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Late on a summer evening,
in a quiet Los Angeles neighborhood
a woman retreats to her daughter's playroom
holding a laptop in hand.
With her teeth brushed and pajamas on,
her husband and daughter sleeping
just a few doors down the hall,
she cracks open her laptop and creates a new tab.
With one goal in mind,
catching a serial killer.
Traveling through decades of evidence
with a few mouse clicks,
she delved into yearbooks, marriage certificates,
mugshots and thousands of police reports.
Around her were stuffed animals and pink toys.
She writes down California penal codes
with her daughter's crayons,
slowly collecting evidence on the Golden State killer.
This woman, Michelle McNamara,
would not live to see the Golden State killer,
apprehended in 2018,
but her posthumous published book,
"I'll be Gone in the Dark",
remains a landmark moment in true crime.
McNamara's voice drips through every syllable
of her writing, but her book stands out,
for bring to light the sheer obsessiveness
of a citizen's desire to know.
McNamara spent much of her adult life,
desperate to put a name to the unidentified killer,
whose spree terrorized the West Coast
between the late 70s and early 80s.
Although her research is much more comprehensive
than mine could ever hope to be,
I can't help, but see some similarities
between her world and mine.
When researching videos on various topics,
I too find myself falling down strange rabbit holes
for days on end and if you've been watching
my channel for a while,
I'd wager many of you are the same.
Today, I want to fall down another rabbit hole
not so much pursuing a mystery as usual,
but through the stories of people like Michelle.
The history of people who couldn't help but dive further
into a mystery, in search of answers.
Let's take a look at the history of web sleuthing,
discovering both its major success
and dark failures throughout the decades.
And asking the question of whether it could be doing,
more harm than good?
Web sleuths, e-sleuths and internet investigators,
are all different names for the same concept.
Somebody who takes to the internet to solve cases.
New technology has come with a new lease on life,
for the armchair detective
and a slow merge between the digital and real world.
With the public accessibility of a huge number of databases,
along with potentially millions working together
on cracking a case online,
the number of cases being solved by internet detectives
across the globe, has never been higher.
So, where did this all start?
In an interview with oxygen.com
a man named Todd Matthews discusses his status,
as arguably the first web sleuth.
When Matthews' father found the body
of an unidentified woman in a tent in 1968,
Matthews became absorbed in finding a name
for the individual.
He began his research in libraries in the 80s,
before eventually starting tentgirl.com
to reach a wider audience in the 90s.
This would expedite his investigation,
leading him to finding a classified post
for a missing girl named, Barbara Ann Hackman Taylor.
After almost three decades,
Taylor was finally identified as the tent girl.
A mystery that by any other metric,
should have faded into obscurity,
only to be brought back into light,
by the new digital age.
Today, Matthews embodies the web sleuth so perfectly.
Not only did his work blur the lines between media,
citizen and private investigator,
but also in Matthew's own acknowledgement
that he was driven mostly by an obsession to know the truth,
no matter how unlikely it was to be found.
Today, web sleuthing has diffused
across various online communities,
websites, subreddits and forums,
all exist to find the identities of serial killers,
long gone in the dark.
Others like web sleuths.com have entire sections
dedicated to finding missing persons
and identifying bodies.
The work is oftentimes varied.
From matching individuals between photographs,
to going through video footage for hours on end,
in the hopes of finding a single frame
that could assist in solving a case.
And yet, that question still lingers.
Does web sleuthing do more harm than good?
Let's start with the obvious.
Web sleuthing seems to be at its most controversial
when attempting to pin the identity of a perpetrator,
particularly when accusing someone not involved.
The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing still lingers
as a dark example.
As subreddits would spring up,
specifically to comb through available footage,
suspects were made without confirmation
of them actually being connected to the incident.
This led to a handful of mis-identifications,
including that of Sunil Tripathi,
with some Reddit users suggesting that he shared
a similar facial structure to a picture of unidentified man
released by the FBI.
Unfortunately, this error could not have come
at a worse time.
Tripathi had been missing for a month,
and some felt confident enough
that they began bombarding his Facebook page,
asking for help in finding him, complete with accusations.
His family was shocked to say the least,
taking page down and asking for police assistance
in stopping the abuse.
