dark_shadows
01-21-2007, 04:48 AM
22-Year-Old New York Man Murdered After Being Drawn Into Internet Love Triangle (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245222,00.html)
BUFFALO, N.Y. — He was an 18-year-old Marine headed to war.
She was an attractive young woman sending him off from afar with pictures and lingerie.
Or so each one thought.
In reality, they were two middle-aged people carrying on an Internet fantasy based on seemingly harmless lies.
When a truthful 22-year-old was drawn in, their cyber escape turned deadly.
"When you're on the Internet (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245222,00.html#) talking, you haven't got a clue who that is on the other end," Erie County Sheriff's Lt. Ron Kenyon said. "You don't have a clue."
———
When Brian Barrett (http://javascript%3cb%3e%3c/b%3E:siteSearch('Brian%20Barrett');) was shot to death Sept. 15 outside the factory where he worked to help pay for college, investigators and his family were stumped.
On Nov. 27, Barrett's 47-year-old co-worker and friend, Thomas Montgomery (javascript:siteSearch('Thomas Montgomery');), was charged with Barrett's murder. The motive, said investigators, was jealousy over Barrett's budding Internet relationship with the same 18-year-old woman Montgomery had been wooing since the previous year.
What neither man knew was that the woman was really a 40-something West Virginia mother who was using her daughter's identity to attract Internet suitors. Cyberspace, it appears, was enough for her and it was a near certainty she would never have met either man.
"The game would have been over at that point and time for sure," Kenyon said.
When Montgomery began chatting with the woman in 2005, the former Marine portrayed himself as perhaps a previous version of himself — a young Marine preparing for deployment to Iraq, Assistant District Attorney Ken Case said.
For a time, they communicated strictly through chat rooms (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245222,00.html#) and e-mail.
Then the woman began sending gifts to Montgomery's home, Case said. Pictures of the woman's daughter, lingerie and a set of custom-made dog tags arrived at the pale yellow house in the suburbs that Montgomery shared with his wife and two teenage children.
Montgomery's wife intercepted one of the packages, Case said. She wrote back to the woman at the return address, and included a family portrait to make her point.
Respectfully,
dark_shadows
BUFFALO, N.Y. — He was an 18-year-old Marine headed to war.
She was an attractive young woman sending him off from afar with pictures and lingerie.
Or so each one thought.
In reality, they were two middle-aged people carrying on an Internet fantasy based on seemingly harmless lies.
When a truthful 22-year-old was drawn in, their cyber escape turned deadly.
"When you're on the Internet (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245222,00.html#) talking, you haven't got a clue who that is on the other end," Erie County Sheriff's Lt. Ron Kenyon said. "You don't have a clue."
———
When Brian Barrett (http://javascript%3cb%3e%3c/b%3E:siteSearch('Brian%20Barrett');) was shot to death Sept. 15 outside the factory where he worked to help pay for college, investigators and his family were stumped.
On Nov. 27, Barrett's 47-year-old co-worker and friend, Thomas Montgomery (javascript:siteSearch('Thomas Montgomery');), was charged with Barrett's murder. The motive, said investigators, was jealousy over Barrett's budding Internet relationship with the same 18-year-old woman Montgomery had been wooing since the previous year.
What neither man knew was that the woman was really a 40-something West Virginia mother who was using her daughter's identity to attract Internet suitors. Cyberspace, it appears, was enough for her and it was a near certainty she would never have met either man.
"The game would have been over at that point and time for sure," Kenyon said.
When Montgomery began chatting with the woman in 2005, the former Marine portrayed himself as perhaps a previous version of himself — a young Marine preparing for deployment to Iraq, Assistant District Attorney Ken Case said.
For a time, they communicated strictly through chat rooms (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245222,00.html#) and e-mail.
Then the woman began sending gifts to Montgomery's home, Case said. Pictures of the woman's daughter, lingerie and a set of custom-made dog tags arrived at the pale yellow house in the suburbs that Montgomery shared with his wife and two teenage children.
Montgomery's wife intercepted one of the packages, Case said. She wrote back to the woman at the return address, and included a family portrait to make her point.
Respectfully,
dark_shadows