MYSPACE PRANK TURNS SUICIDAL

Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her.

Megan, a 13-year-old who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, corresponded with Josh for more than a month before he abruptly ended their friendship, telling her he had heard she was cruel.

The next day Megan committed suicide.

Her family learned later that Josh never actually existed; he was created by members of a neighborhood family that included a former friend of Megan's. Now Megan's parents hope the people who made the fraudulent profile on the social networking Web site will be prosecuted, and they are seeking legal changes to safeguard children on the Internet.

The girl's mother, Tina Meier, said she doesn't think anyone involved intended for her daughter to kill herself. "But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old, with or without mental problems, it is absolutely vile."

Megan Meier hanged herself in her bedroom on Oct. 16, 2006, and died the next day. She was described as a "bubbly, goofy" girl who loved hanging out with her friends, watching movies and fishing with her dad. Megan had been on medication, but had been upbeat before her death, her mother said, after striking up a relationship on MySpace with Josh Evans about six weeks before her death.

Josh told her he was born in Florida and had recently moved to the nearby community of O'Fallon. He said he was homeschooled, and didn't yet have a phone number in the area to give her.

Megan's parents said she received a message from him on Oct. 15 of last year, essentially saying he didn't want to be her friend anymore, that he had heard she wasn't nice to her friends.

The next day, as Megan's mother headed out the door to take another daughter to the orthodontist, she knew Megan was upset about Internet messages. She asked Megan to log off. Users on MySpace must be at least 14, though Megan was not when she opened her account. A MySpace spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Someone using Josh's account was sending things like, "Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat."

Megan ran upstairs, and her father, Ron, tried to tell her everything would be fine. About 20 minutes later, she was found in her bedroom. She died the next day.

Her father said he found a message the next day from Josh, which he said law enforcement authorities have not been able to retrieve. It told the girl she was a bad person and the world would be better without her, he has said.

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MISSING 24-YEAR OLD KYLE FLEISCHMANN

Kyle Fleischmann

Kyle Fleischmann's mother is about to undergo cancer surgery. That alone is enough evidence for Richard Fleischmann to conclude that his 24-year-old son, last seen a week ago at a Charlotte, N.C., bar, is the victim of foul play. "He didn't run away when his mother's going into surgery," Richard Fleischmann told ABC News.

Since his disappearance, more than 16,000 Facebook users have joined a group devoted to searching for Fleischmann, a graduate of Elon University who lives and works in Charlotte as a health care recruiter. There is also a Web site devoted to finding Fleischmann, www.helpfindkyle.com.

The site is being managed by Daniel Scagnelli, who described himself as Fleischmann's best friend and was with him at the Buckhead Saloon the night Fleischmann disappeared. Scagnelli is also involved in the search, which a private investigator is leading.

While the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department took the initial missing person report a week ago, Fleischmann is an adult and there is so far no evidence of a crime. Both factors make the case less of a police priority.

Fleischmann went with a group of friends last Thursday night to see comedian Dane Cookperform. Afterward, the group went to the local bar. As they split up, with some friends heading home, Scagnelli said Fleischmann stuck around, chatting with a group of girls with whom he had a mutual friend.

The girls left Fleischmann, Scagnelli said, and the bar's surveillance camera caught him leaving alone at 2:20 a.m. Fleischmann left his debit card and his jacket. Scagnelli said that his friend was likely a bit drunk, but not "blackout" drunk.

• At 2:19 a.m., Fleischmann called his sister but did not leave a message, according to phone records.

• At 3:28 a.m., Fleischmann called Scagnelli, but did not leave a message. At 3:29 a.m., he called his roommate, Bruce Mottern, and again, did not leave a message.

• Fleischmann's whereabouts from 2:20 a.m., when he left the bar, until 3:29 a.m. remains unknown.

Fleischmann, who lives about 3 miles from the bar, had left the bar on foot. His car was parked at Scagnelli's house, where the group had gathered for a while before heading out to catch the Dane Cook performance.

Scagnelli said that Fleischmann, the best man at his wedding this summer, had neither a girlfriend nor enemies that he knew about. Tuesday, a ground search began at the bar and spread out around the area. Dogs have been brought in in the hope of picking up Fleischmann's scent.

While the Facebook group has generated intense interest in the case, Scagnelli said he's also had to do rumor control as users theorize about what may have happened to Fleischmann...Richard Fleischmann visited his son's office in Charlotte Friday. On his son's desk was a list of things to do that day -- more evidence that Kyle Fleischmann didn't just run away.

(Source)

SERIAL KILLER OF THE DAY--ED GEIN

The "legend of Ed Gein" lives on and on through movies and books like Silence of the Lambs, campy horror flicks like Texas Chainsaw Massacre (i.e. Leatherface) and a myriad of other copycats love to depict this infamous recluse of the 1950's. Gein and his crimes have gone down in history...and is known to be one of the most sadistic and psychologically mind-boggling serial killers of all time.
Next time you see a creepy neighbor, maybe you better think twice.

