Social media.
What began as a fun distraction in the early 2000s has quickly come to dominate our lives.
Most of the time, it's fun and games; a meme here, a cringy status there, but sometimes,
the darker side rears its head.
Whether it’s helping to solve a crime or helping to commit one, today, we’re looking
at 5 twisted cases that involve Facebook.
Betrayed by a Belt (Brittney Gargol)
18-year-olds Brittney Gargol and Cheyenne Antoine were inseparable, described by others
as “best friends,” they were always there for each other over their three-year friendship.
In March of 2015, the pair decided to go out partying in their local town of Saskatoon, Canada.
Accounts differ, but it seems that the two started their night at Manchester’s Brew
Pub and then moved on to a house party, and one additional bar before allegedly parting
ways near the end of the evening.
Cheyenne even wrote on Brittney’s Facebook page after arriving home later that night,
“Where are you?
Haven’t heard from you.
Hope you made it home safe.”
Unfortunately, when Brittney was found strangled to death near a landfill with a black woven
belt beside her body, it was clear she did not make it home at all.
Devastated, Brittney’s large, blended family prepared for her funeral a week later with
no answers in sight, mourning the loss of the “brilliant light” of their family.
Tips began rolling into the Saskatoon Police, but they remained publicly quiet about the
status of their investigation in the beginning.
Since Cheyenne was the last person to see Brittney alive, investigators questioned her
about the timeline of the evening.
However, she stated that she did not know about the crime, saying that after the house
party, the two had gone on to the Colonial Pub and Brittney had left with an unknown
man, while Cheyenne went to visit her uncle at a senior home.
The investigation dragged on, with Cheyenne adamantly denying her involvement, but the
police were suspicious.
There was no CCTV footage that showed Brittney or Cheyenne at either the Colonial Pub or
the senior facility where Cheyenne’s uncle lived.
Upon interviewing her uncle, he revealed what his niece had told him and it was an entirely
different story.
According to him, Brittney and Cheyenne were in a hotel room with two strangers from Toronto.
Apparently, an argument had broken out about drugs while Cheyenne was in the bathroom and
when she emerged, Brittney was dead.
The two men then held a gun to her head and coerced her into covering up their crime.
Suspicious that Cheyenne was using her uncle to fabricate an alibi, the authorities continued
to regard her as a suspect.
Furthermore, she was seen with cuts and bruises on her hands after Brittney’s death and
her cellphone data lined up with the projected chronology of the murder,
placing her near the scene of the crime.
The cops began to dig into Brittney and Cheyenne’s Facebook accounts, using them to build a timeline.
They didn’t have to dig for very long.
In a selfie, posted by Cheyenne six hours before the slaying, she could be clearly seen
wearing the black woven belt that was the presumed murder weapon found alongside Brittney’s corpse.
Now, while this was stunning evidence, it was a tip Brittney’s family received six
months after her slaying that truly destroyed Cheyenne’s version of events.
Unable to keep her horrific crime to herself, she had confided in a friend about the murder.
She’d even shown up at their house the night of the crime, sobbing hysterically about killing
Brittney after an argument.
This, coupled with the physical evidence of the belt sealed Cheyenne’s fate.
Three years after the crime, Cheyenne was charged with manslaughter and pleaded guilty
in January of 2018, expressing extreme regret for her actions, with part of her statement
reading, “Nothing I say or do will ever bring her back…I am very, very sorry…it
shouldn’t have ever happened.”
She was sentenced to seven years in prison due to the deep remorse she claims to feel
for her actions.
Cheyenne had an extremely troubled past, checkered with abuse and addiction, and she maintains
that she remembers nothing about the murder, blaming the gaps in her memory on the alcohol
and marijuana the pair had consumed throughout the evening.
It’s unclear what exactly provoked the argument that led to Cheyenne brutally strangling Brittney,
but the whole crime may have remained unsolved if it weren’t for that single, incriminating selfie.
Catastrophe in a Car Park (Ross Houllis)
Early in 2020 in Sydney, Australia, 28-year-old Ross Houllis was attempting to sell a pair
of AirPods on Facebook Marketplace, but there was a problem: the AirPods were fake.
He connected with 27-year-old Sami Hamdach on the platform and agreed to accept $150
for the earbuds.
By the time Hamdach realized that the product was no good, he was $150 down and quite furious.
So, he and his partner, 27-year-old Loubna Kawtharani hatched a plan.
Posing as an interested buyer on Facebook, Kawtharani contacted Houllis and asked if
the AirPods were still available, claiming she wanted to purchase them as a Valentine’s
Day gift.
