Malicious Exes - More Horrible in the Internet Age

by Kashmir Hill

After a break-up, it’s natural to feel hurt and angry. Hopefully you and your ex are able to vent those painful emotions by talking to friends, eating copious amounts of ice cream, taking up new hobbies, spending hours at the gym to negate the ice cream eating, and/or meticulously cutting each other out of one another’s digital lives through de-friending, deletion and detagging. Let’s hope your ex finds a healthy way to deal with his pain and doesn’t decide to go down the dark path taken by Shawn Sayer of Maine. After he and his girlfriend split in 2006, he harassed her for years, notably by crowd-sourcing his revenge. A court order from Judge Brock Hornby describes how he kept up his harassment after his ex moved to a new state in 2009:

[A]fter Sayer’s former girlfriend changed her name and moved from Maine to Louisiana to escape him, the defendant Sayer, still in Maine, created fictitious internet advertisements and social media profiles using [the victim's] name and other identifying information. The fictitious internet postings included [the victim's] address and invited men to come to her home for sexual encounters.

He wasn’t doing this to help her meet new people and start afresh. According to The Courier, these postings were in the “casual encounters” section of Craigslist, and included a photo of Sayer’s ex, “directions to her house and a list of sexual things she would do when interested individuals arrived.” Sayer didn’t stop there. According to the court order, he also “engaged in chats and e-mails with prospective sexual partners, while posing as his ex-girlfriend.” And you thought your ex was bad…

Sayer avoided getting caught, reported the Portland Press Herald in 2010, by “connecting to unsecured wireless networks at different locations… That way, when police issued subpoenas for Internet records after a fake personal ad was posted, the trail dead-ended at the owner of the wireless network.” From the court document:

The Defendant also posted video clips to several adult pornography websites depicting sexual acts [the victim] had consensually performed with him during their relationship. The Defendant edited the clips so they also displayed [the victim's] name and actual address. As a result of the Defendant’s actions, numerous men arrived at [the victim's] Louisiana residence seeking sexual encounters, terrifying her and causing her to fear that she would be raped or assaulted.

Luckily, Sayer’s ex was not assaulted (though she was groped one time). Another woman subject to this sort of treatment by an ex was not so lucky. A spurned former Marine took revenge on his ex-girlfriend by posting a “rape fantasy ad” to Craigslist on her behalf. A 27-year-old Wyoming man answered the ad for “a real aggressive man with no concern for woman.” Thinking he was corresponding with her (rather than her ex), he thought he had her consent when he went to her home and raped her. (Eek!) Both the ex and the fantasy fulfiller were sentenced to 60 years in prison in that case.

Since Sayer’s ex was not ultimately attacked, Sayer got off a little easier. Law enforcement finally tracked him down by getting their hands on surveillance video taken in areas where he connected to wireless networks that didn’t require passwords. In 2010, he was sentenced to 22 months for violating a protective order. But prosecutors also want to go after him for the federal crimes of interstate cyberstalking and identity theft (because he posted social media profiles posing as his ex).

Sayer tried to get the cyberstalking charge dismissed, pointing to a recent case that established our constitutional right to harass people on Twitter, which privileged a cyberstalker William Lawrence Cassidy’s right to free speech over a Buddhist leader Alyce Zeoli’s right to be free from harassment. Cassidy had criticized Zeoli’s looks, criticized Buddhism, described cinematic ways that Zeoli could die, and told her to commit suicide. A judge ruled that Zeoli was a public figure and that she could have avoided harassment by simply not looking at Cassidy’s tweets.

The judge in the Sayer case doesn’t think the cases are comparable, though, because Zeoli was a public figure (while Sayer’s ex is not) and because he was simply harassing his ex, not exercising speech worth protecting.

“What Sayer is alleged to have done involves no political or religious speech or the promotion of ideas of any sort,” writes Judge Hornby. “Instead, everything that Sayer allegedly said was ‘integral to criminal conduct,’ his criminal conduct seeking to injure, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to the victim.”

Thus, Sayer’s federal case will move forward. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

My friends, try not to let ‘obsessing’ over your ex enter criminal territory.

