A New Hampshire man recently walked into his wife’s hospital, fatally shot her and then turned the gun on himself. The murder-suicide was explained in a message on his Facebook page:
“My baby was trying to escape the bipolar demons that have been swirling around in her brain since childhood and now because of my selfishness in dialing 911 she is experiencing the only thing she feared more than her illness — life support on a respirator,” he wrote.
There are several other recent examples of homicides involving social networking sites like Facebook. But is there really such as thing as “Facebook Murder?” Two British researchers recently set out to consider whether homicides involving social networking sites were actually unique.
Elizabeth Yardley and David Wilson of Birmingham City University analyzed 48 recent homicide and manslaughter cases from around the world in which the perpetrator used social networking sites like Facebook. The study was published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice.
The researchers identified six ways in which homicide perpetrators used social networking sites: reactors, informers, antagonists, predators, fantasists and imposters.
Reactors reacted angrily to content posted on social networking sites. Informers posted their intentions online before carrying out their crimes. Antagonists engaged in online “trolling” and arguments that eventually escalated into real-world violence. Predators used sites like Facebook to stalk or lure their victim. Fantasists turned to murder to maintain their online fantasies. Imposters used fake profiles to impersonate others, including their victims.
Despite the six profiles, Yardley and Wilson said the cases they identified were not so unique that they necessitate the introduction of a label like “Facebook Murder.”
“Victims knew their killers in most cases, and the crimes echoed what we already know about this type of crime,” Yardley said in a news release.
“Social networking sites like Facebook have become part and parcel of our everyday lives and it’s important to stress that there is nothing inherently bad about them. Facebook is no more to blame for these homicides than a knife is to blame for a stabbing — it’s the intentions of the people using these tools that we need to focus upon.”
