Talk:Internet homicide

Is this the 1st?

Mercer County Prosecutors Office: "Man Pleads Guilty in Cyber Slay Case. An East Windsor man pleaded guilty today to aggravated manslaughter in the 1996 killing of a man he met through a sex 'chat room' on the Internet, Mercer County Prosecutor Daniel G. Giaquinto announced. George 'Chip' Hemenway (DOB 1/16/57), of the first block of Jeffrey Lane, had been indicted on murder and weapons offenses in the Jan. 4, 1996 death of Jesse M. Unger, 38, of Mark Twain Drive in Hamilton." ↜Just M E  here , now 03:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice find, although to say in the article that it is the first you would need a source. Шизомби (talk) 03:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

User:Fences and windows had found reference to it. See hi/r comment that begins "Order! Order!' somewhere above. Phila. Inquirer: "Chip Hemenway and Jesse Unger were electronic pen pals of the '90s. They met through their computer screens. Then, Hemenway allegedly killed Unger here earlier this month, and investigators said he turned to others he met online for help disposing of the body. The case - believed to be the first killing in which the victim and the alleged killer met through the Internet[...]. ↜Just M E  here , now 05:28, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is sourced! I'm male, to avoid the contortions of s/he or hi/r. I use "they" and "their" as singular non-sexed pronouns. Fences and windows (talk) 12:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for finding this reference, F&windows. I've added mention of the "first known murder of a victim met online was 1996" to the article's lede. ↜Just M E  here , now 16:15, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The only problem is that the source used is not about internet homicide. Again, you are doing original research by collecting all of these reports and adding them to the article. It might qualify as a list, but not as a topic. Viriditas (talk) 11:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:PRESERVE, over any anticipated deletion of the material in this article, I'd endorse its change to a list, per Viriditas's suggestion directly above. ↜Just M E here , now 16:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the article is well-established, and we don't need to concede anything. The original research is gone and the article is fairly well constructed and it is well sourced. There are enough sources discussing the concept of internet killings in adequate detail to show that it is a notable topic, and the sources I added that argue that it isn't a phenomenon actually strengthen the argument for keeping the article, as there's obviously enough people who say it is real for them to bother refuting it. Fences and windows (talk) 22:07, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

More cold water

Another source pouring cold water on claims of the internet as a causal agent in murders:[1]. A legal theorist pressed for an "internet angle" on a murder by a journalist related that "I asked her whether, if I called her up and asked her out on a blind date and murdered her, she would think it was a "telephone-related murder"?". Fences and windows (talk) 19:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Added as part of a new section. Fences and windows (talk) 22:10, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Questionable phrase

Is the phrase "such as in World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Halo, or other online games" really necessary in the opening sentence? Sounds like more anti-game Bullcrap to me. There are many more ways a person can be met online, many predating the Online Gaming boom. Quatreryukami (talk) 18:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Internet dating section is problematically sourced

The section on Internet dating has a single source that states that "[...] since 1995, there's been [...] over 400 instances where a homicide has been related to the person that [the victim] met online." This source is no longer available on the original site; it is available on the Internet Archive, though that doesn't include the video. The archived version of the page includes a transcript that says 40, not 400, instances of homicides since 1995 (as of 2007) had been linked to people the victim met online; as the video is not available, it's hard to say if the transcript is accurate. So four things:

1. The source, given its unavailability in original form and the lack of video in archived form, seems unreliable to me, though for now I've flagged it as a failed verification.
2. Are forty homicides over a twelve-year period (that ended a decade ago) that have been mentioned in a single source that is no longer fully available really noteworthy? It's not as if all forty were committed by the same person.
3. The transcript does not mention the locale of the forty (or maybe four hundred) homicides. We don't know if they're in a single country, let alone which; if it's a region; or if it's the entire globe. To me, that makes the source fairly useless.
4. The text of the section is misleading. The same transcript that notes "over 40 instances" also states, "Since 1999, there has been over eight hundred thousand instances reported of date violence." Not only is the number in the text inaccurate, the text also leaves out a major contrast that the source includes. It seems written to provide something of a slanted perspective.
5. Given the above, it seems to me the section is essentially unsourced, biased, and uninformative, and I'm not sure there's a way to fix it. Might it be better to move the link to the "Internet relationship" page to the "See also" section of the article, or at least to delete the current text (as it's outdated, insufficiently sourced, and misleading) and simply link to the "Internet relationship" page under the "Internet dating" subheader?

Subluxate (talk) 13:18, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

See also: Eamonn Walker?

What's the connection here? Doesn't seem to be anything in his personal life, so I'd have to guess it has to do with a role he played which seems like a bit of a stretch considering there's nothing else about the concept in fiction on the page. Would appreciate if anybody could reply with the relevance even if the link ends up removed. 2604:3D09:A27F:2EC0:3D97:7CC0:B8B7:7260 (talk) 01:22, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

• Good point--I deleted it. I see no relation. Drmies (talk) 01:25, 3 August 2024 (UTC)