H/T Eric Goldman

original article found here

Facebook Rage

Once again - the victims are being blamed or called obsessed! Why are cheaters, liars and players FRIENDING their victims and/ or putting their business on Facebook in the first place? If they weren't acting like narcissistic creeps - there wouldn't be a problem.

And what about 50 year old married people who put their spouses and buddies on Facebook to make themselves look like good people (like Beckstead or Dunetz!) and then prey on vulnerable people on loads of other sites... all the while pointing to their Facebook saying "see, you can trust me!" - EOPC


Social networking sites are causing an outbreak of jealousy among partners of online fans that researchers have dubbed "Facebook rage".

Suspicious lovers find it so easy to trawl profiles for photos or messages that may show their partner is a cheat (or misinterpret things on Facebook) that they become obsessed.

And the more time they spent with their online surveillance, the more jealous they feel, according to the study by the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Psychologist Dr Brenda Wiederhold said: "This new forum might be impacting the dynamics of adult relationships."

It's a Crime: Harassment

(INDIANA) Here’s how a Chesterton Police officer spent part of her shifts[].

At 9:36 a.m. on Monday, according to the officer’s initial report, a woman filed a complaint against her ex-boyfriend—with whom she’d broken up on Saturday—after he “harassed her extensively via telephone over the past 24 hours” and sent her as well a total of 46 texts.

“She stated that some are just general conversation but in some he makes threats against both her and her estranged husband,” the officer stated and included these examples: “Watch your back the next few weeks”; and “I’m going to put your husband in the hospital.”

The officer duly contacted the ex-boyfriend and strongly advised him to “cease all contact” with both the woman and the woman’s husband. The ex-boyfriend admitted having sent some “stupid” texts and promised the officer that he would so cease.

Then, at 3:25 p.m. on Tuesday, the ex-boyfriend discovered what it’s like to be on the receiving end of threatening texts, the officer stated in her second report on the case. Beginning at 8:30 a.m. that day, the ex-boyfriend complained, he’d gotten a series of threatening texts apparently from the estranged husband. Examples: “Im still waiting 4 u 2 run ur mouth some more”; “Why dont you tell police that u like 2 chase married women”; “Better yet why dont u meet me”; “Whats wrong? U have nothing 2 say now?” and “I will find u!”

The ex-boyfriend advised that he hasn’t responded to the estranged husband’s texts and doesn’t intend to, that at the moment that estranged husband doesn’t know where he lives and he wants keep it that way, and that the estranged husband owns “multiple firearms” and “he is afraid that (the estranged husband) may harm him.”

Then, 4:04 p.m. on Tuesday—less than 30 minutes after the boyfriend had filed his complaint—the woman’s estranged husband also reported receiving from the ex-boyfriend a derogatory text about his wife at 12:05 a.m. on Monday, the officer stated in her third report on the case. This time the officer strongly advised the estranged husband to “cease all contact” with the ex-boyfriend.

The officer told all parties that her reports will be forwarded to the Porter County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for review.

Harassment

Harassment in Indiana is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by a term of up to six months in jail and a fine of $1,000.

Code defines it as occurring when “A person who, with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm another person but with no intent of legitimate communication,” makes a telephone call, sends a telegram, writes a letter, broadcasts over a CB radio, or uses a computer network to communicate with another person or to transmit “an obscene message or indecent or profane words.”

As Porter County Prosecuting Attorney Brian Gensel told the Chesterton Tribune, the key statutory element of the crime of harassment is “no intent of legitimate communication.” He gave this example. Say an estranged husband and wife are talking on the phone about the custody of their child. “There may be cussing and shouting, there may be trash talk, but at the end of the call they make some arrangement or reach some agreement about their child’s upraising. That’s not harassment. If there’s some legitimate communication beyond merely haranguing, then it’s not considered harassment. But if one parent is just calling up the other and screaming for the sake of screaming, then that may be harassment.”

Harassment can be a tricky crime to prosecute, Gensel noted. For one thing, “there’s the difficulty in interpreting a basis for what constitutes meaningful communication between the parties involved. Obscene calls are clearly harassment. But a text or call with a legitimate nugget of communication is not. It has to be wholly devoid of legitimate communication to be considered harassment under the law.”

