police and detectives are bogged down withso many crimes on a daily basis, it’s impossible to solve every case. thankfully, loads of people on the internethave plenty of time on their hands. social media can give key evidence in a casethat would have been much more difficult to find in the past. amateur websleuths have come together to solvethe following 10 crimes. 10. the case of grateful doe in 1995, a young man was found in a car crashin southern virginia.
his body was damaged beyond recognition, andhe did not have any identification except for two grateful dead concert ticket stubsin his pocket. the authorities called him “grateful doe.†years later, a computer generated image ofhis face was created using his skull. members of the online community websleuths.comcirculated his image all over the internet, searching for clues about who he actuallywas. this face ended up being posted to facebook. family members of 19-year old jason callahanrecognized him immediately, and sent in dna samples to confirm his identity.
jason told his mother that he was on his wayto a grateful dead concert, but never said the location. he was originally from south carolina, andwent on a long road trip to get to the concert. his mother had no idea which jurisdictionshe should file the missing person’s report. according to his half-sister, the family assumedthat he had cut ties with his family in order to start his own life. they had no idea he was actually missing,or dead. 9. twitter solves a hate crime
in september 2014, a group of friends raninto two gay men in center city philadelphia. they asked if they were a couple. when they said “yes†the group beat androbbed them. one of the victims was so badly hurt, he hadto go to the hospital and get his mouth wired shut. the group was captured on a security cameraearlier that night, but police had trouble identifying the attackers. they asked for anyone with information tocome forward to help solve this hate crime. a twitter user by the name of “fansince09â€had around 5,000 followers at the time.
he normally wrote funny posts about sportsin philadelphia. he decided to tweet a link to the surveillancevideo, asking for everyone’s help. through small clues in the video, people ofthe internet were able to find a group photograph, which lead to identifying a restaurant wherethe attackers had eaten that night. then, they looked at facebook’s “checkin†feature to see who was there the night of the crime. it only took them 2 hours to find the identitiesof the criminals. 8. the murder of abraham shakespeare
an online community called websleuths is exactlywhat it sounds like. they are a group of thousands of amateur detectivesspending their spare time poring over evidence of cold cases in the attempt to solve a murderor missing persons case. in 2006, a man named abraham shakespeare wonmillions in the lottery. he hired a woman named deedee moore to behis financial advisor. in 2009, she killed shakespeare so she couldcontinue having control over his money, and buried his body under concrete. he was reported missing, but even though thepolice suspected her, they couldn’t find enough evidence for a conviction.
since the police’s hands were tied, thewebsleuths community began taking action to search for any additional evidence that maylead to finding shakespeare’s killer. deedee moore was so threatened by this, shecreated her own account to try throwing off anyone who found evidence against her. users were able to trace moore’s ip addressback to her office. that information was passed on to law enforcement,and it added to the stack of evidence piling against deedee moore. she was eventually found guilty of murder. 7.
the unidentified victims every year, thousands of people go missing,and bodies of jane and john does continue to go without identities. because of this, many families never get closureafter a crime has been committed. one of the subforums of websleuths.com isa page called “the unidentified.†members of the forum spend hours going throughyearbooks, facebook pages, and public records in order to match the forensic drawings ofmissing people with photographs. there have been dozens of successful matches,including a woman named lynda jane hart, who went missing in 1988.
websleuth moderator and forensic artist carlkoppelman matched her records in 2011. several other web communities have openedup to identify missing people, including the doe network, and reddit’s bureau of investigation. through the power of crowdsourcing, thesewebsites have solved over a thousand different cases. 6. confession bear reddit obviously takes their crime solvingvery seriously. so, when a user says they committed murder,clearly, they’ll want to solve the crime.
a user called narrato posted a confessionbear meme, saying, “my sister had an abusive meth addict boyfriend. i killed him with his own drugs while he wasunconscious. they ruled it as an overdose.†when users questioned him, he replied thatthere was “some truth†behind it. redditors immediately got to work figuringout the real identity of narrato. if he truly was connected to a murder, theyplanned to report him to the police. in the end, he was a 24-year old man who smokesweed, plays world of warcraft, and practices martial arts.
after one reddit user contacted his sister,she told them that she and her brother had moved to entirely different countries, andshe had never dated a meth addict. turns out narrato just watches way too muchbreaking bad. while this was a false confession, it’sstill proof of how easy it would have been for the internet to find a murderer who wasstupid enough to meme about it online. 5. boots the kitten back when the smartphone app vine still existed,a teenager uploaded a video where he kicked a ginger kitten off his back porch.
