An Anthology of Dark Internet Murders (Part 2)

We had a lot of fun last time we did one of these videos. In fact, we had so much fun that by 20 minutes into the video you had forgotten it was a Casual Criminalist episode. I’ve got some bad news for you, Simon, but that’s not going to happen this time around. Not only are today’s stories much darker, but they also involve children.

So if you need to take a break and go record something else instead while you mentally prepare for this, now is your last chance to turn back. Or maybe you’ll just take a break halfway through. I don’t know; I’m not the boss of you.

With that out of the way, it’s time to begin our descent into the murderous depths of the internet.

The Imperfect Alibi

Thirty-two year old Natalie McNally was living a rather peaceful and pleasant life in the town of Lurgan in Northern Ireland. She had earned a law degree before switching paths and getting her master’s in Marketing and Business from Queen’s University Belfast, eventually getting a marketing job at Translink, the area’s public transportation provider.

Besides her job, Natalie was very involved working as an activist. Some of her activism was related to better public services for people with type 1 diabetes, a condition she had suffered with since she was only 3. But most of her activism was dedicated to fighting for women’s rights and the LGBT community.

Everyone who knew Natalie described her as being very happy with her life. She lived in Lurgan with her dog and two cats, had a loving family who were well known and respected in the area, and she had a new boyfriend, 33 year old Stephen McCullagh. The two had only been together for a few months, but they already had a baby on the way. Natalie was 15 weeks pregnant, and she couldn’t have been happier.

Her parents, Bernie and Noel, were happy as well, much happier than I imagine I’d have been if my daughter was that far along in a pregnancy with a man she’d only been dating a few months. But apparently Natalie’s three brothers were all more careful than her boyfriend, because this was going to be her parents’ first grandchild. They were thrilled at the prospect of grandkids, plus they thought that the couple was really in love. Well, they thought Natalie was in love anyway.

Bernie and Noel had barely even met Stephen by this point.

On the night of Sunday, December 18, 2022, Natalie was visiting with her parents to watch Argentina defeat France in the World Cup finals. She was a huge soccer fan and would frequently spend time with her parents, as their home in Craigavon was just a few miles away from Lurgan. After the game, it was time for Natalie to head home. She had a much anticipated Christmas vacation coming up, but she still had to work the next morning.

She had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for three days later to find out the sex of the baby, which Bernie was going to accompany her to, so Natalie packed up her car with some wrapping paper and said that she’d give Bernie a call on Monday or Tuesday before driving home.

Once she was home, Natalie took a look at social media, as you do. There was a Twitter post from Stephen saying that he was going live on YouTube soon with a special holiday stream of some GTA4. She liked the post, and he texted her asking her to wish him good luck. She did, then said that she might take a peek at the stream a little later.

Stephen’s YouTube channel had over 35,000 subscribers, but it wasn’t a full time job for him. His channel was mainly focused on collectible toys, specifically Doctor Who, and a lot of Battlebots content as well. He uploaded videos consistently and had a couple perform reasonably well, but in general he struggled to get more than just a couple thousand views.

He also wasn’t really a streamer, and this was his first stream in over a year, with the previous one having been the first stream in nearly a year. Even at the height of his streaming, which was already years in the past, it looks like he barely averaged one stream per month. A lot of his other work involved producing, directing, and appearing in other digital content, but his most “official” job was as a part time assistant audience editor for the Belfast Telegraph.

I had to look up what that job is, but it sounds like a combination of SEO, running social media, taking reader feedback, and so on. For print media like the Belfast Telegraph, it basically sounds like the job is to be the young person who can impress old people with a basic understanding of modern technology and current trends. Regardless, the point of all this is that this stream was a special event that Stephen had planned, not a typical Sunday night for his channel.

The next morning, Natalie didn’t show up for work. If any of her coworkers were aware she was pregnant then they may have just attributed a potential tardy arrival to a particularly brutal bout of morning sickness, but as the hours dragged on that would have become less likely. She also wasn’t answering her phone, which was unexpected and a bit concerning.

It wasn’t just work that Natalie was ignoring, either. She also wasn’t answering calls from Stephen. His home in Lisburn was only about 20 minutes away, so that night he decided to go check on her to make sure that she and their unborn baby were okay. They were not okay, and no sooner had Stephen arrived at her house than he called emergency services. There was blood everywhere. Natalie had been viciously beaten and stabbed to death.

When police arrived on the scene, Stephen was promptly arrested, because of course he was. Everyone knows that like 90% of the time it’s the boyfriend or husband, and he was the person to find the body. It would be irresponsible of them not to take Stephen into custody, and these cops were surprisingly on the ball. I know on this channel we frequently wind up shitting on local police and waiting for the FBI to come fix things (or I guess for the NCA since this was taking place in the UK), but these police honestly did a really good job throughout the entire investigation.

In the initial interview with Stephen, he was able to show them his YouTube livestream. It had started at 6 pm and run until just after midnight. Natalie’s time of death had been determined to be about 24 hours before her body was reported, right in the middle of the time that he was live. When asked about anyone that might have hurt Natalie, Stephen said that she had an ex-boyfriend who had recently been harassing her.