For another, there really needs to be documentation of the harassment—a recorded call or a text—for a prosecution to be successful. “Otherwise, it’s just one person’s memory of what was said,” Gensel observed.

On occasion, a decision may be made not to prosecute because the harassment “was an isolated incident,” Gensel said. “Typically police officers took at whether the harassment is part of a continuing pattern and so do we.”

For the record, in November 2009 a Porter man was charged with harassment after Chesterton Police said that he e-mailed photos of himself to a Westchester Public Library employee and then left a note for her indicating that he was “waiting” for her.

Harassment as his deputies usually see it, Gensel said, tends to involve ex-friends, acquaintances, and family members in face-to-face or telephonic communication. Cyber-harassment is an altogether different issue. “One of the dilemmas about e-mails is who’s doing it, where are they doing it, and how will you find them?”

In any event, Gensel said, pinpointing the federal agency with jurisdiction in the matter can be problematic.

As it happens, Chesterton Police Chief George Nelson said, his officers spend a fair amount of their time responding to what are classified as either “Harassment” complaints or “Obscene/Harassing Phone Calls.” In 2009 alone, calls for service included a total of 122 of both.

More: according to the logs, the CPD officer who filed three separate reports on Monday and Tuesday devoted a total of 35 minutes of her time to the case or just under 12 minutes per report. If that average is in any way typical, the CPD devoted 24.4 hours or three full eight-hour shifts in 2010 to harassment complaints.

original article here

After Stalking His Ex on Facebook, he Kills Her

(U.K.) Clifford Mills, 49, attacked Lorna Smith after inviting her to his flat in Brixton, south London, in February last year. He denied murder, claiming he was suffering a mental abnormality at the time, but an Old Bailey jury took just 90 minutes to find him guilty.

Mills showed no emotion as the verdict was passed, but one of Miss Smith's relatives broke down in tears. Another shouted "Lorna lives in us, you murdering b******" as they left court.

Mills stabbed Miss Smith, 45, to death and went drinking for 14 hours before handing himself in at St Thomas' Hospital in central London. He told staff that someone called "Stan" had committed the killing and that "Stan" existed in his head.

Police found Miss Smith's body in Mills' flat, where he had left the Oasis song Stop the Clocks playing on a loop.

Miss Smith had been in a relationship with Mills from 2002 until 2006, and they remained in touch after breaking up. She began seeing another man, Tony Hersey, but Mills remained in "relentless" contact with her, prosecutor Zoe Johnson QC said.

As well as telephoning and sending text messages, he pretended to be someone called Charlie Manning on Facebook to stay in touch with her.

Mills had a "psychological grip" over Miss Smith and asked her to help him with court paperwork at his Brixton flat on the day she was killed.

Within 20 minutes of her arrival he had murdered her, because he was "jealous and angry", jurors were told.

Mills will be sentenced on Monday.

original article here

Cyberstalker: "You Ruined Her Life"

By Claire Ellicott

An obsessed television producer who stalked his ex-classmate for nearly a decade was jailed yesterday after he sent her an anniversary card marking the sixth year of her restraining order against him.

Sentencing Elliot Fogel, 37, to two years in prison, Judge Ian Darling branded his behaviour ‘sinister and deeply concerning’ and said he was jailing him for the good of the public.

The former Sky Sports news producer Googled Claire Waxman’s name 40,000 times in a year, posed as a prospective parent at her child’s nursery, broke into her car and made hundreds of late-night phone calls to her.

As a result of his nine-year campaign of harassment, Mrs Waxman, 36, a therapist, claims she suffered a miscarriage, developed an eating disorder and had been forced to move home five times. It is the third time Fogel, who the prosecution described as the ‘stalker who will not stop stalking’, has breached his restraining order and the second time he has been jailed to protect the mother-of-two.

In the latest breach, on February 1, 2011, Fogel drove along a road in Willesden, north-west London, where Mrs Waxman regularly parked and slowed down before giving her a ‘sinister’ grin.