Houllis noted that they were available, and agreed to meet Kawtharani around 9:00PM on
February 14, 2020, at a quiet shopping center parking lot in Wakeley, a western suburb of Sydney.
Once the appointed time arrived, she sent two texts.
One, to Houllis, noting that she had arrived, and the second to Hamdach, advising him to
avoid security cameras so his license plate wouldn’t be spotted.
After Houllis arrived, instead of meeting with Kawtharani, he was instead ambushed by
Hamdach and an accomplice, Abdul Karaali.
The men began by demanding money from Houllis before violence erupted.
Hamdach and Karaali savagely beat the young man and then dragged him through the parking lot.
Houllis was later taken to the hospital with critical injuries to both his brain and his
lungs, and tragically died three days after the incident on February 17, 2020.
Kawtharani, though she pleaded guilty to accessory before the fact of assault, managed to avoid
any jail time, since she is her three children’s only caretaker.
She was instead sentenced to a two-year Intensive Corrections Order, meaning she essentially
serves her sentence in her own home.
The magistrate on the case, George Breton, expressed disgust toward Kawtharani, noting
that she knew her partner well enough to assume that the confrontation would be violent, saying
to her, “Ultimately your role was absolutely crucial…it would not have happened without you.”
As for Hamdach and Karaali, they were charged with murder, and it appears they are behind
bars awaiting trial.
Although Kawtharani expressed deep regret for her role in the slaying and penned a letter
of apology to the victim’s family, Houllis’ mother, Janet, rejected it.
Believing Kawtharani should have been more harshly punished, Janet said to 9News Australia,
“I think she should have got more than what she got because she gets to go home to her children.”
Of course, it’s never a morally good idea to scam anyone, but it’s also a matter of safety.
You just never know what kind of person you meet online is going to turn into offline.
A Problematic Parent (Misty VanHorn)
We’ve all seen our fair share of parents complaining about their kids on Facebook,
but what you likely haven’t stumbled across is a parent actively trying to sell their children.
Yet, that’s exactly what then-22-year-old Misty VanHorn was up to in March of 2013.
A mother of two girls, a 10-month-old and a 2-year-old, in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, VanHorn
was trying to raise money to pay her boyfriend’s bail.
A neighbor of VanHorn’s reported seeing her going door-to-door, begging for cash,
saying she needed $1,000.
While it’s unknown what her boyfriend was imprisoned for, it is clear that VanHorn was
unsuccessful in her crowdsourcing quest for cash.
She turned to social media instead, messaging a woman on Facebook who lived thirty minutes
away in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Offering her $4,000 for the 2-year-old and an additional $1,000 for the 10-month-old,
VanHorn said, “I’ll give you all of her stuff and let y’all have her forever…”
Repulsed, the unidentified female buyer called the Oklahoma Department of Human Services,
who in turn notified the Sallisaw Police.
Arrested on suspicion of child trafficking, Vanhorn’s’ bail was set at $40,000 and
she was placed in the Sequoyah County Jail to await trial.
Later that year, she pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to ten years in
prison, though eight of those years may be served on probation.
Her children were taken from her and placed in the care of the state’s DHS.
According to one of VanHorn’s friends who occasionally watched the children, Crystal
Mize, she was an incredibly neglectful mother, stating, “She brought them over dirty and
untaken care of, she never even called and checked on them.”
It is unclear at the time of this recording where VanHorn and her children are now, but
we hope the young girls are enjoying a better life these days.
Sunday Shooting (Robert Godwin)
In Ohio on Easter Sunday in 2017, beloved 74-year-old grandfather, Robert Godwin, was
making his way home from a family Easter meal, picking up aluminum cans along the way.
This was normal behavior for Godwin, who along with loving to fish, was frequently seen with
a plastic bag in hand, collecting cans as he walked in his eastern Cleveland neighborhood of Glenville.
Sadly, on this day, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Around 2:00PM, 37-Year-old Steve Stephens was driving around the area in his late-model
white Ford Fusion while recording a video for Facebook.
He stopped and got out of his car when he noticed Godwin walking on the side of the road.
Approaching him, he had a brief conversation with the older gentleman, asking him to say
his girlfriend’s name before fatally shooting him.
Stephens was reportedly angry at his girlfriend, Joy Lane, and blamed her for the murder saying,
“She’s the reason why all of this is about to happen to you,” before heartlessly killing Godwin.