Given his alibi and the potential lead he offered police, Stephen was released from custody the day after being taken in. The following day, an unnamed 32 year old man was arrested. It’s possible that this was the ex-boyfriend that Stephen had mentioned, but there’s no way to be sure. I can tell you that the ex was definitely looked into, and it was incontrovertibly proven that he was nowhere near Lurgan on the day of the murder.

Following the second arrest, the police held a press conference. They had already announced that Natalie’s death was suspicious, but this time they gave more details about the cause of death, as well as adding that she had been pregnant. Of course they asked for information from the public as well, but this wasn’t your typical “if you or anyone you know has information about this please come forward” sort of request. I mean, they said that part too, but they had a much more specific request as well.

Police asked for anyone who owned a dash cam and happened to be driving on Kiln Road between 8:45 pm and 9:45 pm on the night of the murder to come forward with their dash cam footage, as they believed someone may have unknowingly caught the murderer on camera. The next day they released CCTV footage of a man they believed to be the murderer walking down the street and approaching Natalie’s home.

In the weeks that followed, little information was released about the case publically. There was another arrest of an unnamed man who was later released, but it didn’t seem to be amounting to much. On Christmas Day Natalie’s family held a wake for her, and the day after was her funeral. Several hundred people attended her service, with thousands attending vigils for Natalie and an end to violence against women, the sort of event that she would have been likely to partake in herself.

But while little information was being released to the public, the police were doing plenty behind the scenes. They had obtained over 4,000 hours of CCTV footage, and had been able to piece together nearly the entirety of the killer’s journey. They also recovered the murder weapon, which was a knife that had come from inside Natalie’s house. There had been no sign of forced entry and this attack seemed very targeted, so it was their belief that the killer was someone close to Natalie who she would have felt safe letting into her house at night.

The case seemed to be dragging on, but police later revealed that it took so long because this was a highly complex case in terms of evidence collection. In their guts they almost certainly knew that Stephen was the killer, but they had already let him go once, so they didn’t want to arrest him again until they were sure they had enough evidence.

One of the things that made him appear so suspicious to police was that his behaviour seemed incredibly strange for someone who had just lost his girlfriend and unborn child. His social media showed him continuing his life as if nothing happened, and he never once called the police to ask for an update on the case. To be fair, I’ve always said that I don’t put a lot of weight on things like that, as everybody grieves and handles death differently. And honestly, I’m not sure that bugging the detectives for updates would be particularly helpful for either party, unless he had new information that could be of use to them.

Besides, Stephen had an alibi. He was live on YouTube to an audience of…I actually have no idea how many people were watching him live, but it was more than zero as evidenced by the chat. There was a funny thing about that chat though, and about the stream in general.

In addition to your basic introduction, the first 10 minutes or so of the stream was dedicated to explaining all of the technical issues that Stephen had been experiencing while trying to set up his stream. It was a long list of lies, I mean complaints, but the upshot was this: Stephen said that because his computer sucked and OBS was acting up, he would be unable to read chat during the stream.

That’s already a bit weird, as interacting with chat (even if it’s just to make fun of them) is one of the main jobs of any good streamer. Otherwise, what’s the point in bothering to watch live? Stephen even acknowledged that he could choose to look at chat on his phone occasionally, but that he decided against it because he hated streams where the person was just talking to chat. Which, again, is like half the point of a stream.

Why do you think “just chatting” is consistently the most popular category on Twitch? His other excuse for not looking at chat on his phone was that if he used his phone, he’d just start scrolling through TikTok.

And that brings us back to the evidence collection I mentioned. A lot of the investigation was spent waiting for the results of digital forensics, who were meticulously examining the electronic devices of everyone involved, retrieving data that a lot of people don’t even realize exists. Things like a complete log of every time a phone was unlocked or swiped open. And of course, deleted files.

On Stephen’s computer, they found a deleted video file that was just over 6 hours long containing the entirety of his stream. By itself, that wouldn’t necessarily be weird. It’s not uncommon for streamers to make a local recording in case something goes wrong with the VOD. However, this video was originally recorded days before the stream, and it was deleted as soon as the stream ended.

This meant that Stephen wasn’t live on YouTube at all, he just had a six hour prerecorded video streaming on his channel that could serve as the perfect alibi. You know, so long as nobody on the police force knew the first thing about computers.

But delving deeper into the video, it’s even worse than just a fake stream allegedly meant to let him get away with murder. He also seemed to have filled the stream with Easter eggs regarding the true motivation for this recording. A little over 3 hours into making the video, Stephen took a ten minute break. That’s not to be unexpected, especially since he was drinking heavily, but it seems like the timing was intentional.

This break would have aired from about 9:15 pm to 9:25 pm, believed to be the exact time that Natalie was being murdered. Near the end of the break, the background music and “live stream back soon” title card vanished, instead being replaced with the poster for the James Bond movie No Time to Die. At another point in the video, Stephen was complaining about the physics engine, saying that whatever happened in the game would “abso-fucking-notly” happen in the real world.