Shortly before, he had been called a ‘vexatious’ litigant after bringing a civil case against her which alleged that she had created a hate campaign against him on Facebook. The case was dismissed and Mrs Waxman is suing the Crown Prosecution Service for £5,000 because it failed to prosecute Fogel for bringing legal action against her because it said it would have breached his human rights.

Although Fogel claimed he was using the route as a short cut home from the hearing, the judge said: ‘I’m satisfied that you drove slowly and sinisterly up behind her and when she looked you smiled at her before driving off.’

Judge Darling said Fogel’s ‘compulsive and enduring obsession’ meant that he posed a high risk to the public and there was no option but to give him a custodial sentence.

He told him: ‘You have plagued her life for many years and you have literally ruined it. You have mentally terrorised her over many, many years and her life will never and can never be the same.

‘Your actions have not just affected her, they have also impacted on her family, her children, her wider family and her friends, so widespread and calculating you have been.’

The Inner London Crown Court heard that Fogel allegedly posted a card to Mrs Waxman on January 16 – the sixth anniversary of his restraining order – while he was on bail awaiting sentence for his third breach. Although the card was unsigned, she said the ‘tenor’ and timing convinced her it was from him.

Fogel, of Edgware, north-west London, first developed an unhealthy obsession with Mrs Waxman when the pair were A-level students together at a college in St Albans, Hertfordshire. She demanded he leave her alone and she heard nothing more until she received a dinner invitation from him ten years later in 2003, which she declined.

Later that year, he was seen jogging on the spot outside her home and he began spending more time around her workplace. After his arrest, a police search of his computer revealed he had her wedding photographs as a screensaver and a Google Earth aerial map of her home. It also emerged that he had posed as a prospective parent at the nursery her daughter attended and had also paid for background searches to be carried out on both her husband, Marc, 35, who works in marketing, and her father.

In 2006, Mrs Waxman obtained a restraining order banning him from going near her home, her work or her parents’ address, which he repeatedly breached, even after being jailed for 16 weeks last year.

Yesterday Fogel showed no emotion as he was jailed.

original article here

Cyberstalking by Exes - It's Illegal

by Jann Blackstone-Ford & Sharyl Jupe

(Florida, U.S.A.) Question: I'm going through a divorce. Yesterday I found out my soon-to-be ex hacked my email account and changed all my passwords so he could read my private business. Then he changed them back, thinking I wouldn't know — but they send an alert and my email comes through my phone, so I knew what he was doing. He thinks I had an affair because he still can't believe I would leave him just because he's a jerk, so he's looking for some justification I was fooling around. I know you are going to say it's bad ex-etiquette, but what can I do about it?

Answer: It's not only bad ex-etiquette, but it also could be regarded as cyberstalking, and that's illegal. Hacking an ex's email is not new, but unless the victim feels he or she is danger, rarely does that person press charges. It really depends if this is an obsessed ex and your life is in danger or merely someone feeling particularly desperate one day and making bad choices. Hopefully, from your history with this guy, you know which it is. If it's an act of desperation, talking to him will probably do the trick, but make your boundaries clear.

After a breakup, people often continue to sleep together for various reasons and this sends mixed messages — especially if one of the parties wants to stay together. If you are doing this, or anything else like it, you may be contributing to the confusion. Make sure you're not doing anything that will keep your ex hanging on. That said, if your ex has acted irrationally in the past and you are frightened, consider going to the police. The police take cyberstalking very seriously and many have departments devoted specifically to problems with Internet and social-media interaction.

Unfortunately, it's common practice to share passwords — even PIN numbers — with your partner, but this can present a problem after a breakup. It gives them easy access to your personal life and even your money, so best practice is to change all passwords and PIN numbers as soon as you realize the breakup is final. You may even want to change the email accounts linked to your Facebook or other social-media accounts, so there is no way he can hack into your private business.

It goes without saying that your ex is breaking just about every rule of good ex-etiquette, but that doesn't mean that you have to break the rules when dealing with him. Being honest (Ex-Etiquette Rule No. 8) is always a good one to rely on, as well as rules No. 5 and 6, don't be spiteful and don't hold grudges. Finally, one rule your ex definitely forgot, Rule No. 9, is "respect each other's turf." Respect is critical to any successful relationship — even when breaking up.

original article found here

NOTE: CONTRARY TO WHAT THESE AUTHORS SAY - MANY POLICE DEPARTMENTS DO NOT, UNFORTUNATELY, TAKE CYBERSTALKING SERIOUSLY. - EOPC

Cyberstalking & Social Networking

More on the danger of Social Networking and Relationships that start online as well as Cyberstalking - EOPC

by Leah Shafer

Once upon a time, two people fell in love. It rocked.