Ed Gein was born on a farm in

the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. His mother was very repressive, convincing all of her children that sex was evil and would send them to hell. 

Ed never left home, living with his brother and mother until they had both died by 1945. The day his mother died, Ed was thirty-nine years old and still a bachelor. He stopped farming and began to live on federal subsidies and doing odd jobs for people in town. 

Alone in the large house, he kept his mother's room untouched and locked, just as it had been before she died. He also sealed off most of the other house, choosing to live only in a bedroom and the kitchen. 

Free of his mother's prying eye, he soon began to take an interest in the female anatomy. Ed found medical books, horror novels, pornographic magazines, and books on the Nazi medical experiments. Through this media he was able to thoroughly study that which his mother had hidden from him for so long. 

He fantasized about having his own woman to study, but his social inhibitions disallowed him from meeting women. A desperate Ed took things a little too far.

 

Ed went to local cemeteries and began digging up female corpses to take home. He would spend hours studying the corpses and removing parts via dissection. Sometimes, after removing internal organs and the head, he would remove the skin and wear it around the house. 

He also enjoyed fondling the removed female genitals, sometimes putting them into a pair of women's underwear, which he wore around the house. Ed's behavior made him very careful about keeping people away from his farm to hide his secret activities. 

He quickly became a recluse in the community and was referred to as "weird old Eddie". His condition took a turn for the worse when he began to seek fresh females to study. He began to murder women in their fifties (about the same age as his mother when she died) and perform the same practice. 

One of his victims was Bernice Worden, who happened to be the mother of the sheriff's deputy. The deputy heard about Ed being in town (a rare event) on the same day his mother disappeared and went out to the Gein house. After some snooping around, the man found what would arouse the interest and horror of the entire nation and set a new standard for disturbing behavior. 

Worden's body was naked and beheaded, hanging upside down in the barn, with the chest cut open. Inside of the house, her head and intestines were found in a box and her heart on a plate. 

Other monstrous items included:

• Preserved skins from ten human heads
  A rolled up skin from a woman's torso
• A belt made of excised nipples
• A chair covered in human skin
• Soup bowls made of the crowns from human skulls
• Lampshades made of stretched human skin
• A table with human leg bones as legs
• A refrigerator filled with human organs
• Bracelets made from human skin
• A shoebox filled with female genitalia
• The entire skin from a woman's torso, including the breasts 

The police estimated that the remains came from at least fifteen bodies. Ed was arrested and sent to a mental hospital. After ten years, he was considered mentally fit to stand trial and was found guilty while criminally insane. He was put in more mental hospitals, until he died of heart failure in 1984. 

The story of Ed Gein became the source of a number of horror movies, including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs. Articles were published in Time and Life magazines in December of 1957, informing the entire nation about his "house of horrors". Ed Gein remains one of the most notorious criminals in human history.

 (source)

CONVICTED CHILD MOLESTER HURLS HIMSELF OFF COURTHOUSE BALCONY

(Not the actual jumper, so do not try this at home.)

(Source) FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- A man hurled himself off the third-floor balcony in the Allen County Courthouse after he was convicted of child molesting. Cicero Offerle, 30, of Fort Wayne was hospitalized in critical condition after falling about 20 feet on Thursday, but was expected to survive.


Offerle, who had been out on bond, was taken into custody after a jury convicted him of molesting a 10-year-old girl he had been babysitting in October 2006. Offerle showed no visible reaction when the verdict was read.


After the verdict, Judge Gull revoked Offerle's bond and ordered him held until sentencing Nov. 19. A sheriff's deputy handcuffed his hands behind his back and led him from the courtroom. As the bailiff led him down the corridor, Offerle broke into a run and dove over the third floor railing, striking the marble second-floor railing and landing on the second floor, Gull said.


Gull said she ordered Offerle held until sentencing in part because prosecutors had said he tried to kill himself following his initial interview with police. She said Offerle would remain under guard at the hospital. No jurors were in the courthouse when Offerle leaped over the railing, Gull said.

(Source) It was a spectacular suicide attempt...Police say as he was being led from the courtroom, Offerle ran from the officers, and jumped head-first from the third floor balcony.


There were not many people still in the courthouse at that late hour. But a courthouse security officer working on the first floor, about forty feet below, heard some scuffling and other commotion that drew his attention up above.


Brent Dubach/Security Officer: " I looked up that way, I saw an object falling from the third floor. I thought the evening cleaning crew had dropped something from the third floor. At that time, the object then struck the railing on the second floor and I could see it was a person falling."


The distance of the fall was approximately 21 feet, and he struck a marble railing with his hands behind his back, with no way to cushion the blow. It is believed his torso area made first impact.