From available sources,
it seems the police never seriously considered the claims
that Tripathi was involved
and a few days after the ordeal started,
Tripathi's body was found in a nearby river,
eventually ruled a suicide.
This incident did immeasurable harm
in the public perception of the internet investigator.
One of the most critical critiques
I could find on the field, came a few years later
in Michelle Dean's article, "True Crime Addict
"and the Serious Problem of Internet Sleuths",
published by the New Yorker.
In the article, Dean talks about the disappearance
of Maura Murray under strange circumstances.
21 years old at the time,
Murray had driven her car into a snow bank,
begged an eyewitness to not notify the police
in apparent distress and then vanished without a trace.
In the article, Dean specifically directs her attention,
at James Renner's "True Crime Addict"
a book detailing his obsessive attempts,
to get to the bottom of Murray's disappearance.
Renner writes about not being afforded
much media attention for its work
and advocates for reporters to open up their research
to everyone interested,
showing the evidence they gather along the way.
Although some would argue in favor of Renner's
proposed open source type of investigation,
Dean was not convinced.
She suggests that Renner's own work
on the Murray case,
is an example of a collaborative investigation gone wrong.
Where Renner was too quick to publish
any potential theory that was suggested
and individuals drawn to the case,
kept long debunked theories alive
for much longer than they should have been.
Dean also brings to light, Renners repeated insensitivity
in trying to contact Murray's family directly.
Renner at one point writes,
that Murray's father has been uncooperative
with responding to his requests for an interview,
stating that usually families of victims
are open to speaking to the press.
Dean points out that this couldn't be farther from the truth
and critiques Renner and people like him,
for drawing out the suffering of those
affected by unsolved crimes.
This I believe, is the core concern
many have with web sleuthing.
The vast majority of active investigations,
especially those surrounding violent crime, are sensitive.
Although many individual internet investigators,
work with empathy and diligence
the exceptions pose dangerous consequences.
doxxing, tampering of evidence
and exposing information better left confidential,
are all examples.
And while some decades old cold cases finally get closure,
Dean reminds us of the enduring pain,
caused by constant reminders of a loved one,
still un-found.
However, sometimes the call to web sleuthing,
comes to the investigator.
When a teenager living in South America,
reached out to Celia Blay
a retired British school teacher, Blay was shocked.
The young girl claimed to have entered a suicide pact,
with a young nurse going by the name Li Dao,
that she met in an online chat room.
Blay managed to stop the young girl from committing suicide,
but quickly found herself posting warnings on chat rooms
and unraveling similar attempts
to lure people into harming themselves.
Blay tried to reach out to authorities,
claiming that she had evidence to suggest
that three users, Li Dao,
Falcon Girl and Cami D,
were all trying to convince users to commit suicide
through online chat rooms,
were all tied to a real life nurse,
named William Frances Melchert-Dinkel
Authorities chose not to investigate,
even as Blay and a friend managed to gain the trust
of Melchert-Dinkel
and conclusively tie him to the Cami D persona.
The case was eventually picked up by the authorities
in January of 2008,
three years after a British man
was convinced to hang himself
after speaking to the Falcon Girl,
and Li Dao personas.
In mere months before an 18 year old Canadian
was convinced to jump to her death
from a bridge over a river,
Blay's efforts in filing of an affidavit with her findings,
are now believed to have been crucial in solving the case.
Melchert-Dinkel was convicted a few years later,
but due to the complicated legal definitions,
surrounding the promotion of suicide,
as a form of manslaughter, he served only
178 total days in jail.
Another success story in the realm of web sleuthing,
is one so bizarre I had to include it.
And so I'm gonna have my buddy Cadaver take it away.
- In 2006, it seemed as though Abraham Lee Shakespeare's
life had changed forever.
A casual laborer, Shakespeare had just won a 17 million
payout in the lottery.
A few years later, Shakespeare was reported missing
in November of 2009, only for his body to be found
buried deep under a concrete slab,
in one of his newly purchased homes.
Suspicion immediately gravitated
towards Shakespeare's financial advisor,
Doris Dunigan Moore, who went by the name Dee Dee Moore,
had claimed herself as responsible
for managing Shakespeare's money after his body was found.
This immediately drew suspicion,
especially considering Moore's long history of fraud.