They both changed their Facebook status to "In a Relationship" and posted pictures on their blogs of them kissing, laughing and frolicking. Then things went sour and they broke up.

In the olden days of, say, 2001, they would have parted ways and had little way to keep tabs on each other, outside of gossipy friends and occasional apartment drive-bys. Not anymore.

She watched his MySpace page and knew exactly when he started dating a new woman by his status updates. He looked at her Flickr photos and saw her having a great time at a Granada concert, and wondered, "Who's that guy?"

Cyberstalking is alive and well in the digital age, with many relationships continuing virtually long past the breakup through passive observation.

"It is creepy, but we're curious by nature," said Angela Faz, 31, who admits to mild curiosity about exes. "I try not to look!"

The view from online is tempting, because instead of driving by his or her house, you get an intimate view of your ex's thoughts, she said.

But that view can be painful, especially when the other person has started a new relationship or appears to be having a rollicking good time without you.

Oak Cliff resident Michael M., 33, is cyberstalking his ex and said he often wonders when the obsession will stop.

"I've found that since my breakup, I've had the need to keep up with my ex – is she dating, did she go to the fair this year (with whom?), what did she do for Halloween? Did she wear a costume we talked about last year? Is she keeping up with me, too?"

The situation is sort of like a sore in the mouth that would heal, if only you'd stop tonguing it.

"Am I doing it for pleasure – do I enjoy the torture and sometimes humiliation that goes with it?," Michael M. asked. "A friend once told me, 'You can glance at the past, just don't stare at it.' At what point does the staring begin?"

There's also a question of whether the observed person knows he or she is being watched and posts with that in mind. It could feel good to stick it to your ex by posting ambiguously sexual remarks on another (hot) person's profile.

Not that we would know anything about that. But even cyberstalking is still in relation to the two people involved and the length and intensity of their relationship.

The way this changes the psychological dynamics of a breakup is unclear – will it make it harder? Easier? Or just more complicated? Only time – and maybe a few SuperPokes – will tell.

SOURCE

Chicago Man Charged Over Online Obsession

A Chicago man has been charged with stalking a Naperville woman over the Internet and badgering her in a lurid e-mail campaign.

Daniel R. Tamburich, 32, is charged with cyberstalking, causing emotional distress and electronic communication harassment.

Detective Rich Wistocki, of the Naperville Police Department, said the woman “reported back in December she was being cyberstalked” by a man who identified himself as “James Randall.”

The man — later identified as Tamburich — “on four different occasions posted his sexual desires and sent them to her e-mail address,” Wistocki said. Tamburich also obtained pictures of the woman from her Facebook account “and then sent them to her and made them of a sexual nature,” Wistocki said.

The woman told police Tamburich was “just a random guy she went to college with,” Wistocki said.

According to the woman, the two never dated and were more acquaintances than friends, he said.

original article here

Stalking An Old Flame On Facebook? How About Some Federal Charges!

Facebook is not only a site where you can connect with friends and family while taking in a game of FrontierVille, it’s also a complex network that spans the entire world. So what happens when someone stalks you on Facebook, while sending you disturbing messages? In the past the outcome was typically a slap on the wrist, possibly a misdemeanour charge, but that could soon change. The new outcome? Federal Interstate stalking charges if the person that’s stalking you lives in another state.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent star Kathryn Erbe is currently involved in a 2 year stalking case in which deranged fan Charles Nagel not only visited her shooting location in New York, but also harassed her daughter and brother through the popular Facebook service and MySpace. Prosecutors are now determined to have Nagel charged with interstate stalking, a charge that brings with it up to 5-years in prison and a felony count on the guilty person’s record.

