The older boy he had "looked up to and wanted for myself," as John would later express it, had fallen for an imaginary girl. Deceitful. To make matters worse, the police went out and arrested a shop assistant with the same name as one of the charactersonly, the poor girl was perfectly innocent. The modem was removed from John's laptop and the computer itself exiled to her room. After months of analysis, detectives were able to establish that it was John who sent the final messages from his home computer on the night of 28 June 2003 and had planned his own murder. There wasn't just one teenager to charge in the attempted murder of young John, said Clarke, there were two. "Skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as that
In legal terms, it was unique in British criminal history. Even though, thanks to the Internet, anyone who wishes can access all relevant information. But it is not a one-way street. [2] [3] [4] The 14-year-old boy, dubbed Boy B in court, created a series of fictional characters in chatrooms, one of which ordered Boy A to murder him. |
He was told that his reward would be money, a job as a British secret service agent and sex with the spy, whom he believed was a middle-aged woman. Mark, who is also from a middle-class family in Greater Manchester, was given a two-year supervision order for attempted murder. "And so if you are talking about safety, that's one of the big dangers. 26 Feb Feb "So we said, 'Fine. It is clear he doesn't have much sympathy for the boy whose brush with death prompted the unprecedented charge. Janet had used it and so had John. Mark was given the number 47695 and ordered to "terminate" his friend. But more than 500 pages of Internet-chat transcripts, 50 pages of psychological reports, and excerpts from a score of police interviews land in my possession. Janet: Could you stab someone?Mark: I haven't really thought about it. Janet: Well think please.Mark: OK. A court order, citing the age of the culprits, would not permit any media outletincluding Vanity Fairto identify the boys and required every publication to use the pseudonyms "John" and "Mark." Thanks very much. Kennie Carter was found badly injured in Thirlmere Avenue, Stretford, shortly before 19:00 GMT on. That girl was in fact the younger boy.". However tragic for its victim, the condition also had devastating consequences for the British secret service, which needed John dead, she explained, in record time. People will hear, please be quiet," the older teenager told him. John and Mark then physically met, as did their parents, but in the chatroom John introduced increasingly far-fetched characters, including another boy who "stalked" John and supposedly killed his girlfriend. Janet asked Mark in the final chatroom exchange. January 13, 2004: New York, NY FKL. "I wanted to be dead," John told his therapisthe finally has one. "But these could not be described as any normal circumstances," he said. the perpetually besotted Mark asked her. Nov. 29, 2022. Next to it is the headline BOY STABBED. Manchester stabbing: Boy, 15, killed and mother injured as police hunt suspect Anyone who believes they have seen the suspect has been instructed by police not to approach him and to call 999. By April 3, 2003, Mark had grown so smitten with the character Rachel, whom John had equipped with her own e-mail address (Rachel_@hotmail.com), that her creator grew alarmed. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of Terms and Conditions. That same camera follows John whenever he revisits the scene of the crime. On the other hand, for whom exactly were Ross and his computer experts supposed to be looking? A third victim, Harold "Oink" Cook, age 39, survived a gunshot wound to his buttocks. "I was surprised Mark believed it all," John would later admit. Thus, he concocted more than a half-dozen fantasy personas, four of them women. "She" then introduced him to her stepbrother, who was John. And they shared his mission: to keep Mark perpetually in contact with their creator, John. "I don't think it's an exaggeration to say he brainwashed my client," says David Hatton, Mark's attorney, who has nothing but compassion for the boy. Police are investigating after a boy who admitted killing his friend took a video of himself in a toilet during his murder trial making stabbing actions. But Boy B did not die and spent a week in. "The Internet's a very dangerous place to be," the prosecutor says mildly. There was, the boy said, "nowhere to go." Dobinson was, as Mark had been informed, 44 and authoritative. Everything is as it was that June day when Mark carried the six-inch knife they had bought together. Both sets of parents decided there would be no more sleepovers. He did reasonably well at school, although he wasn't the most academic person. Writing only in capital letters, Janet convinced Mark she was a spy and he was the reason she had joined the chat room, to recruit him into MI5. Boy A, a 15-year-old, stabbed Boy B twice,. On 26 July 2020, 4 people were stabbed in Moss Side in Manchester, England, 17-year-old Mohamoud Mohamed died at the scene. Rachel was then apparently released by Kevin, although she would mysteriously disappear from the chat room shortly after. The two boys were beginning to meet in person. All this took place on June 29, 2003, a very hot Sunday, in a small alleyway in an area that goes by the charming name of Goose Green. Judy Bachrach is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and the author of Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power (Free Press). Manchester Crown Court heard that John, who had fallen in love with Mark, also tricked him into performing sex acts on a webcam before tricking him into stabbing him twice in an alleyway at Altrincham on 29 June last year. Off you go.'" Around