He then paused and said “abso-fucking-Natalie”, while chuckling to himself and smiling at the camera. There are probably other supposed Easter eggs as well, but I’m not sitting through six hours of shitty gameplay to find them.

When asked about this by the police, Stephen said it was all totally normal (it’s not) and that streamers prerecorded their videos all the time (they don’t). When an internet performer records themselves for publication at a later date, we call those YouTube videos, like the one you’re watching now. Though he admitted to recording the video ahead of time, Stephen said that he spent the night at home getting shitfaced. This, even though he was supposed to not be drinking alcohol at all in solidarity with Natalie, who was unable to drink for obvious reasons.

There was another interesting recording found on Stephen’s phone as well. Though he had barely met Natalie’s family before her murder, he spent a lot of time at their house afterwards, trying to ingratiate himself to them by playing the part of the heartbroken and grieving boyfriend. However, during one of these visits, he “accidentally” left his phone at Bernie and Noel’s house, recording audio for 40 minutes as a sort of makeshift bug. It’s believed that he did this to determine whether or not they suspected him of Natalie’s murder.

On January 31, 2023, Stephen was again arrested, and on February 2 he was officially charged with murder. It was at this time that a lot more evidence began coming out, parts of the investigation that the police had hidden from the public. In addition to the things I just mentioned, there was also a lot of CCTV footage.

Police had shown a single clip of a man walking down the street, but cameras caught the man boarding a bus to Lurgan, walking down a number of streets, and arriving at Natalie’s house carrying a rucksack. There was even footage from inside the bus, showing the man sitting almost motionlessly, except to take a sip of Coke.

Unfortunately, he had a hood on and was wearing a face mask, so the person couldn’t be identified by their face. At one point on this journey the man dropped some money. He removed his black glove to pick it up, but beneath the black glove was a yellow Marigold glove. While gloves are a great (though not infallible) way to conceal your fingerprints, technology has come a long way.

Where glove prints were once deemed useless, they can now be used to identify the material and often even brand of the glove being worn. And there happened to be bloody prints in Natalie’s house left behind by Marigold gloves.

This was all extremely strong evidence that the person in all these CCTV clips was the killer, but was there any way to tie it directly to Stephen? Not from those videos, but the person’s journey continued from Natalie’s house to downtown Lurgan, where he got into a fonaCAB taxi he had ordered using an app. The taxi picked the person up outside of a pub, but the passenger requested to be dropped off at a different address than the one he had entered on the app. He claimed that he had to go see his sick mother or some other bullshit.

Obviously the goal with this was so that fonaCAB wouldn’t have a record of where he was really dropped off, but there was still a record of the ride taking place. It also turns out that taxi drivers have both GPS and fucking eyes, so the cabbie was easily able to identify Stephen as his passenger, as well as identifying the location where he dropped the passenger off, which was Stephen’s house. Since there was a record of the ride, the company was able to confirm that the passenger had been dropped off at 11:13 pm. And thanks to those data logs recovered by digital forensics, it was shown that at 11:16 pm, Stephen’s phone was manually swiped open for the first time in over five hours.

Although he has been charged with Natalie’s murder, Stephen has not yet gone to trial. The trial is set to begin this September (quite possibly around the time this video is finally released), so until then he is only allegedly a murderer. But the evidence, of which there is a lot, definitely does not look good.

Of course, this does all leave one simple question: why? What would possibly be Stephen’s motivation for allegedly murdering his pregnant girlfriend? It’s quite possible that Simon just said (or at least thought) that it doesn’t matter what the asshole’s motivation was and to strap him in the chair. That said, the purported motive is simple jealousy.

It’s claimed that on December 15, three days before the murder, Stephen unlocked Natalie’s phone and saw WhatsApp messages between her and an ex-boyfriend. Later that same day, he recorded his fake livestream. The prosecution argues that “sexualized contact” with her ex and with others “over a period of time” was the catalyst for the murder. The terms used are pretty vague, but the implication that Stephen allegedly murdered his girlfriend of a few months for talking to other people is not.

It’s also worth noting that this wouldn’t be the first time something like this had happened. In 2019, Stephen’s then girlfriend alleged that he hit her after seeing something on her phone that he didn’t like. When interviewed by police in 2019, Stephen admitted that he hit her, but basically said that she had it coming. That was apparently good enough for the authorities, as prosecutors decided not to go forward with the case.

His ex-girlfriend eventually withdrew the allegations, but again, he still admitted to getting violent with someone he was dating because he didn’t like what was on their phone.

For the time being, we’ll just have to wait and see what the verdict is. When the trial begins, it’s expected to last 3 or 4 weeks. Until then, Stephen is being held without bail. It’s being argued by the prosecution that, even though it failed, he had a sophisticated plan to avoid suspicion and is “capable of deception beyond imagination”. I don’t know how accurate that is, and it seems the judge denied him bail for the same reason he had a job: because a lot of old people don’t understand technology.