While Nagel’s travel to New York city is at the center of the controversy, a guilty verdict with Federal charges attached could give enough precedence for further interstate charges to be filed against Facebook followers who have chosen to stalk their prey online across state lines. The question will become, where is the line drawn between stalking someone from another state in person versus over the internet. Enough news of suicides by harassment and fights caused by text messages have arisen lately that the social impact during the outcome of this case could stem beyond simple misdemeanors charges.

While the case is far from determined, it will be interesting to see how social media plays it’s part in the trial, a guilty verdict in a case dominated by social media mentions could help form social network policing policies for years to come.

What do you think, should Facebook, MySpace and other social networking harassment be tolerated more than traditional stalking or should these crazy online stalkers face harsher penalties as they use modern means to attack their obsessions?

original article here

Stalking & Googling Someone 40,000 Times = 16 Weeks in Jail

By Arthur Martin

An ‘obsessive’ TV producer who stalked a former classmate for more than seven years was jailed for just 16 weeks on Monday.

Elliot Fogel, 34, subjected Claire Waxman to an ‘unimaginable’ ordeal by following her, breaking into her car and making hundreds of late-night phone calls to her home.

A search of his computer revealed he had Googled his victim more than 40,000 times in one year. But despite a judge ruling that Fogel’s actions had caused ‘mental harm’ to his victim, a police source revealed that he could be free in as little as six weeks.

Mrs. Waxman, 34, a complementary therapist from North-West London, attacked the sentence as too short and called for tougher jail terms in stalking cases.

‘I will get a couple of months’ respite at best, but I am under no illusion that he will be out of jail soon and the harassment will start again,’ she said. ‘What we are looking at here is an obsessive person who is highly likely to reoffend.

'There is currently not an appropriate sentence for stalking. This obsession started 20 years ago and it’s not going to suddenly stop after a few weeks in jail.’

Wood Green Crown Court in North London heard how Fogel – a freelance producer at Sky Sports News and Capital Radio – first developed an unhealthy interest in Mrs Waxman while they were students at a college in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

She repeatedly told Fogel to leave her alone and, after leaving college in 1993, heard nothing more from him. However, ten years later, she received a dinner invitation from him, which she declined.

A few months later, in December 2003, Fogel, from Isleworth, West London, was spotted jogging on the spot outside her home and also began to spend increasing amounts of time hanging around her workplace.

Mrs Waxman told the court she felt ‘like a sitting duck’ as Fogel continued to follow her and make phone calls to her home.

After his arrest, a police search of his computer revealed he had also managed to get hold of Mrs Waxman’s wedding photographs and had a Google Earth aerial map of her home.

Further investigation found that he had paid for background searches to be carried out on Mrs Waxman’s husband Marc and her father, and that he had posed as a prospective parent at the nursery her daughter attended.

Jailing Fogel for 16 weeks after he admitted breaching a restraining order, Judge Fraser Morrison said:

‘Mrs Waxman wants some peace from you because you weren’t able to take the hint that any relationship you wanted with her was not going to take place.

‘You’re not an unintelligent man but you didn’t take the hint. She wants you out of her life.’

In a 16-page written impact statement to the court, Mrs Waxman described how she had suffered a miscarriage, developed an eating disorder, and had to move home five times as a result of her seven-year ordeal.

‘He has nothing in his life and all he chooses to do is pursue me and my family,’ she wrote. ‘Though there has been no physical harm, the mental harm of all these years is getting too heavy to bear.

‘My life has been ruined by this man in so many ways and yet no one can help us nor protect us.

'Instead of preventing something terrible from happening, I feel like we’re being left like sitting ducks waiting for something to happen.

‘He has said time and time again that he will leave me alone and yet never does. He still feels he is allowed to do what he wants because he has no moral compass.

‘He has no respect for me, my family, the law and I feel not even himself. Fogel is mentally unwell and has an obsession with me – he needs medical attention.’

Police have been unable to take tough action against Fogel because he has not made any physical threats to his victim. It means that officers have been able to use only anti-harassment laws to curb his campaign.

original article here

Facebook gives Murderer 'Motive'

A woman was stabbed repeatedly by her ex-lover after he saw a picture of her with her new boyfriend on Facebook.