the time of this incident, she slipped into her son's room and checked his laptop, where she found that Mark was a frequent on-screen presence. Mark was no help at all. At first it seemed as though a brutal, but straightforward, robbery had gone wrong. Into the chat room, therefore, came a new character, Lyndsey East, equipped with all that was required for instant membershipLyndseyeast2k3@hotmail.com. And not just one. In fact, John was determined to get himself killed, which is why he never used the abort code - 6969 - that he provided. "That was the stumbling point for me. said one message. "He said it was important to him to keep Mark as his friend and he was not confident that Mark would be interested in just speaking to John.". You can take any identity you want.". "This was a seemingly unprovoked attack," he told the media, which were directed to inform the public of the knife-wielding monster, "and we have no idea why this happened." A multitude of other people had also apparently come and gone on the chat room during this period. Officers found three victims had been shot. (His Lordship, as it happened, did not.). He knew he was addicted, and not just to the Internet. At the time of the stabbing the alley led nowhere; it was cut off by a 40-foot drop. It was then that Janet entered the chat room. Sometimes John would approach their bedroom and listen quietly, his ear pressed to the door. That is what lies at the heart of this story. All of it? As they poured through the copy, they initially believed they were looking for a paedophile pretending to be Janet and grooming Mark. That, however, was not how it seemed at the time. Both pleaded guilty and received, to their patent relief, probation. I didn't like it, I couldn't undo it, it was all fake, taking someone else in." He brought into play Janet Dobinson"a spy, said John. But this time John also was chargedwith inciting murder. He was, he told his probation officer, "trapped" in the virtual world, with no way out. The prosecutor thinks otherwise. The incident happened at a house on Bednal Avenue in Miles Platting at. "This case serves as a stark warning of the dangers of the dark side of the internet," Nicholas Clarke, prosecuting, told the court yesterday. "Because he had the friendship with Rachel and Janet.". Hogg recalls that the boy "brought into play different people whom we would later find. The boy was devious. In John's small bedroom, which overlooks a small garden of aloe and yew, the boys played videos. Within short order, a devastated Mark was to learn his virtual girlfriend was deadgang-raped and then murdered by the mythical stalker and his cohorts. "And sometimes it would be a week or a few weeks before that character came back," always without a hitch, Hogg says. In Wythenshawe Hospital, where he spent more than a week, John asked to see a psychiatrist, but this was Britain, home of the dilatory National Health Service. No mention of sunken treasure, fatal tumors, or Tony Blair. (It was not the most felicitous evening: the videos were porn, and the two boys engaged in oral sex that night.) Police Identify Driver Killed in Crash. "John said he invented other personas in the chat room in order to keep Mark interested in him," one therapist was later to learn. He found he was never tired. Boy A, a 15-year-old, stabbed Boy B twice, but he did not die, Manchester Crown Court heard. wondered Mark. Two teenagers on a junior high school basketball court after school became involved in a fight and one stabbed the other in the shoulder. However much she screamed for u.". The police concluded John was the mastermind behind it all; he was every character in that chat room, the puppet master pulling the strings whilst Mark played the role of puppet. Credit: Family photo. "He manipulated him," says Hogg. "That's the guy that got stabbed," one might say. Over the coming weeks, Janet spun her web of deceit, convincing Mark to carry out tests to prove his worthiness before hed be given his first official mission. Murderers? All this took place on June 29, 2003, a very hot Sunday, in a small alleyway in an area that goes by the charming name of Goose Green. What appeared on the screen was a revelation of flattering significance: "This is the UK's biggest secret I CAN TRUST YOU WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE TO LOOK AT YOU WHILE I TELL YOU?". The lawyer is distinctly impressed by his client. You might be tsted on that later on. . "Don't say that," begged Mark. "No offence but wot does she do neway?" An arid pause. "Mark did it once, stood up, holding me, did it again," the victim told police. In the universe he inhabited, there was, John felt, no one to sustain himexcept on the Internet, which he peopled with characters of his own device. "Take him [to] a quiet place," advised the British agent. Mark was visibly shaken by what he just witnessed, telling the police he saw a hooded knifeman stab his friend, for no reason, before running off. There's no safeguards whatsoever.". Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Just before 8pm on Sunday 29 June 2003, the police were called to a stabbing that had taken place down an alley behind a row of shops in Altrincham, a town in Greater Manchester. Boy B survived, and spent a week in Wythenshawe Hospital recovering. "Staggering," said the judge who would hear his case. But that was because police had possession of the computers and were bound to find out about her anyway. As solace, John eventually allowed Rachel to return from the dead, at which time it was explained that she had simply slipped into "a coma," and had, moreover, despite her previous conditionand the fact that she had never actually met himgiven birth to Mark's baby. It was she who ordered the teenager to carry out John's murder. An intricate web of deceit had been spun by the boy on the chatroom to recruit another teenager as his would-be killer. A closed-circuit camera at the base of the alley had recorded all the foot traffic. (These are not their real names.). Moreover, he was not to stray from her explicit instructions, because: "4 Agents watching you now ", "Each style of conversation was totally differentI really believed it," marvels Sally Hogg, the police analyst. Less than 24 hours later, a 14-year-old boy was critically ill in hospital with stab wounds in the chest and stomach. Crime news across America. The teenager was with his friends when. In the months since the stabbing, he had been working out regularly at the juvenile-detention-center gym; he had grown muscular, hard. John wonders. He, in turn, went to Judge Maddison. Thus, the stories that emerged about John were a feeble compilation of bare-bones facts and judgments spoon-fed by the authorities. There were no demands to see Janet Dobinson, who had sworn that she would engineer his freedom. this sort of thing. Brilliant. "He would become withdrawn. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. These messages included the following exchange: 'Spy' (in reality Boy B): could you stab someone? CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, VA - Chesterfield County Police continue to investigate a fatal motor vehicle crash that occurred in the 9100 block of Midlothian Turnpike. One of the stab wounds pierced his kidney and lacerated his liver. thats wot ur asking me? ]]> The next day, 29 June 2003, Boy A carried out Boy B's orders "to the letter", the court heard. Rhamero West was stabbed to death in south Manchester. He was never in any trouble and was close to his family. Mark never noticed. By February 2003 he was contacting 20 to 30 people a night in chat rooms; within a week he had found Mark. John, from Greater Manchester, pleaded guilty at Manchester crown court to incitement to murder and perverting the course of justice. Boy A: ok but it will only hve one set of fingerprints? A man has been arrested in Kent on suspicion of murder after a boy died in north Manchester. "I'm dying.". But yesterday the young "victim" became the first person in this country to be convicted of inciting their own murder. He has told his therapist about his lies to his girlfriend. He was the only child of working-class parents, well mannered and respectful, bound, he thought, for a local business college. Rupert Murdoch Colluded With Jared Kushner to Try to Throw the 2020 Election to Trump Because Of Course He Did, Inside the Dissident Fringe, Where the New Right Meets the Far Left, and Everyones Bracing for Apocalypse, Fuck Biden, Dont Tread on Me, and a Wisconsin Death Trip for Our Times. THE CAMBRIDGE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Rodney Huddleston Geoffrey K. Pullum The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language Rodney Huddleston Geoffrey K. Pullum in collaboration with Laurie Bauer Betty Birner Ted Briscoe Peter Collins David Denison David Lee Anita Mittwoch Geoffrey Nunberg Frank Palmer John Payne Peter Peterson Lesley Stirling . In the meantime, Dobinson added, Mark was to make sure to buy the right type of knife. For example, although the media had named John as a stabbing victim and published his photograph less than a year earlier, no one in Britain would ever be allowed to learn that he had tried to engineer his own execution that hot June day in Goose Green: "As far as the public in south Manchester are concerned there is at large a crazed knifeman who murderously attacked a 14-year-old," said the newspaper lawyer. 3-min read. John's mother wasted no time. A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a boy was stabbed at a house in Manchester. Police only became aware of the labyrinthine plot when they examined John's computer. Invention was so easy, "the equivalent of taking heroin," John thought. Ever. Fifty-eight thousand lines of text were extracted for scrutiny, a fraction of the total. Hatton, Mark's barrister, concedes that when he first met his client "he didn't find it easy to explain to me why he had fallen for it and been so stupid." He seemed to have half expected their arrival. A murder investigation is underway after a 14-year-old boy was stabbed to death in a "ferocious attack." He was injured alongside his mother, 40, who is currently in hospital. "And jus leave him 2 die . The boy, John, now 15, groomed a 16-year-old boy, Mark (both pseudonyms to protect the children), with an "elaborate matrix of deceit" involving six fictional characters in the MSN chatroom and correspondence totalling 56,000 lines of text. Another element the teenagers had in common: a Webcam, which allowed them to view each other and any other chat-room member who had one of the cameras. They were empty of hope. The lawyer suspects that, on being arrested, Mark "was still believing he was acting on behalf of the British secret service, and held a fear if he said anything he might be in danger himself.". Dobinson, too, was interested in watching sexual activity via the Webcam. With each passing day, the fantasy Janet was creating became even wilder, even more unbelievable, yet Mark did not question it. If Mark didnt complete the task Janet would lose her job and national security would be at risk. On the one hand, the police were in luck: Mark's computer contained software that permitted retrieval of much of the chat-room dialogue between the two boyssuch sophisticated software is rarely on the home computers of unsophisticated adolescents, and it is possible the boy didn't know of its existence. On a junior high school basketball court after school became involved in a fight and stabbed! 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