Aside from being deemed a potential flight risk, as far as I can tell the main factor for denying bail was that, because all of the evidence is technology based, surely there would be a way for Stephen to tamper with or destroy all of the evidence that’s already been collected by the authorities. You know, because he’s good with computers. That’s not really how that works and I question how tech savvy he actually is, but I’m not going to lose any sleep about him being locked away until the trial either, especially since I suspect he’ll be going right back to prison once the verdict is decided.

The Disappearance of Chyenne Kircher

On October 13, 2011, 14 year old Chyenne Kircher didn’t show up for school. At first, this looked like a normal case of a girl who ran away from home. To start, she had left a note that read:

Dear Mom,

Don’t try to look for me, you won’t find me. I’m just not happy here.

Love, Chy

The note was in her handwriting and didn’t appear to have been written under duress, which certainly suggested that she was a genuine runaway. And even a cursory investigation would have provided plenty of reasons why she might have done so.

Chyenne’s home life was dysfunctional, to say the least. The small house in East Dubuque, Illinois was home to more people than could comfortably fit. There was Chyenne, her mother, Lori Lyons, her stepfather, Terry Abbas, her two brothers, and her mother’s boyfriend, Steve Staver. Although he was her stepfather, Chyenne had always referred to Terry as “Dad”, as she never met her biological father.

But there was much more than just this unconventional collection of people that led people to call Chyenne’s life dysfunctional. When police initially began investigating her disappearance, one of the first things they noticed was how horrible the house smelled. There was trash, dirty laundry, dirty dishes, and open (presumably spoiled) food containers everywhere.

One neighbour recounted how Chyenne would be kicked out of the house and locked out for hours at a time on a nearly daily basis. When she was locked out she would often spend time with those neighbours, who cooked her meals knowing that it was unlikely she had eaten recently. Neighbours and teachers alike noted how Chyenne always appeared disheveled and unwashed.

School wasn’t necessarily better for her either. Although she liked attention and desperately wanted to fit in, she was incredibly socially awkward and was in special education classes due to a mild learning disability, which led to some amount of bullying from other students.

So there was reason that she might have run away, but there were still a few details that didn’t make sense. Her jacket, shoes, and most importantly phone were all still in the house. Chyenne was described as being glued to her phone, which I was originally going to say makes sense for a 14 year old, but honestly that’s true of most people at any age these days. Even if she left the phone behind for fear of being tracked, she would have still needed shoes.

And with winter fast approaching, the jacket would have been nice too.

But aside from those suspiciously forgotten items and the goodbye letter, Chyenne hadn’t really left anything behind to act as a clue. Or at least not that police realized. They searched her social media, and it was mostly normal 14 year old girl stuff. She had a couple YouTube channels, first Shyenne2010 and then chychylove2011, but police didn’t see anything unusual in these. Unfortunately, that’s only because they weren’t looking hard enough.

There was one thing they had discovered when examining her browsing history, and that’s that Chyenne appeared to be talking to older men from all over the country. These men were all looked into, but none were found to have anything to do with her disappearance. And that was the last lead police had. Some of the details seemed suspicious, but there were no obvious signs of foul play, so the case was largely just written off as a runaway/missing person case for the next two years.

Like I said though, the police weren’t looking at Chyenne’s online activity hard enough. But admittedly I am working with the gift of hindsight, so I don’t want to be too critical of them for missing things that might only seem obvious in retrospect.

To start, there are those conversations she was having with older men. No details were given, but if they were of interest to the police then we can probably all guess what kind of conversations they were. Even if the people she was talking to weren’t involved, that doesn’t make this information any less important.

It’s very common for people who experienced some sort of abuse or trauma to actively seek out ways to reenact that trauma as a way of helping them to cope with it. It’s not generally considered a healthy coping mechanism, but the compulsion for victims to repeat their trauma in a setting where they feel they might have some sort of control over changing the outcome is well known. If Chyenne was talking to a lot of older men, it might have been in the police’s best interest to take a closer look at older men in her life who had the opportunity to hurt her.

And that brings us back to her YouTube channels. Most of it is weird and doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s also pretty much what you would expect from a 14 year old in the early-ish days of YouTube. Some of the videos only feature Chyenne, but she would also perform skits with her brothers as well.

Terry could frequently be seen in these videos too, but not because he was part of the skits. He was just there, working at his desk, and the house was so cramped that there was nowhere else for anyone to go. When he got involved it was mostly just playful banter with Chyenne, and it all seemed relatively harmless. All until the very last video on Chyenne’s channel.

A video that might have served as a warning of things to come, had it not sat in total obscurity, almost completely unwatched for the five months between the upload and her disappearance.

Chyenne had prepared a skit with her older brother, and she began streaming on YouTube. The video opened with her sitting on her bed, saying that she was bored and contemplating what to do. Then she looked at the camera and loudly declared, “I know what I can do!” before standing up. Presumably this was supposed to be her brother’s cue, but instead it was Terry who walked in.

