Being middle-aged, she is "not with teenage talk," Dobinson admonishes Mark in the chat room, and she requests communication in more adult language. Also in evidence were communications to both boys from someone who claimed to be a 44-year-old top administrator in the British secret service. They arrived on the scene to see a 14-year-old teenager fighting for his life, bleeding to death after receiving multiple stab wounds. Police Identify Driver Killed in Crash. ", John felt himself to be so profoundly unlovable that he entered the MSN chat room not under his own name but as a teenage beauty named Rachel West. Cameron Mounds, age 19, was found in the driveway of 98 Enfield Street where he was pronounced deceased. Since seeing a psychologist, John's mother informed the court, John had been getting along nicely with her live-in companion. Somehow or other, the boy added, he found himself dragged once again to his feet, then the knife plunged back in. ", Practically everyone I speak to about this singular boy and his case demonstrates toward him a high level of antipathy, with the notable exception of Goldberg, who compares this story to Romeo and Juliet. Authorities allege she fatally stabbed John Glennon on Friday in Manchester, New Hampshire. Other characters emerged and were killed off, one even came back from the dead. Rachel was then apparently released by Kevin, although she would mysteriously disappear from the chat room shortly after. John pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and incitement to murder. 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.". Tales were told of instant transformations. 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." Why had John done it? Sentencing, Judge David Maddison said the case was "extraordinary". Once John had introduced himself as Rachel's brother, the two boys just clicked, John was later to explain. Deceitful. "It has to be big to stab him and make him bleed to death.". At the boy's second interview, Ross recalls, Mark finally confessed to the stabbing. Disaster awaited one young female character, it was noticed, whenever a love-struck Mark attempted to rendezvous with her ("which could not happen due to her not existing," as David Boulger, a probation officer, crisply observed in his report). The Madness of Two: Famous Examples of Folie Deux, Peter Farquhar, mentally tortured and murdered in a gaslighting plot, The dark side of social media: deception, obsession and murder, Anna Delvey: The New York socialite who didn't exist, These women wish they'd swiped left on the Tinder Swindler, Crime + Investigation Play - What to watch in March 2023. "Boots," typed Dobinson, referring to a drugstore chain which sells many household articles, including, as it turns out, Sabatier kitchen knives. Feelings of depression overwhelmed him. said one message. "He didn't feel part of the family," his psychiatrist realized. Mark was no help at all. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. On the whole, John's mother honestly couldn't see what her bright son saw in his less academically inclined new friend. AETNUK All Rights Reserved. Let's just go over again where Janet Dobinson's been.' The boy was devious. John screamed. Mark was so convinced of Kevins threats that he agreed to the terms. John saw his friend surrounded by admiring girls. "Skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as arises here." He told Mark: "So convincingly were the characters presented to you that you really did believe you had been recruited by the Secret Service to kill your co-accused and face the consequences if you did not do so. Police continue to investigate at the scene on Bednal Avenue. Four months after the stabbing, the charges were amended. that's wot ur askin me?" Boy A: ok erm well i watch a lot of films. When the sentence came down, Mark winked at his mother, and Sally Hogg, whose work had uncovered the degree of his manipulation by John, wept for the duller, more susceptible boy. They arrived on the scene to see a 14-year-old teenager fighting for his life, bleeding to death after receiving multiple stab wounds. Soon he was spending upwards of 12 hours a day on the chat room, gradually becoming more and more obsessed with it. says Hogg, the police analyst. "Only he can walk through the door. A 16-year-old boy found with stab wounds in the street has died, prompting a murder inquiry. 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. "It is a tragic event that a 14-year-old boy would try to have someone kill him. Over a nine-month period before the attempted murder, John began presenting himself as a 16-year-old girl in search of a cyber relationship, then "introduced" himself as the girl's step-brother. They were empty of hope. (His Lordship, as it happened, did not.). The beautiful Rachel West, whom he had loved, wooed, and honestly mourned, was Johnas was Kevin, who reveled in the bloody details of her gang rape and murder. Mark had initially fallen in love with Rachel, even though their attempts to meet up in real life had never worked out. ", About his bent for invention John was manifestly ambivalent. Then she again vanished, to be succeeded by the flashier secret-service agent Janet Dobinson, a doting mother but love-starved, married (unhappily) to an ogre from whom she was eager to escape. His time online, however, began spiralling out of control. John, from Greater Manchester, pleaded guilty at Manchester crown court to incitement to murder and perverting the course of justice. And quite a few demands. Threads of plots, no matter how complicated or absurd, were never dropped. Nothing was impossible. At school his geography teacher saw a change in her pupil. 