Virtual Murder

The Sunday Times has a more in-depth report on the story I posted yesterday about the boy who plotted his own murder on the Internet.

"John", the boy who convinced "Mark" to try to murder him said yesterday that he was "fine" and the incident was "probably just a phase that he was going through"

Don't we all go through those murderous phases at some point in our teenage years? If you live outside the UK and can't access the Times aritcle I have posted it in the extended part of this post.

Focus: Virtual murder

It was an internet fantasy that turned deadly real. Richard Woods and Adam Nathan report on the boy who plotted his own murder

Try to imagine what must have been going through their feverish adolescent minds. It was June 29 last year and two young boys who had met over the internet set out from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, each with murder secretly in their thoughts.

They were embarking on a plot that ended last week in one of the most extraordinary cases ever to come before a British court. The older one, known for legal reasons as Mark, was 16 and had never been in trouble before. But after months of e-mail communication with mysterious characters in internet chat rooms, he believed that he had been given a licence to kill. He was a British secret service agent, number 47695. His mission: to stab his friend.

That friend was 14 years old at the time and known in the court case as John. He was a bright grammar school boy from a middle-class family and was expected to go to university. But he was also lonely and confused, having fallen out with schoolfriends and his stepfather. For him, Mark was a special older friend, one with whom he had a quasi-sexual relationship.

As the two walked into a shopping centre, Mark said casually that he had to “pick up a knife”. First he withdrew £10 from a cash machine and then they went into a Boots store where he asked John to pick out a suitable implement.

“By asking him to pick out the knife I think I was making it easier for him,” Mark later told police, according to prosecutors. John chose a 6in Sabatier and they bought it together.

To Mark it was all part of his orders, delivered through cyberspace, to help “British intelligence”. But John, too, had a secret: he knew Mark was planning to stab him — because he was the person who had arranged and ordered the killing in cyberspace.

According to documentation presented in court, Mark was feeling sick and dizzy. “I started to get visions in my head,” he later told police. “The visions were becoming more frequent. I had a feeling of knowing that I had to stab someone which came from the visions.

“Whilst I sat with (John) . . . I tried to tell him how I was feeling.” He apparently told the younger boy that he “might have to do something” that day.

John knew exactly what that “something” was but gave nothing away. Instead the boys headed for a wooded area where Mark told his friend that he had to stab him.

“You’ve got to let me do it,” he said, according to prosecutors. On several occasions over about an hour he held the knife close to John’s body. What was the younger boy thinking? Was he secretly waiting to see if his friend would go through with it? Did Mark believe that the younger boy thought he was only larking around? They returned to Altrincham and then went to a McDonald’s where they bought a Coke before heading to an alleyway in an area known as Goose Green. It was about 8pm. According to prosecutors, the younger boy later testified from hospital: “He (Mark) said I was his best mate and pushed the knife in. I said ‘No, stop’. He pushed it in. I started to scream. He said, ‘Calm down, don’t let anyone hear us’.”

The older boy later told police: “I was not in control. I did not even feel like me. I put the knife to his stomach and pressed down on it.

“The knife went into him and he started bleeding through his top. I hugged him as I did not want to hurt him. Then I put the knife into him again.”

Despite having committed the stabbing, Mark called the police, who arrived within minutes to find John lying critically injured. He was taken to hospital with wounds to his kidney and liver, but survived.

At first both boys claimed that John had been stabbed by a mystery attacker after being dragged into the alley. Detailed descriptions of the assailant were given and a manhunt was launched.

It was only when police looked at CCTV footage and discovered that nobody else had been in the alley with the boys that the extraordinary truth began to emerge. Using the power of the internet to indulge his wildest fantasies, the younger boy had created half a dozen different characters who had bewitched the older boy. John had planned it all and lured his best friend into attempted murder.

“THE internet is a medium where people can lose themselves emotionally,” said Professor Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University, who studies technology and addictions. “You can become whatever is written on the screen. People can forget themselves.”