Lane told a local news station that she had just seen Stephens the night before, and he
had informed her he was quitting his job and moving out of state.
After murdering Godwin, Stephens continued to record.
He appears to be on the phone, speaking with an unidentified person.
Telling the person on the other end of the line that he has killed 13 people and he “just
snapped” after feeling angry for a long time, he informs them that he’s going to
“keep killing” until he is caught by the police.
After hanging up, he returns his focus to the recording.
Reiterating what he already told his friend on the phone.
‘’I killed 13, so I’m working on 14 as we speak’’
Other than murdering Godwin, no other crimes committed by Stephens were ever substantiated.
He then fled the state, initiating a two-day-long manhunt.
He was eventually spotted at a McDonald’s 100 miles east of Cleveland in Erie, Pennsylvania.
One of the drive-through attendants recognized him and alerted authorities while delaying
Stephens by saying his fries weren’t yet ready.
Fearful that he might have been recognized, he fled the restaurant’s property just ahead
of the police, and subsequently led them on a two-mile chase.
When the authorities managed to bring his car to a halt, Stephens took his own life.
Facebook’s role in the whole episode was called into question after Godwin’s family
filed a lawsuit against the social media giant.
The family accused the company of negligence for not reporting threats that Stephens made
on the platform before the murder.
Additionally, the horrifying video remained available for twenty-three minutes after Facebook
was made aware of it.
However, a Cleveland judge dismissed the case, claiming that Facebook was not legally responsible
for Godwin’s death.
Mark Zuckerberg spoke on the matter, acknowledging that the company was reviewing protocols surrounding
video monitoring and removal, and noting, “Our hearts go out to the family and friends
of Robert Godwin, Sr.”
The 74-year-old patriarch left behind ten children as well as many grandchildren and
great-grandchildren and his murder forever changed the lives of his family.
As his daughter, Tonya Godwin-Baines said on the third anniversary of his slaying,
“I want to tell people not to go through grief recklessly like I did because I lost my faith…Grief
is a timeline and the expiration of grief is when you die.”
Beefing Over a Boyfriend (Kayla Van Wert)
During the spring of 2016, a pair of former friends from Scranton, Pennsylvania, escalated
their fight from social media sites to the streets.
18-year-old Kayla Van Wert and then-16-year-old Cathleen Boyer had been furiously feuding
on Facebook for over a year.
The reason?
Then-19-year-old Jorge DeJesus, Kayla’s boyfriend, and the father of her young daughter.
Kayla was suspicious of Boyer, believing that she had become romantically intimate with
DeJesus, and she confronted Boyer over Facebook Messenger.
From there, the friendship collapsed and ballooned into an argument that spiraled out of control.
As Roxanne Draper, a friend of Kayla’s told the Pocono Review, “They used to be the
best of friends…It all went sour over a guy.”
On the night of May 29, 2016, the two girls decided to meet face-to-face to fight it out,
as they had several times before; but unbeknownst to Kayla, Boyer had brought a knife with her this time.
Draper, who Kayla was temporarily living with, begged her not to leave, but with her mind
made up, Kayla stormed out of the house around 9:30 PM to the nearby alley where Boyer was waiting.
Once the fight was underway, Boyer brutally stabbed Kayla in the neck and chest, before
fleeing the scene.
Kayla was taken to the Regional Hospital of Scranton where she was sadly pronounced dead
around 10:00PM.
Police arrived at the crime scene and found a broken knife as well as a pool of blood.
Boyer, confessed on Facebook, saying, “I’m wrong, I’ll admit it and I’m gonna [sic]
turn myself in…but it is what it is at the end of the day, got to face the consequences…no remorse.”
She was later arrested and convicted of third-degree murder.
In 2017, she was sentenced to seven to twenty years behind bars, and she is currently serving
her sentence at the State Correctional Institute in Muncy, Pennsylvania.
As for the man at the center of the fight, DeJesus was not even present that night, since
he had been arrested earlier that same day for assaulting Kayla.
Claiming it was self-defense after Kayla punched him, DeJesus allegedly threw her to the ground
and dragged her by her hair.
It’s unclear where he is now, but it does appear that the assault charges against him
were dropped following Kayla’s death.
Kayla is remembered by her mother, Cindy, as a “wonderful, caring person,” and she
left behind her small daughter who would now be around 7 years old.
She is reportedly under the care of her paternal grandparents.
It certainly is interesting to see the role that social media can play in crime nowadays.
Did any of these cases surprise you, or do you know of one we might have missed?
Leave your comments below.
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And as always, thanks for watching!