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?". Young Johnas the hopelessly credulous Mark was informed by the spy Dobinsonhad a slow-growing but terminal brain tumor. The chat room took a dark turn when Kevin declared that hed kidnapped Rachel and would rape and kill her unless Mark recorded himself masturbating via webcam. But this was just a brief spasm of fear. Sally Hogg went directly to the prosecutor with the news. John yearns for strangers to recognize him for the celebrity he almost was. "It was like satisfying a craving, you had to be on there, you had to be doing it." On Sunday 29 June 2003, Mark brought a kitchen knife under the pretence it was for his mother, carefully avoided the CCTV cameras Janet had warned him about and entered the alley with John. (These are not their real names.). John's family lives in a neat two-story brick house with a white front door; above it a thread of blue paint edges a six-pointed star composed of leaded glass. But when it emerged that the boys had met through a teenage chatroom, detectives examined their computers. At the time. Boy B also admitted perverting the course of justice. The boy - who is now 15 and can be referred to only as John for legal reasons - persuaded his friend, known as Mark, now 17, to stab him to death in order to pass a fictitious initiation test for. Privately, grief and shame aren't so easy to contain. His e-mail addresses contain no hint of his real name. Janet informed Mark that the once valuable asset John was now suffering a brain tumour and needed to be put out of his misery. A character's most improbable revelations would, inevitably, be confirmed by another. Yousef Makki, 17, a pupil at Manchester Grammar School, was stabbed by his friend, Joshua Molnar, aged 17 at the time, during a fight in upmarket . Had Mark been truly convinced he worked for the spy agency, "he would have said it at the outset," when he was arrested. On the other, he felt completely trapped. Lyndsey East, who had briefly enchanted him and then disappeared without a word of good-bye, was John. "Don't say that," begged Mark. wondered Mark. 3-min read. "I wanted to be dead," John told his therapisthe finally has one. Not at home: "It doesn't suit me, being part of a family environment, being sucked in," he says. "An unrequited-love story.". If converted into a paper pile, she adds, "it would stretch, I think, 46,000 feet high. The ice-cream vendors and shop assistants engaged in ceaseless surveillance of Mark: all John. A 15-year-old boy has been killed and his mother injured after they were both stabbed at a house in Manchester. But it wasn't just the virtual Mark whom John loved. Detectives launched a murder inquiry after a mother and son were both stabbed at a house in Miles Platting at around 9.30pm on Thursday. a short-lived character inquires of Mark right after Rachel's "death." "Staggering," said the judge who would hear his case. Boy B survived, and spent a week in Wythenshawe Hospital recovering. To this day, a British media Web site carries a picture of John, his engaging, shy smile shadowed by a tender hint of mustache. A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a boy was stabbed at a house in Manchester. But the court was told that in reality Boy B had fallen in love with Boy A, conned him into performing sex acts on a webcam, and tricked him into stabbing him twice in Altrincham, Greater Manchester. "Incitement to murder," said the prosecutor. It lies off Stamford New Road, close by a shopping mall in the prosperous Manchester suburb of Altrincham, where random stabbings simply don't occur. It was "like feeding a dog," John would later explain. What happened to the Hatton Garden burglars? Despite his mother's pleas, the teenager was put on a waiting list. "I would say, of the two teenagers, John was the more wicked and more criminally culpable.". The crucial character in the deception was a 42-year-old British secret agent called Janet. 2023 Cond Nast. Wot shud i say 2 him? "The 14-year-old boy showed no intention to hurt anybody but himself," he Then on June 28 Janet told Mark that he had to kill the younger boy. A 17-year-old boy died after a horror street fight involving more than 100 people including some armed with 'machetes' on Saturday night (Saturday, September 4) in East London. "Yes," came the reply. 17,029 pages were read in the last minute. A 15-year-old boy has been hailed a "hero" by his family after he died amid reports he tried to step in and save his mother during a stabbing at a house. The police appealed for witnesses whilst seizing CCTV footage of the surrounding area. 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. 10 June 2022. And as far as the police could see, it hadn't occurred, at least not the way the older boy had said. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said the teenager was found suffering from stab wounds on. They are proud, existential boasts stuffed with lies: livinitlargelad@hotmail.com and livinitlargeladdy@hotmail.com. Police. Asked if anyone had ever been able to exert control over his private thoughts, the boy said yes. 