Paul Bristol, 25, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering Camille Mathurasingh, 27, at her east London home in April 2009.

The IT technician, who lived in Trinidad and Tobago, flew to London within two weeks of seeing the picture and killed the accountant.

Bristol, who denied murder, is expected to be sentenced later this month.

The court heard he could not accept "it was over" and had come to "win" his girlfriend back.

Bristol, who worked for the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Administration, and Miss Mathurasingh met during the three years she worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

'He looked evil'
After her return to London in 2008 their relationship continued through emails and telephone calls, but last year she began having doubts about their future and decided to go out with her new boyfriend.

Simon Denison QC, prosecuting, said: "It would appear she tried to bring about the end of her relationship with this defendant gently and did not tell him about her new boyfriend.

"He found out when he saw pictures of them together on Facebook.

"He would say he could not accept it was over and he decided to come here to see if he could win her back."

The day before her murder, she told her sister Nadine that she had to flee her home as Bristol had arrived from Trinidad, but she saw him following her.

Nadine said of the conversation: "She said she looked into her rear-view mirror. She said he looked evil."

Metropolitan Police said they caught Bristol when he fled on foot after a collision between his car and a black cab in east London.

When stopped he had blood over his face and clothes and admitted killing his girlfriend. He claimed he committed manslaughter through provocation.

Following the verdict, the victim's mother Indra Mathurasingh said: "Justice has been served for Camille. She was snatched from us and we are empty without her."

original article here

Man Arrested on Suspicion of Cyberstalking

A 39-year old Michigan man has been arrested on suspicion of stalking a local woman he met on line.

Ventura County sheriff's deputies say George Costales had been sending the woman unwanted emails for the past year.

Investigators say the woman had blocked Costales from her MySpace account "at least five different times." Then last week, deputies say Costales announced he was selling his business and moving to California to be with her, "because he loved her."

When Costales arrived at the woman's front door her boyfriend recognized him from "photos he had posted online."

Investigators said they used the Internet to lure Costales back to the woman's house, where he was arrested on suspicion of felony stalking.

Costales is being held at Ventura County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Is a Virtual Affair Real-World infidelity?

Or are in-game chats and animated sex just harmless experiments?
By Kristin Kalning

Sam had met someone, and it was getting serious.

It started out as a friendship, as many relationships do. But gradually Sam's feelings for Kat, a beautiful, smart and confident woman, had turned romantic.

Hang on — there’s a catch. Sam and Kat met in the virtual world Second Life. And although they shared all kinds of intimacies in Second Life, the real people have never laid eyes on each other.

That didn’t seem to matter to Sam. He fell pretty hard for his avatar sweetie. They bonded intellectually, emotionally, and yes, thanks to Second Life animations, even physically.

Here’s where it gets complicated. Unlike his avatar, which is female, in real life, Sam is a man. A married man. And the person behind the blonde, curvaceous Kat? Married. And, quite possibly, a man, too.

(As you might imagine, some people interviewed for this story did not want to reveal their full names. Some gave us their avatar names, while others went with pseudonyms.)

Sam knew from the outset that he had no intention of ever meeting Kat in real life. So although he acknowledges feeing some guilt, he didn’t see the online affair as being as damaging as a real one.

“With Second Life, there wasn't the fear of a real-life physical attachment,” he says. “The fear of someone calling me up at home.”

For many folks, the arms-length quality of in-game romance is what separates a (fairly) harmless experiment from actual infidelity. If these intimacies, no matter how personal, never translate into a real-world meeting or real-life sex, can it be considered cheating?

The majority of people who responded to the MSNBC.com/iVillage Lust, Love and Loyalty survey think it can — although that characterization tends to skew along gender lines.

Sending a sexually flirtatious e-mail to a co-worker? Just over half of men — 53 percent — think that’s cheating, as compared with 73 percent of women. Ratchet that up to online talk or “Webcamming,” and the cheating meter ticks up slightly: 57 percent of men think that’s a no-no, while 77 percent of women do.

Even Sam wasn’t sure how to term his relationship. After all, he was role-playing.

“It’s a 3-D avatar having sex with another 3-D avatar,” says Wagner James Au, author of the Second Life blog New World Notes. “What looks like a hot blonde babe could be a 60 year-old man in Milwaukee.”