even though he deleted the video, it was spreadacross reddit and 4chan, in attempts to find his identity. eventually, they figure out that he was a17-year-old named walter easley, and reported the incident to the police. peta posted his personal information online,and he began to receive death threats. by the way, in case you were worried, thekitten was totally fine, but that didn’t stop animal protective services from removingall of the pets out of the easley home while the case was under investigation. this was especially troubling for easley’smother, whose beloved pets had been taken
for her son’s foolish actions. walter easley plead guilty to animal crueltyin court, saying that he never meant to cause harm to the kitten, and that it was all justa joke. 4. the jane doe of akron a 22-year old woman named christina scateswas looking in the highland park cemetery records for one of her ancestors. she noticed a grave from 1975 that had noname. it simply said, “unknown white female bones.â€
scates felt compelled to search for the identityof this young woman. she began to search at her local library,and found the newspaper clipping about the murder of this unidentified woman, who hadbeen shot in the head. she called as many local detectives as shecould, until one finally sent her the digital cold case file. scates uploaded the files to the reddit bureauof investigation under a username called “callmeice,†and it was passed on to the team at websleuths.com. carl koppelman, the forensic artist we mentionedearlier in the list, was able to recreate a digital version of the woman’s face fromcrime scene photographs.
koppelman’s unique skills in facial recreationhave earned him respect in the criminal investigation community. detectives and medical examiners from allover the country reach out to him for help whenever they find unidentified bones. koppelman was speaking to a contact in cuyahogacounty, ohio, where the unknown white female bones were located. it turns out that a clerical error had preventedsome of the older cases from being included in the namus missing person database. once it was updated, koppelman was able tofind linda pagano, and she looked exactly
like his drawings. after 43 years, her family was finally ableto reunite with her remains. this may also be one step closer to solvingher murder. 3. tammy jo alexander in 1979, the body of an unidentified 16-year-oldgirl was found in a cornfield in new york. for 36 years, no one knew that her true trueidentity was tammy jo alexander. the strangest part was, tammy is originallyfrom florida. at the time, new york police would have neverthought to search in florida for a missing
girl, and the case went cold for years. the internet came to the rescue yet again. websleuths.com began to post the details ofthe unidentified body in new york. meanwhile, a former classmate of tammy joalexander was looking to reconnect with her online. she learned from relatives on facebook thattammy had disappeared, and felt shocked that she hadn’t noticed tammy’s name triggeringa missing persons database on google. that’s because the case from the 1970s hadnever been put on the internet. this friend took it upon herself to make surethe information about tammy’s disappearance
made it onto the national missing and unidentifiedpersons system. websleuths connected the dots in 2015. now, the next step is to find tammy’s killer. 2. social media saves the day in 2012, high schoolers from steubenville,ohio were having an end-of-summer party in a large, empty field. as you might imagine, there were kegs andflasks of whatever these underaged kids managed to find.
the party took a really dark turn when oneof the young girls got so drunk, she passed out. multiple football players began to sexuallyassault her over and over, for several hours. some of the boys even urinated on her. one student posted a picture of the back oftwo football players dragging the girl by her wrists on instagram, including #rape asa hashtag. shockingly, no one from the party came forwardto confirm their identities. the girl did not go to their high school,so no one at the party knew who she was. a crime blogger re-posted the photos frominstagram, and other evidence that made its
way on social media, accusing local policeof showing favoritism to their local football stars. this was actually true, because many membersof law enforcement requested to distance themselves from the case, due to their loyalty to thefootball community. through this blog and doing some digging oftheir own, the victim and her parents found an overwhelming amount of evidence about herrape on twitter, instagram, and youtube. they gathered the evidence on a flash drive,and handed it in to steubenville police. a week later, trent mays and ma’lik richmondwere arrested for rape. without social media, the victim would havenever gotten justice in the small town caught
up in football hero-worship 1. facebook solves child murder on halloween night of 1968, a 4-year-old girlnamed carolee ashby was the victim of a hit-and-run accident by a drunk driver in upstate newyork. for decades, police could not find out theidentity the driver. after retiring, a former police officer bythe name of lt. russ johnson posted the story about carolee ashby on facebook, expressingthat he still regretted never finding her killer.
the story was shared, and it reached a womanliving in florida. the florida woman had been friends with awoman from new york, who told her the story of being in the passenger’s seat of a vehicledriven by a man named douglas parkhurst, who was just 17-years-old at the time. he hit a small child on halloween night. the girl carried the guilt with her all herlife, but never went to the police to turn parkhurst in. after getting this tip, the police questionedhim, and he admitted to the crime. unfortunately, the statute of limitationshad passed, so he could not be arrested for
the death of carolee ashby.