As soon as Chyenne saw him, her bubbly on camera persona disappeared momentarily. She grabbed his arms and tried to quietly mumble a warning to him, but her audio was still picked up clearly: “I’m on a live, so be careful.” He said okay, and the two quickly reverted to their on camera personalities, engaging in a brief slap fight. Eventually her brother joined the video as well, and it went back to the normal, somewhat incoherent content that she was used to creating.

But that quiet warning from Chyenne to Terry as he stepped into her bedroom shouldn’t have gone unnoticed in the investigation, especially as it occurred only 23 seconds into the video. What would have been much easier to miss, but no less unsettling, were the hints from her older brother that he might have known what was going on.

In a previous video in which Terry was working at his desk in the background, her brother said, “That’s that creepy guy that lives downstairs. Oh, I mean my stepdad, Terry.” And in this final video, when Chyenne started showing off her Michael Jackson shirt to the camera, coincidentally right after Terry walked back into the room, he said “yeah, she’s into a child molester.” Of course, it’s unclear whether he really did know something or was just a teenager making rude comments.

Unfortunately, none of this was scrutinized by the investigation, and since there was no other evidence the trail went cold. As time went on, however, an increasing sense of concern began to mount. Even though she was essentially the textbook example of a child who would legitimately run away, fitting into every high risk category for runaways, to disappear so completely was unusual to say the least.

After a few weeks or definitely a few months, there should have been a phone call to her grandparents or a Facebook message to one of her friends, something to let a person she trusted know that she was okay. But there was nothing.

In June of 2013, nearly two years after Chyenne’s disappearance, a special task force was created with police from four cities in the county as well as the Illinois State Police. The task force wasn’t created specifically for the purpose of finding Chyenne, but she was going to be their first case. To start, they wanted to take another look at Chyenne’s friends and see if anyone knew anything.

This led to two hugely important discoveries. The first was that some of Chyenne’s friends now revealed that she had confided in them Terry was sexually abusing her. The second was that her best friend in the world, the person who she was considered to be inseparable from, had moved to Wisconsin. Police believed, or at least hoped, that her friend’s family had taken Chyenne in and moved her with them to Wisconsin.

But in order to find out the investigation was going to need to cross state lines, which meant it was time to get the FBI involved.

An agent went to Wisconsin to interview the friend, and bluntly asked her, “Where’s Chyenne? She’s here, isn’t she?” Her friend immediately broke down into tears and said, “She’s dead.” Not because she knew anything the police didn’t, but because if Chyenne hadn’t shown up yet then it seemed like the only option. And after speaking with the girl, the FBI agent was convinced as well. The home in Wisconsin had been their best chance of finding Chyenne alive, and they no longer believed she was just a runaway.

But there was still no evidence. Authorities had no proof that Terry had abused Chyenne, nor could they prove he was responsible for killing her. Their only hope in advancing the case was either to find her body or to get Terry to confess. There wasn’t enough manpower to keep Terry under constant surveillance, so instead they put a tracking device on his car. They hoped that, given the increased police interest in the case, perhaps he would return to the body to move it or better conceal its location.

Once the tracker was in place, agents watched from a laptop as Terry went for a drive to a gas station and then across a bridge into Iowa, at which point the tracker stopped working. There was no way to know whether Terry had found the bug and tossed it over the bridge into the Mississippi River or if it had fallen off on its own, but either way it would no longer be able to lead them to the body. With that option gone, all they could do was bring Terry in for questioning.

He was given a polygraph test, with some reports saying that he passed and others saying that he failed. The results of the test are irrelevant anyway, and not just because polygraphs are bullshit. After the test was administered, Terry was taken to another room to be interviewed further. Inconsistencies quickly started appearing in his story, and he finally broke down and confessed to everything.

Sort of, anyway. The first confession was full of half truths to try to absolve himself of some guilt, but eventually the police got the real story.

The day before her disappearance, Terry took Chyenne into the woods behind their house. After having sex with her, he strangled her to death with his bare hands. Originally he claimed that he dug a hole to bury her in afterwards, but he eventually confessed that he had dug the hole the day before. As if that wasn’t evidence enough of premeditation, there was also the note Chyenne had written for her mother.

Terry had Chyenne write the note a month before her death, telling her that they were going to use it to prank her mother. That never happened, and he had instead been saving the note for this occasion. He agreed to take police to Chyenne’s body, which was buried just 100 yards from the family home. Terry pled guilty to murder, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, and concealing a homicidal death.

He was sentenced to life in prison, and none of the reporting mentions a possibility of parole. I can only hope that is because there is none.

I know this story was a little rough, Simon, but brace yourself because today’s final story is going to be a whole lot worse.

Amanda Todd and The Daily Capper

People much younger than Simon or me might recognize the following image:

This is from a show called Crashbox, an educational show produced by HBO in 1999. It was a stop motion animation show that took place inside a computer or something, and the show targeted grade school kids who were outgrowing shows like Sesame Street.