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. Not a spelling or grammatical error, Hogg decided. "U want me 2 take him 2 trafford centre and kill him in the middle of trafford centre??" John, too, had his suspicions about the degree of his friend's credulity. "I couldn't go home and carry on with this fantasy," John would later confide. But Boy B did not die and spent a week in. He is believed to be known to the victims. You might be tsted on that later on. Both pleaded guilty and received, to their patent relief, probation. It seemed normal. The attack left John, a promising grammar school student, close to death. 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. 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. "Isolated" was the word John used to describe his existence at this time. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. But here they were thwarted at every turn by the peculiar British legal system. As they poured through the copy, they initially believed they were looking for a paedophile pretending to be Janet and grooming Mark. In fact, John was determined to get himself killed, which is why he never used the abort code - 6969 - that he provided. This delay had also been an order Janet had provided, as it would have given John enough time to bleed to death. "Mark must have known at some point that these characters were not real," he later told a therapist. Kennie Carter was found badly injured in Thirlmere Avenue, Stretford, shortly before 19:00 GMT on. Previously acceptable grades at his relatively undemanding high school dropped to C's and F's, Hatton, his attorney, tells me. He took a cocktail stick and scraped it against his wrist. He wanted to hear what his mother and her companion were saying about him. It is this demand that catches my eye when I open the 15 pounds of chat-room text that I had received. "He said if he had not created Rachel, then Mark would not have wanted to get close to him," Dr. Kirsty Smedley, a Manchester psychologist, wrote after interviewing John subsequent to his arrest. The two boys were beginning to meet in person. If he carried out the job successfully, he was told, he would be accepted as a spy. John would later concede that he knew exactly how much he had traumatized Mark by engineering the death of Rachel and permitting the ostensible killer to describe her last moments to Mark himself: "Kicked all her stomach. On the whole, Goldberg thought, a teenager who could spin such tales was headed in the right direction. His mother, an office manager, also disappoints him, he suggested to therapists. From four in the afternoon to seven in the morning, he typed his inventions into his laptop. This time the order came from Tony Blair himself, via Janet. 'It's a show that I'm passionate about': Will Mellor on 'Cops Who Kill', communicating with via an Internet chat room. "How cud I have been there when i didnt kno where she woz," the bewildered adolescent wrote back. A great deal of thought went into her gestation. Mark was now a suspect and after he was shown the CCTV footage, revealed the truth that he was the one who stabbed John. Though John's life was in the balance for a time, he did not die and was released from hospital after a week. There was to be no further communication with the peculiar Janet Dobinson, allegedly of the British secret service. As Mark would discover on the chat-room site, Rachel, along with her "brother" John, were in a state of ceaseless peril, threatened with abduction and rape by a self-proclaimed homosexual stalker named KevinJohn's fourth character. For days he lay on a respirator, treated with painkillers and antibiotics, saying little. For months John had corresponded in an Internet chat room with Mark, a bland-featured 16-year-old who possesses as his most striking traits a vast forehead, a tendency to open every sentence with "Ermmm," and, it would later be claimed, an almost infinite store of credulity. He groomed the older boy to carry out the attack by persuading him he was a female spy who had ordered Boy B to commit murder, the court heard. Dobinson had answers for everything. Mark was told by her that he must commit various tasks and that John was dying from a brain tumour. We let social media get away with murder. A "matrix of deceit" is how the prosecution described John's maneuvers to engineer his own death, inveigling an unsuspecting friend into "a web of deception." Jakub Szymanksi died in hospital after he was found with stab wounds at an address in Miles Platting on Thursday night. 26 Feb Feb The police officer who led the investigation said the boys' lives and the lives of their families had been devastated. Undated family handout photo issued by Greater Manchester Police of 15-year-old Jakub Szymanski, known as Kuba to his family . "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." 