Social Media Monsters: Internet Killers (True Crimes Collection RJPP Book 16) Read online

  Michael was studying auto mechanics in Cedar Alternative High School located in Eagan, Minnesota, but he dropped out. He worked for a while in various auto parts warehouses. A few months before his arrest in 2007, he was working the night shift at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport, refueling jets.

  Michael was living with his parents in his family’s home in Savage. He had two other siblings older than him. At the time, his father was laid off from Northwest Airlines where he had once worked as a mechanic.

  Not much is known about the childhood and early life of Michael, but he was known as a nice kid. He had friends with whom he used to play video games. Michael was shy around women. No one expected him to grow into a man who would hurt anyone. He was perceived as a normal guy.

  Until now, there is no apparent reason to explain why Michael planned the murder of twenty-four-year-old Katherine Ann Olson. He only wanted to experience the feeling of killing someone. Fortunately, Michael did not plan ahead and he was caught early on in his murderous career before he could inflict more pain.

  Using Craigslist, Michael posted an advertisement asking for a nanny. He pretended to be a woman named ‘Amy.’ The unlucky responder was Katherine Olson. Katherine had graduated from St. Olaf College in 2006. She had a degree in theater and Hispanic studies. She also worked as a temporary nanny. On Thursday, October 25, 2007, after many emails exchanged between Katherine and ‘Amy,’ Katherine went to meet her new employer who had asked her to babysit from 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Before leaving, Katherine told her roommate that she thought her new employer seemed a bit strange, but she was going to show up for the job anyway. After all, Katherine had answered two previous ads on Craigslist and had worked as a nanny at least twice before.

  Katherine thought that she was going to meet a woman or a couple. To her surprise, Michael was the one who answered the door. Somehow, he got her upstairs where he shot her in her back with a .357 Magnum. The autopsy later revealed that Katherine bled for fifteen minutes after being shot. She also sustained other injuries when Michael dragged her body downstairs, stuffed her into a sleeping bag, and threw her in the trunk of her own car. He drove her body to the Burnsville Nature Preserve, five blocks away from his house, and abandoned the car there.

  Katherine’s purse was found in a dumpster the next day and turned over to the police. When investigators called Katherine’s residence to notify her that her purse had been found, her roommate answered and told them that Katherine had not come home from a babysitting job the day before. A search was initiated. With the help of a helicopter, police located her vehicle at the nature preserve. To their horror, they found her corpse in the trunk of the car with her ankles bound. In a nearby garbage can, they located Katherine’s smashed cell phone wrapped in some bloody towels. One of the towels had Michael’s name on it.

  The address and phone number of ‘Amy’ were those of Michael’s address and phone number. In addition, the email used by ‘Amy’ was traced back to Michael. The evidence was overwhelming. Upon searching Michael’s house, investigators located blood that matched Katherine’s, especially on the stairs where drag marks were still visible. In Michael’s bedroom, a gun and some shell casings were found. Blood spatter was found on the walls and on the mattress as well. Moreover, a neighbor had seen Katherine’s car in front of Michael’s house for more than two hours on Thursday, the day of the murder. There was no evidence that indicated that Michael and Katherine knew each other prior to their encounter the day of the murder. Also, there was not any evidence of sexual assault.

  Nineteen-year-old Michael was arrested at his workplace. At first, he denied any involvement in the murder. He claimed that he had not used Craigslist personally since January of that year but his mother and other three friends had access to his account. He also claimed that he had never contacted the victim. Despite these claims, there was just too much evidence incriminating him. When the police confronted him with the evidence that they had found, Michael claimed that he was present at the time of the murder, but actually a friend had committed the slaying, thinking that “it would be funny.”

  Michael was charged with one count of first-degree premeditated murder, and one count of second-degree intentional murder. The defense claimed that Michael suffered from Asperger syndrome, a form of autism. However, after examination, it was revealed that Michael was not mentally ill. In addition to all the physical evidence, the prosecution highlighted the fact that Michael never told the police that the shooting was an accident. He never seemed sorry for what he had done. During the trial, Michael did not testify and he expressed no remorse for his crimes. On April 1, 2009, Michael was found guilty of both charges, in addition to second-degree manslaughter, and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the chance of parole.

  Chapter 3: John Steven Burgess

  In 2007, Donna Jou was a beautiful nineteen-year-old pre-med student at San Diego State University. A dedicated student, Donna hoped to become a doctor someday so she could care for elderly patients. She volunteered at battered women’s shelters and food drives. She was always trying to help others in need and wanted to spend the rest of her life doing just that. In June of 2007, she was spending her summer break at her parents’ home in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. Looking to make some extra cash, she placed an ad on Craigslist offering math tutoring.

  A thirty-six-year-old man named John Steven Burgess responded to her ad. According to court documents, he described himself as “a loving father, a devoted son, and a decorated veteran of Desert Storm.” What Donna didn’t know was that he was a convicted sex offender. In 2002, John (then thirty-one) had been convicted of battery and committing a lewd act on a girl younger than fourteen. He served a 146-day prison sentence and was released on the condition he register as a sex offender, which he never did. In 2005, he was arrested for assault after attacking his ex-girlfriend.