One of the recurring segments on the show was called Distraction News, which is where the above image comes from. In these segments, the newscaster, Dora Smarmy, would read off random educational tidbits while all sorts of random bullshit happened on the screen to distract you. At the end of the segment, Dora would then quiz the viewer with five questions about what she had just reported on.

Honestly, this seems like a really stupid idea. While there may be specific reasons that a person would want to practice focusing on something while surrounded by distractions, in general this isn’t a good way to learn. I don’t ever remember showing up to school and having my teacher say, “Today I’m going to teach you how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem while these dogs bark at a screaming child and someone puts on a laser light show. And yes, this will be on the test.”

While I question whether or not Distraction News was successful in teaching anyone literally anything, a lot of people have fond memories of these segments and of Crashbox in general. But for others, the above image is the stuff of nightmares. Not because stop motion animation is inherently kinda creepy, but because of the YouTube show that used that image as their backdrop. Dora’s news anchor voice was replaced with a horrible, early 2000s speech to text voice, used to narrate a show called The Daily Capper.

In this context, a capper is a person who takes screencaps. Specifically, the show was about people taking screencaps of predominantly underage girls who had been convinced to expose themselves on various cam sites. The capping community was highly organized, working together to target girls who they wanted to see exposed, sharing the photos and videos, and in many cases, blackmailing them. And The Daily Capper was their weekly news program, sharing constant updates about what was going on in the capping community.

It was all publically available on YouTube for anybody to find. And on DailyMotion, MetaCafe, Motherless, and I think some other places as well, though virtually all of these videos have been deleted by this point. In the show they also made references to a newsletter, which I can only assume was far more explicit than the show designed to be safe for YouTube.

Obviously it’s fucked up that something like this existed, but the show was also a bit weird in general. It was clearly made by a member of the capping community, someone who was passionate enough about what they were doing to want to provide news and updates for everyone. They referred to the captured videos as wins or epic wins, and were clearly promoting capping in general.

However, the show was also written with a healthy dose of contempt directed at all parties involved. And not in a playful or satirical way, like when I broke Simon last episode by referring to him as an “asexual entity”. Obviously The Daily Capper was going to show contempt for their victims, who they coldly referred to as cam whores. But they weren’t really much nicer to the cappers, either.

Cappers were described on the show as being lonely perverts and pedophiles. I don’t really disagree with that sentiment, but since they were the target audience of the show it seems weird to talk about them like that. The show also talked about how annoying some of the members were, with one of the names that came up the most often being a capper by the name of Viper. Whoever was behind The Daily Capper really seemed to dislike Viper, which is actually going to be important later.

Hell, this Viper guy was so annoying that he was even nominated for “most annoying” for the 2010 Capper Awards.

That’s right, there was even an annual awards show, voted on by the community. And there were several thousand votes cast for each category. A lot of the categories were things you would expect such as “cam whore of the year”, “cam site of the year”, and “blackmailer of the year”.

However, that last category shows just how brazen the community was fifteen years ago. You would expect that The Daily Capper would prominently feature YouTube friendly images of the girls being talked about, but the show used real images and even the real names of the blackmailers whenever possible as well. I know 15 years feels like an eternity in internet time, so to give some sort of context as to how long ago this was, the Jessi Slaughter “Consequences will never be the same” incident was nominated for “LULZ moment of the year” in this same show.

And speaking of brazen, one of the other categories was “shocker of the year”, featuring a truly mind blowing event: girls meeting their cappers face to face. Obviously the girls involved (at least the ones not being blackmailed), didn’t understand that they were victims in all of this. There was even a “couple of the year” category, because many of the girls believed they were in romantic relationships with the men that were just using them until they got bored.

But what made this truly shocking is that the couples appeared live on cam together. Grown men showed their faces on livestreams with girls as young as 13 who believed that the older man was her boyfriend rather than a predator that was collecting and sharing compromising videos of her with his online buddies. These cappers had no problem showing their faces because they thought nobody would ever see. The only people watching these streams were either other cappers or other teenagers, and despite being available for anyone to see, The Daily Capper lived in obscurity.

That was the way it was for years, and that was the way they assumed it was going to remain. Of course, that didn’t mean that there were never consequences for the cappers’ actions. Everything they were doing was super fucking illegal, and whenever one of them got arrested The Daily Capper was there to broadcast headlines like “this fag was arrested yesterday for blackmail”, with regards to 21 year old Trevor Shea, sentenced to 33 years in prison for exploiting 10 girls aged 13 to 16.

They also talked about the “homeless pedophile” Jimmy Lee Cook, a 42 year old man camping in the woods behind the church and using free public wifi to coerce girls to upload videos of themselves to YouTube. It took the efforts of multiple law enforcement agencies to track him down, though he was only sentenced to 160 months (13.3 years) despite already having prior convictions like armed robbery.

And what did The Daily Capper, a show dedicated to celebrating, encouraging, and promoting these monsters call the people who got them arrested? Heroes. YouTuber TimeToSmite was even nominated for the 2010 “hero of the year” award for his role in helping police track down and apprehend Jimmy Cook. They were probably calling the people heroes ironically, seeing as this is the same show that reported, “Epic win was delivered in the form of four thirteen year old girls from blogTV Jr [who] stripped it all for a room of 300”, but it’s honestly really hard to tell given the apparent contempt towards so many of the cappers.

