an hour after the murder and call. Two murders was already enough, we had to catch this psycho. I grabbed my toolkit and went directly to work at the scene. All forensics found at the scene though was a piece of ripped cloth which appeared to be from a gardening glove. However, no DNA. We continued to look at the victims phone and found dead end snapchats from it all which had been opened except one which had the word "Luddite". I went back to the station and tried to figure out the connections between the two murdered victims and girl including the word "Luddite" -all three were snapchat users-all had suspicious activity from unknown source-the two murdered were killed with either a kitchen knife or unknown blunt object.-all were younger women ranging from teenage to mid 20s. Nothing was adding up. Was this guy trying to show how internet was dangerous? We didn't know or had intent. I rigorously studied the paths of the murders which were all random with no connections. All loosely based on intense social media addicts. Phycology wise this guy was either a technophobe or an addict to technology. I finally decided to look up the word "Luddite". Apparently, the Luddites were a group of people during the industrial revolution who despised and destroyed technology because they believed it was threatening their jobs. Apparently, this guy must've been a technophobe and hated technology, but why would he still go on technology if he hated it? These questions were bringing up more mysteries than answers. After the following weeks the public wanted answers and word got out about the "Snspchat Slaughterer". People began to freak out and were frustrated at the police not getting the answers. The paranoia also began to mount as local snapchatters began to get  more and more messages from  The one day something unannounced happened and someone dropped off an anonymous cd to the department. It contained a video about 4:34 seconds long. The video started out with a man in some kind of dark room. He looked like the man described in the previous murder: black cap, dirty piece of cloth covering the face, a white t shirt, and sunglasses. He was just standing there speechless looking at the camera. He then grabbed a power tool which had a long drill-bit in it. He revved it up high and then turned the camera to a young girl no older than 16. She looked terrified  and her eyes showed it all. She was tied up screaming her lungs out for someone to come by, but no one would. The camera then was turned around by a pair of gardening gloves to face a blank wall away from the guy and his victim. All you could hear in the background was a faint radio playing "crystal blue persuasion". After that screaming could be heard  for about a minute longer and then quietness. The camera then was picked up and faced the man now covered in blood just staring at the camera. You could see the cold stare within his eyes even with those glasses on. He was glaring at the camera and then the scene cut out. Everyone amazed at what they saw Didn't believe it. People were scrambling trying to find the body or any evidence. However, it came within time as the decomposing body of the girl was found in a foreclosed house in East Palo Alto. By then I quit trying to solve these gruesome murders. I resigned from the force and decided to get out of the field of death and homicide. I couldn't handle it. It was my first homicide investigation and I just quit. I gave up on the people, the girls, the parents. I couldn't handle it. I went home and still was having nightmares about this gruesome murderer with those deep soulless eyes staring at me ready to kill me. I still see him in my dreams, my life, even without any connections I know he's still out there, waiting to claim another victim, another person, another soul.  