But at some point, Sam’s in-world relationship with Kat began to intrude on his real life. A recent family vacation was punctuated by furtive Second Life meetings with his avatar girlfriend.

“I dreamed up any excuse I could with my family to tell them I needed to get online for a few minutes here and there,” he says. “It was pathetic.”

That’s where the lines get blurry, says P. Shavaun Scott, a marriage and family therapist from San Luis Obispo, Calif.

“If people are getting their needs for love, attention, intimacy, companionship and sex from somewhere else, I think it’s cheating,” she says. “And, if they’re keeping their relationship a secret from their real-life partner.”

When Kat’s real-life spouse began getting suspicious, things between the Second Life couple began to deteriorate. Sam says Kat became paranoid. She started having outburts.

“She no longer became the funny, excited and refreshing girl I had fallen for,” he says.

There was a breakup, a half-hearted reconciliation and a final breakup. What Sam didn’t expect, he says, is how much the virtual breakup would affect him.

“My feelings for Kat were no different in many ways than what happens in a real-life relationship,” he says. “All the way down to a breakup.”

“It’s not the sex, it’s the emotional intimacy,” says Au. “You’re online at 2 a.m. getting very personal and talking about stuff that you should only be talking about with your boyfriend, girlfriend or whatever.

Some folks use virtual relationships as a way to experiment. The excitement is what initially drew Sam to hook up with Kat. And plenty of people are interested in the sex aspect of the hookups. “It’s a more interactive form of masturbation,” says Au. “And everyone’s going to do that on occasion.”

Plenty of people, though, initiate in-game romances because they’re seeking something that’s lacking in their real-life relationship.

Amanda, 20, started up a friendship with someone she met in “World of Warcraft.” Her real-life relationship was one that she terms as “moderately abusive,” and her real-life boyfriend as “very controlling.” Her in-game guy, Joel, was much nicer. He spent hours teaching her how to play the game. They went on raids together. In-game chat graduated to AIM chat. Then long telephone conversations.

“You talk about your day, your dreams, that kind of thing.” she says. “I couldn’t get that from my real-life boyfriend.”

Max, 39, isn’t sure what drove his soon-to-be-ex-wife to have a relationship in Second Life. He says she refused to talk about it, and if he asked questions, she’d just hop online and freeze him out.

“I thought she was going through a depression and she’d get bored and move on with life,” he says. “But she kept getting deeper and deeper.”

Within six months of signing up for Second Life, Max’s wife was spending up to eight hours a day online — and even more on the weekends. She and her in-world boyfriend were in constant contact — even when they weren’t in-world. Max says he found out later that his wife and her avatar boyfriend were having drinks together — in his house — via Web cam.

Max went on Google and started doing some detective work. To his amazement, he learned that his wife had married her in-world boyfriend in Second Life.

“I had my dad looking over my shoulder at the stuff I was finding,” he says. “Just so I could ask him ‘Am I crazy? Am I really seeing this?’”

Max ended up pulling the Internet connection out of the wall, and he says his wife started trashing the house. The end came, says Max, when she threw a punch.

“I’m 6 foot, 200 pounds,” he says. “When she took a swing, I said, ‘no, we’re not going past this point.’” The two are currently finalizing divorce proceedings.

Although Max’s wife did end up meeting her virtual boyfriend in the real world, that often isn’t the case with virtual relationships. Sarah had a plane ticket bought and plans to meet her virtual partner, Martin — but she canceled her trip.

“One day I had the realization that I didn’t really want that guy,” she says. “What I wanted was for my husband to treat me like that guy.”

Sarah and her husband split up, and have since divorced. But Sarah credits Second Life with showing her what she wanted from a partner — attention, affection and romance. She gets all that from her current real-life boyfriend — a guy Sarah says she’ll probably marry.

And even though Sarah’s boyfriend didn’t ask her to, she ended her Second Life relationship last year. As a result, she doesn’t go in-world that much anymore.

“I decided that I didn’t want to partition my love,” she says. “I just wanted to have one person to call ‘sweetheart.’”

ORIGINAL