Like I said though, this was all supposed to be an obscure corner of the internet, only ever discovered by fans of child exploitation. Despite the numerous arrests of cappers that the show reported on, authorities always seemed to believe they were isolated cases. They never considered, or at least could never prove, that the people they arrested were part of a large organized network of criminals.

But that was all going to change on October 10, 2012, when 15 year old Amanda Todd was found in her home in Coquitlam, British Columbia after hanging herself. The story made international headlines, and all the initial reporting from mainstream media outlets claimed that she was a victim of cyberbullying and harassment. That’s certainly true and the internet has apparently turned kids into fucking monsters, but there was much more to the story than the media seemed to be aware of, even though they wouldn’t have had to look very hard to uncover the truth.

Amanda was, by and large, an ordinary girl. She was involved in a lot of activities growing up including swimming, figure skating, cheerleading, gymnastics, and ice hockey. Those things kept her busy, but above all else she loved to sing. However, she did suffer from some unspecified language-based learning disability.

The good news is that her mother, Carol, was a special education teacher, so she was able to recognize that at a very young age. Carol knew that raising Amanda was going to take more time and effort than it would for a typical child, and she was fully prepared for that. The bad news is that knowing a problem exists doesn’t make the problem magically go away, so Amanda struggled academically.

This, rather predictably, resulted in a lot of bullying and taunting from her classmates. Some of her teachers even assumed that she was just a bad child, because they were either unaware of or dispassionate towards Amanda’s disability. What they saw as her misbehaving or being disobedient was just Amanda’s inability to communicate what she wanted to say. Eventually she was able to work past that difficulty with teachers, but it still made those early years of school undoubtedly miserable.

And the bullying about her grades never stopped as she got older, as Amanda consistently remained at the bottom of her class.

Like I said though, above all else Amanda loved to sing. That was the entire reason she started visiting cam sites in the first place, as it gave her a chance to sing in front of an audience and hopefully make some friends. On September 6, 2012, just a month before her suicide, Amanda created a YouTube channel: TheSomebodyToKnow. The next day she uploaded her very first video to the channel.

Anyone that knew her probably would have assumed that she’d upload videos of her singing, but that’s not what this was at all. Amanda didn’t say a word. Instead, she stood in front of the camera for 9 minutes, filming herself in black and white as she held up a stack of papers, turning them one by one. It was the piece of the puzzle that all those news outlets missed, and what would have made it clear that this was much more than a case of some online bullying.

The video was titled “My Story: Struggling, Bullying, Suicide, Self Harm”. While I normally don’t like to include long quotes when I can avoid it, I’ve decided that rather than paraphrase the video, it would be best to let Amanda tell you her story in her own words and in its entirety, as everything she wrote was true and without exaggeration:

Hello!

I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story.

In 7th grade I would go with friends on webcam Meet and talk to new people. Then got called stunning, beautiful, perfect, etc… Then wanted me to flash… So I did…1 year later…

I got a message on facebook From him… Don’t know how he knew me.

It said…If you don’t put on a show for me I will send your boobs.

He knew my address, school, relatives, family names.

Christmas break…

Knock at my door at 4am…

It was the police… my photo was sent to everyone.

I then got really sick and got…

Anxiety, major depression and panic disorder.

I then moved and got into drugs + alcohol…

My anxiety got worse… couldn’t go out

A year past and the guy came back with my new list of friends and school. But made a facebook page

My boobs were his profile pic…

Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me… again…

Then nobody liked me name calling, judged…

I can never get that photo back

It’s out there. Forever…

I started cutting…

I promised myself never again…

Didn’t have any friends and I sat at lunch alone so I moved schools again…

Everything was better even though I sat still alone at lunch in the library everyday.

After a month later I started talking to an old guy friend

We back and forth texted and he started to say he liked me…Led me on…He had a girlfriend… then he said come over my girlfriend’s on vacation

So I did… huge mistake…

He hooked up with me…

I thought he liked me…

1 week later I get a text, “get out of your school…”

His girlfriend and 15 others came including himself…

The girl and 2 others just said, “look around nobody likes you” in front of my new school (50) people..

A guy then yelled “just punch her already”

So she did… She threw me to the ground and punched me several times.

Kids filmed it. I was all alone and left on the ground.

I felt like a joke in this world… I thought nobody deserve this :/

I was alone… I lied and said it was my fault and my idea.

I didn’t want him getting hurt, I thought he really liked me but he just wanted the sex… Someone yelled “punch her already.”

Teachers ran over but I just went and laid in a ditch and my dad found me.

I wanted to die so bad… when he brought me home I drank bleach…

It killed me inside and I thought I was gonna actually die.

Ambulance came and brought me to the hospital and flushed me.

After I got home all I saw was on facebook - “She deserved it”, “did you wash the mud out of your hair?”, “I hope she’s dead.”