It was a medium that soon sucked in Mark after his parents bought him a computer in 2002 to help with his school work. In idle moments Mark visited chat rooms and by March last year he was in regular contact with John.

In many ways chat rooms are modern versions of the “dark woods” of fairy tales. All sorts of unknowns lurk there.

The parents of the younger boy were well aware of the risks, warning him not to give out his address or home telephone number. Even after the two boys did begin meeting in person, John’s parents kept an eye on proceedings.

They went to meet the parents of the older boy and found his family to be perfectly average. All seemed well.

However, in cyberspace John was forming an increasing attachment to Mark. He also began to disguise himself as other characters. One was called Janet Dobinson, who contacted Mark in April 2003. She described herself as about 40, from London, and said she was involved with secret government work.

“I thought it was all a bit stupid,” Mark told the police, according to court testimony. “I just went along out of curiosity. As time went on we had more and more conversations . . . It all started to become real.

“She said I was part of the British secret service, agent number 47695 . . . it was just so real.”

Other characters — male and female — began to make contact. For months Mark was engaged in conversations over the net, sometimes with several of the characters at the same time. On occasion the content turned sexual.

The boys had webcams attached to their computers and on more than one occasion a character persuaded Mark to masturbate in front of the webcam. But for adolescent boys, sex was not the only alluring fantasy.

Mark’s fictitious characters began to hint at a complex plot involving a letter with the Queen’s seal, secret agents, the world’s richest jewels and “a massive safe at the bottom of the Atlantic”.

One day “Dobinson” contacted Mark saying he was going to have to go to London where he would meet the Queen, the prime minister and the head of the secret service.

Although it now all appears absurd, Mark was gradually becoming enthralled by “Dobinson”. When John, once again pretending to be Dobinson, broached the idea of Mark killing someone, the older boy went along. He continued to go along when the target became John himself.

On June 28 last year, Mark logged on and talked to “Dobinson” about their plans.

“He will die in the middle of alti (Altrincham)??” wrote Mark.

“Please!” replied the younger boy, acting out a character.

Half an hour later the cyberspace conversation continued.

“Could you stab someone?” “I havnt really thought bout it.”

“Well think please.”

“Okay. erm . . . well I watch a lot of films.”

“Be back in 10 minutes. think about it.”

The last exchange read:

“U want me 2 take him to trafford centre and kill him in the middle of trafford centre?” “Yes.”

The next day Mark put the plan into action.

As the police began to search the boys’ computers after the attack, at first they were puzzled.

They arrested a young woman from whose e- mail account some of the plot appeared to have come, on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. But as investigators dug deeper they realised that someone had hijacked her e-mail address.

Sally Hogg, an analyst, began examining 58,000 lines of computer text to try to identify who Dobinson was. She began to notice that all the characters who contacted Mark used the word “mybye”, a misspelling of maybe. It was more than coincidence and the trail began to lead to John.

Last Friday he pleaded guilty at Manchester crown court to incitement to murder and perverting the course of justice. He is the first person in Britain to be convicted of inciting someone to kill them. He was given a three-year supervision order and banned from contacting Mark or using the internet without supervision.

Mark was given a two-year supervision order for attempted murder.

Yesterday Paul Goggins, the Home Office minister responsible for child protection on the internet, said it “is important for parents to take an interest” in how their children used computers. Yesterday, too, John emerged from his home and said he was “fine” now and could not explain exactly what had happened or how it had come about. The episode, he said, was “probably just a phase I was going through”.

Additional reporting: Judith O’Reilly, Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas

Comments

[cant say]

I met "john". He is effeminate and gave the impression he wouldnt harm a fly. mixed race. I wonder how the director of the movie will portray him?

[chris saxon]

With his protracted manipulation of that gullible and immature man,'John' showed all the symptoms of a psychotic/neurotic personality disorder and should have been sectioned indefinitley. He arranged for 'Mark' to stab him in a public place because he couldn't deal with the rejection and this was his pathetic,twisted attempt at revenge on a person he couldn't seduce.