  Donna and John struck up an online relationship. They spent nearly a month emailing each other, discussing things like school and family. John later claimed Donna told him she had always wanted to try drugs. It was then he invited her to a party at his house.

  On June 23, 2007, Donna’s mother, Nili Jou, last saw her daughter as she hopped onto the back of John’s motorcycle, headed to his house in Los Angeles. She had no way of knowing that would be the last time she would ever see her daughter alive. When Donna didn’t return home the next day, Nili immediately called police.

  When the authorities came knocking on his door, John refused to cooperate. Soon after, he painted his pickup truck, stole some money from his roommate, and moved to Florida. He began using an alias, Logan Anderson, as he tried to avoid the police. On July 9, investigators located a black toolbox that John had once kept in the back of his truck. Inside, they discovered a rope, rubber gloves, a scrub brush, and his truck’s license plate, reading SINJIN1. When investigators finally caught up with him in Florida, John was arrested on drug charges and failure to register as a sex offender for his prior conviction.

  Donna’s parents wouldn’t get any answers about their daughter’s whereabouts for two more years. In May of 2009, John finally pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and told police his version of what happened that night. He claimed that when the two arrived at his home in Palms, he gave Donna cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. When he woke the next morning, he allegedly found her dead in a chair, covered with her own vomit. He claimed he wrapped her in a few sheets and stuffed her into his military duffel bag. He put her body in the back of his truck and then drove to the ocean. “I went down to my sailboat and gave her to the sea,” he told police.

  John told investigators exactly where he claimed to have dumped Donna’s body in the ocean, but an extensive search turned up empty. Her remains have never been found. Donna’s relatives do not believe that she accepted drugs and overdosed, as John claims. They cannot accept her death and cling to the morbid hope that she might be alive and being held captive somewhere. They have even hired a private investigator t
o look for her. “I read these stories about people being found after so many years, and I’m just hoping I’m one of those lucky ones,” Nili once told reporters.

  John was given a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, of which he only served about two years before he was released on parole. Donna’s family was outraged.

  In July of 2012, two women called the police on John again. According to reports, they both responded to a Craigslist ad posted by a man named “Johnny” promising a rent-free room in his apartment in exchange for cooking and cleaning. The two women, who didn’t know each other before responding to the ad, both visited the apartment to meet with John on the same day. John began to tell them a rambling “true story” about his life and Donna Jou’s death after he learned that they were writers. He told the women after he found Donna dead in his house, he put her body in a trashcan and dumped it in the ocean. While they were in the apartment, they also caught glimpse of a woman who appeared to be groggy, dressed only in underwear, and trembling uncontrollably. Troubled by ‘Johnny’s’ story, the two women Googled his name when they got home and decided to go to authorities when they realized he was an ex-convict. He was arrested on possession of ammunition and violating his parole, which prohibited him from using social media and the internet to meet women. He pleaded no contest to being a felon in possession of ammunition and was sentenced to four years in prison soon after.

  When Nili Jou heard of John’s arrest, she told a KTLA reporter that she was relieved. She said she and her husband had feared he would kill again once he was out of prison and she was thankful he was back behind bars.

  John was imprisoned at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Riverside County for just two years. He was released on July 24, 2014 on the condition he register as a sex offender and wear a GPS tracking device. Donna Jou’s parents reached out to the media again, this time hoping to warn everyone in his neighborhood about his past. Nili planned on making fliers and distributing them to everyone in the area. “He got away with murder,” she told reporters. “I’m afraid and I’m sure he’s going to do it again.”

  Chapter 4: Christian Grotheer

  Over the past few decades, the internet has become widely used. Although the benefits the internet has provided for the human race are uncountable, there are many disadvantages offered as well, including those that are deadly. And these dangers don’t just exist in one country; they are spread throughout the world. Stalkers, rapists, and killers have all found new avenues to commit crimes through the internet, and the victims are falling in piles. One of the countries affected by this nightmarish spread of crime is Germany, where the first internet killer there “graduated” in 2008.

  Christian Grotheer was a construction laborer. His father was very abusive and this made Christian’s childhood a disaster. As a young boy, Christian had to be taken into the care of child protective services because of his father. Christian recalls one time, at the age of six, he saw his father raping his mother who was screaming and calling for help. This event was very traumatic for him. Growing up, Christian started taking drugs, but then found something else to which he became addicted: online chat rooms. He claimed that chatting over the internet helped him overcome his drug addiction. He spent most nights chatting with strangers over the internet. He claims to have actually met around 100 women face-to-face after chatting with them for a while and even had sexual contact with some of them. It was through these chat rooms that Christian would meet his two victims.

  Christian was using the online nicknames ‘Rosenboy0207’ and ‘Riddick300’ in the online chat rooms where he met various women. On June 5, 2008, Christian met with Jessica K. who was using the online nickname ‘babylove.’ Jessica was twenty-six years old at the time, the same age as Christian. Fourteen days after their meeting, Jessica’s body was found. Christian (after his arrest) claimed that he and Jessica had gotten into an argument that quickly turned into a heated fight. He claimed that he had only “touched her on the throat,” and then she had dropped dead. Traces of Jessica’s blood were found on Christian’s shoes, but he said that the source was from a nosebleed Jessica had gotten while they were still walking together. The prosecution claimed that Christian had stabbed Jessica in the back, but Jessica’s corpse was already in the process of decomposing when she was discovered and the cause of death could not actually be determined.