An anonymous user joined websleuths.com to defend Moore,
against the rising claims
as she was responsible for Shakespeare's death.
Trisha Griffith, owner of the site soon picked up
that something was suspicious.
Between the insider information,
that only a perpetrator could have reasonably known,
as well as the fact that the poster's IP address
matched those of Moore's computer,
police decided to pursue the lead
that Moore herself was the user posting.
Suspicion eventually boiled over to a conviction
and Moore is now serving a life sentence
for the murder of Abraham Lee Shakespeare.
- A final example I'd like to share is in regards to,
the 1989 disappearance of Jacob Wetterling.
11 at the time he was kidnapped,
the case went cold until about 2013,
when a woman named Joy Baker started a blog
writing about the case.
Baker soon realized that Wetterling was not alone,
with multiple other boys his age,
being attacked in the same area between 1986 and 1987.
Baker took her theory to the police,
who eventually pursued it.
After questioning a man named Danny James Heinrich,
who had previously been investigated
for one of the assaults, Heinrich took a plea bargain
and led the police to the remains of Wetterling.
After decades of no breakthroughs,
the case was finally closed in 2016.
So where then does that leave us?
Harm as I mentioned at the start of the video,
is the key phrase we're looking into.
There are a lot of competing perspectives,
regarding whether web sleuthing is ultimately harmful
to investigations, or whether it does invaluable work
and uncovering truths, long since lost.
Perpetrators and victims identified
and misidentified, are only one topic to consider.
But what about harm to us?
The Rolling Stone did an excellent summary
of a recent phenomenon.
Sabrina Prater posted a video of herself,
dancing to a Shania Twain song.
Although some were quick to make fun
of the dilapidated setting.
Prater couldn't have prepared for what came next.
Her videos soon became spotlighted
as evidence of some sinister conspiracy.
Accusations that Prater might be
some kind of serial killer,
pulled from the most minor details and videos.
Before long, subreddits,
like "r/whoissabrinaprater?" were made.
It was like watching a true crime, internet sleuthing,
conspiracy theories, and transphobia,
collide in a horrific car crash.
The article quotes one expert as saying,
"It was not until Prater begged
"for the harassment to stop in a separate video.
"that the accusations began to taper
"but of course they had not stopped entirely".
I don't bring up Prater's situation lightly.
It was presented to me time and time again
as a potential topic to cover as a video,
only a couple of weeks before it became
something of a viral phenomenon.
I watched as the snowball got rolling,
how the comments disregarding it as anything serious
became drowned out by a wave of people,
trying to piece together aspects of Prater's personal life
and tying her to various missing persons cases.
The harassment of Prater is a recent example
of a consideration we need to keep in mind.
It's easy for us to say that there's merit
in a million eyes trying to uncover the truth,
but can we honestly believe,
we'd say the same, if for whatever reason
those eyes were directed to us?
The various attitude towards web sleuthing
is perhaps no more apparent than in actual law enforcement.
I found dozens of accounts on either end of the spectrum,
but mostly somewhere in between.
Some officers go on record to say that they think
the phenomenon is a dangerous one.
Others frame the situation much better,
calling it a type of volunteer work
that has the potential to ensure every piece
of potential evidence is considered in full.
Whether or not internet investigating
does more harm than good,
then remains an open question.
For now, it seems that the type of case,
largely influences whether it will be beneficial,
long cold missing persons cases are one example
from what I've seen, that appears to benefit
the most from an extra pair of eyes.
And in contrast, the desire to find justice for a crime,
can cause some to blur the lines
between web sleuthing and witch hunting.
I'd love to hear your opinions on this,
in the comments though,
and whether any of you have any experiences
in these kinds of communities.
Thank you guys so much for making it
to the end of the video.
If you enjoyed it, I'd really appreciate it,
if you guys would consider subscribing to the channel
or leaving a like.
If you enjoyed the content,
don't forget to ring the bell, as it really helps me out.
I'd also like to give a big thanks to Cadaver,
for voicing some lines in this video.
He makes really interesting videos
on true crime and internet obscurities.
So, if you haven't already checked him out before,
I'd recommend watching his video
The Vanishing of Megumi Yokota, here.
Thanks again for making it to the end of the video
and have a good night.