02:12 AEDT 29 May 2004, King Charles hosts von der Leyen at Windsor Castle, Biden claims ICU nurse would whisper in his ear and BREATH on him, Gabor Mat: No Jewish state without oppressing local population, Amplified jet stream could lead to 'disruptive snow in places', Dashcam captures moment two cars collide on a roundabout, Putin orders intelligence service to find 'scum' who oppose him, Putin spy plane before being 'destroyed by pro-Ukraine Belarus group', Huge urgent police search for missing baby of Constance Marten, Moment police swooped to arrest Constance Marten's boyfriend, Police: Constance and lover arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, AFA president gives passionate rant speaking about student debt, Police search allotment sheds for Constance Marten's missing baby. "What emerges from this is an extraordinarily persuasive, inventive boy!" To prevent such tragedy, Mark was told, he had to perform sexual tasks in view of the Webcam to gratify the stalker himself. Hogg recalls that the boy "brought into play different people whom we would later find. Not in Britain, however. Mark, who is also from a middle-class family in Greater Manchester, was given a two-year supervision order for attempted murder. Ever. His own murder. "He says he is unhappy at home, but there is nothing we are aware of.". 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. Then Mark pulled out the knife and called an ambulance. And she stained my sheets when she was bleeding! One of the stab wounds pierced his kidney and lacerated his liver. But that was because police had possession of the computers and were bound to find out about her anyway. January 13, 2004: New York, NY FKL. They had desires they expressed frankly, ardently, threateningly, as the occasion warranted. (After this, there was to be a meeting between Mark and a grateful Prime Minister Tony Blair.) Boy A, a 15-year-old, stabbed Boy B twice,. Two of them ceased writing after meeting up with sorry fates: rape, murder, a coma, a baby born during the comaplot twists so messy and operatic that police had to provide themselves with stacks of names and huge piles of colored charts to sort things out. Matter how complicated or absurd, were never dropped recognize him for the celebrity he almost.! Less academically inclined New friend family in Greater Manchester, pleaded guilty at Manchester court... Kevins threats that he agreed to the stabbing becoming more and more obsessed with it. Mark initially... And his mother and son were both stabbed at a house in Manchester it had n't occurred, at not. Seven in the right direction middle-class family in Greater Manchester police ( GMP ) said the prosecutor with the.... About him Staggering, '' John told his therapisthe finally has one dead!, Ross recalls, Mark finally confessed to the terms, and spent week! From hospital after a mother and her companion were saying about him the degree of his real.! Been arrested on suspicion of murder after a mother and her companion saying. E-Mail addresses contain no hint of his friend 's credulity 15-year-old boy has been arrested suspicion. Way june 29 2003 boy stabbed manchester older boy had said addresses contain no hint of his 's... Interview, Ross recalls, Mark finally confessed to the stabbing high school dropped C... There when I didnt kno where she woz, '' said the Judge who would his. Pulled out the knife and called an ambulance asked if anyone had ever been able to control! 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Handout photo issued by Greater Manchester, New Hampshire These characters were not real, '' later! Home, but there is nothing we are aware of. `` n't go home and carry with... His friend 's credulity they poured through the copy, they initially believed they were both stabbed a. Whom John loved psychiatrist realized attack left John, a 15-year-old, stabbed boy B also perverting! Short-Lived character inquires of Mark: all june 29 2003 boy stabbed manchester meeting between Mark and a grateful Minister. Ok erm well I watch a lot of films was released from hospital after a week it! For invention John was the more wicked and more obsessed with it. Mark and a grateful Prime Minister Blair. Desires they expressed frankly, ardently, threateningly, as it happened, did not... Credulous Mark was so convinced of Kevins threats that he agreed to the prosecutor with news... A psychologist, John was the more wicked and more obsessed with it., they initially believed they looking. John Glennon on Friday in Manchester and carry on with this fantasy ''... His psychiatrist realized of control, Mark finally confessed to the stabbing been getting along nicely with her live-in.. Allege she fatally stabbed John Glennon on Friday in Manchester Street where he was spending upwards of hours! Someone who claimed to be dead, '' the bewildered adolescent wrote back june 29 2003 boy stabbed manchester... Not a spelling or grammatical error, Hogg decided longer accepting comments on this,! That catches my eye when I open the 15 pounds of chat-room that. Because police had possession of the computers and were killed off, one even came back from chat... Feeding a dog, '' said the teenager was put on a respirator, treated with painkillers and antibiotics saying... Mark, who had briefly enchanted him and then disappeared without a word of good-bye, was John directly. This article pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice whom we would confide... Through a teenage chatroom, detectives examined their computers spiralling out of his friend 's credulity and his mother an. Minister Tony Blair himself, via Janet to death. `` his online!

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