  Only twelve days after Jessica’s murder, on June 17, 2008, Christian claimed his second victim from the chat room. He met up with Regina B., a mother of three children. According to Christian, the two had sex in Regina’s apartment. Then Regina cooked a meal for them. After that, they went to walk her dog. Christian claims that Regina demanded that he pay her a sum of money and enter into a serious relationship with her, or she would report him to the police, claiming that he had raped her. When Regina called him a rapist, Christian claimed he had a flashback to the time his father raped his mother while she screamed for help. Filled with anger, Christian recalled that he saw “the eyes of Jesus.” He then attacked Regina with a kitchen knife and stabbed her twenty-six times: twelve times in her back, and fourteen times in her chest. Her body was found the next day when a passerby discovered her. Christian told police that if it wasn’t for her calling him a rapist, Regina would probably still be alive. He claimed to have been driven by fear and anger and that he didn’t feel in control at the time of the murder. Christian never took the blame for his actions; instead he blamed the victim and his traumatic childhood.

  Christian’s defense tried to portray him as a man who lost control in these events. It was argued that the first murder was simply a tragic accident and the second one was just an effect of Christian’s horrible past. His lawyers also pointed out that, out of all the women whom Christian met in person (and they were plenty), he had only murdered these two and all the others were completely fine. Christian does not want to be categorized as a serial killer for killing these two women whom he met on dating sites. The court declined his insanity appeal and he was seen as fit for trial. He received a sentence of life imprisonment on April 1, 2009.

  Chapter 5: Thomas Montgomery

  By now, the dangers of chatting online with strangers should be clear. The story of Thomas Montgomery has an unusual twist to it with a tragic ending.

  In 2005, Thomas Montgomery, a forty-six-year-old married father of two living in Buffalo, New York, became consumed with frequenting online chat rooms. He particularly enjoyed a teen-only chat room hosted by the online gaming site Pogo.com. Using the name ‘MarineSniper,’ Tom pretended to be an eighteen-year-old version of himself, Tommy. He described himself as six-feet-tall, 180 pounds, with red hair and a large muscular build. He claimed he was a black belt in karate and a Marine on the verge of deployment to Iraq. It was in this chat room he met ‘Talhotblond,’ a seventeen-year-old high school senior named Jessi, who was living in West Virginia.

  The two instantly hit it off in the chat room and it wasn’t long before they became friends on MySpace and used Yahoo to instant message each other. They even exchanged phone numbers and began speaking over the phone and texting one another. Tom shared a photo of himself wearing a military uniform taken years prior during his six-year stint in the Marines. Jessi also shared photos of her own, some of them rather provocative. In quick time, the conversations between the two turned serious. They told each other that they were in love and neither of them had ever felt this way before.

  Tom knew he was in over his head, but he later admitted that talking to Jessi every day was almost like an addiction. He couldn’t quit her, no matter how hard he tried. He later claimed to be fully aware of his ridiculous obsession with a girl he could never be with, but he continued with the relationship. On Christmas day in 2005, Tom asked Jessi to marry him, and she accepted.

  Finally, in March of 2006, the truth came out. Jessi messaged Tom when one of his daughters happened to be using his computer. Alarmed, his daughter showed her mother, Cindy. It wasn�
�t long before Cindy intercepted one of Jessi’s packages to her husband and learned the truth. Searching the house, she uncovered a secret stash of letters, photos, and gifts from Jessi, including a small collection of her panties. Infuriated, Cindy mailed a letter to the return address on the package with a photo of her family, letting Jessi know the eighteen-year-old ‘Tommy’ she had been sending love letters to was a married forty-six-year-old man with two daughters nearly her age—twelve and fourteen. The jig was up. Tom moved into the basement of the family’s Buffalo home when Cindy suggested they separate.

  At first, Jessi was in denial. She went through Tom’s list of friends on Pogo.com to confirm the truth. She contacted an individual who went by the screen name ‘Beefcake,’ Tom’s twenty-two-year-old colleague named Brian Barrett. He was a young athletic man going to Buffalo State College part time and working at the Dynabrade power tool plant, hoping to one day become an industrial arts teacher. Brian confirmed the news to Jessi: Tom was indeed a married older man. Jessi texted Tom to tell him they were finished, admonishing him for swindling her. She was furious. Tom was crushed.

  One would think that Jessi would learn her lesson after falling so hard for someone she didn’t know at all. But as time went on, Jessi and Brian began to talk more and more and developed a relationship of their own. The two even began to flaunt their online relationship in front of Tom in the very same chat rooms he had first met Jessi. When Tom expressed his jealousy and anger towards the new couple, the two began exposing him in every chat room he entered, letting everyone know that he was nearly three times the age he claimed to be and that he was a married man. They called him a child predator and shamed him in front of others in the chat rooms.