Nobody cared. I moved away to another city to my mom’s.

Another school… I didn’t wanna press charges because I wanted to move on.

6 months has gone by… people are pasting pics of bleach, Clorex and ditches tagging me… I was doing a lot better too… They said…

She should try a different bleach. I hope she dies this time and isn’t so stupid.

They said I hope she sees this and kills herself…

Why do I get this? I messed up but why follow me…

I left your guys city… I’m constantly crying now.

Everyday I think why am I still here?

My anxiety is horrible now…never went out this summer.

All from my past… life’s never getting better… can’t go to school

Meet or be with people… constantly cutting… I’m really depressed.

I’m on antidepressants now and counseling and a month ago this summer

I overdosed…In hospital for 2 days…

I’m stuck… what’s left of me now… nothing stops.

I have nobody… I need someone :(

My name is Amanda Todd.

The video then showed an image of Amanda’s arm covered in freshly bleeding cuts, followed by a picture of her bandaged wrist with “hope” written on the bandage. The final image was Amanda’s arm with the words “stay strong” written in marker, inspired by singer Demi Lovato’s wrist tattoos she had gotten the previous year.

Amanda had been begging her parents to let her get it as a real tattoo for her 16th birthday, but she never got the chance. Instead, a month after her death and just before what would have been her 16th birthday, Amanda’s father Norman got the tattoo instead, even having some of her ashes mixed into the tattoo ink.

This tragic chain of events had begun about three years earlier when a 12 year old Amanda would stream herself singing, unaware that her audience was full of predators. They eventually convinced her to flash the camera. One of the cappers saved the image and tried to use it to blackmail Amanda into performing a private show for him, but she refused.

Even if she had given in to the blackmail, it’s unlikely that things would have gone differently anyway. The typical modus operandi for these blackmailers was to threaten girls into performing private shows for them, using each subsequent recording as further blackmail to push the victims into doing more and more. Then, once the blackmailers got tired of them, they would release all of the saved content to the victims’ friends and families anyway.

It didn’t help matters that, once the picture of Amanda had been saved, it quickly spread through the capping community like so many other images. She was mentioned in the December 19, 2010 episode of The Daily Capper, only encouraging more predators to go and harass her. It seems that Amanda had been made aware of the show, and she tried to leave a comment saying that the show should report on the fact that she had gone to the police who were out looking for the man trying to blackmail her. The channel required manual approval for every comment, so her attempt to contact the show wasn’t made public until almost two years later.

And what she said was true, at least as far as she knew. Her family had gone to the police multiple times, so she certainly had reason to believe that the police were all over this. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Each time Amanda’s parents went to the RCMP, they were told that there was nothing they could do. The closest they came to being able to help was suggesting that Amanda stay off the internet.

About a year after she first changed schools, Amanda was contacted on Facebook by someone using the name Tyler Boo. He identified himself as the person that had blackmailed her originally, and he attempted to again, threatening to repeat what had happened at her previous school. When she moved again, this time he did it under the name Austin Collins.

The piece of shit would pose as an incoming transfer student who was moving there the following week, using that as a guise to friend as many people at Amanda’s new schools as possible. Once he had made contact with as many of her classmates (and even teachers) as he could, he would then spread her images to all of them, resulting in a new cycle of bullying.

But this was much worse than just schoolyard bullying like news stories had originally portrayed it, although clearly bullying has changed a lot since I was a kid as well. I can’t even fathom what the fuck was wrong with her classmates that they would be actively encouraging someone to kill themselves. Especially after Amanda switched schools. This girl hadn’t even been at their school long enough for anyone to know her, let alone hate her, yet they were genuinely trying to get her to commit suicide.

But as fucked up and unconscionable as all of the bullying from classmates was, it was all the result of targeted harassment, stalking, and blackmail from a grown ass adult. And the police were powerless to do anything about it, up until the day that she took her own life. Even afterwards, the RCMP seemed to be completely useless. So much so that others had to step in, including Anonymous.

Within days of Amanda’s death, Anonymous released a short video in which they named Vancouver resident Kody Maxson as Amanda’s killer, along with a link to various documentation meant to prove the claim. Kody was picked up by the police, but they declined to press charges. They instead officially listed Kody as not a person of interest.

This pissed a whole lot of people off, because the name Kody Maxson hadn’t appeared out of thin air. Kody, real name Dakota William Shain Maxson, was better known as kody1206. And kody1206 was better known as The Daily Capper’s blackmailer of the year 2010. After being released, Kody instead pointed the finger at Viper, claiming that he was Amanda’s real blackmailer.

In a shocking turn of events, The Daily Capper decided to officially weigh in. After the 2010 capper awards, there had only been a single show in January of 2011, and then another on Halloween that year. For reasons unknown, whoever had been behind the show decided to pack it in (probably hoping to avoid legal liability in a case just like this one). Shortly after Amanda’s death, The Daily Capper returned after over a year of silence for one final show.

Even though Kody had been blackmailer of the year and Viper was considered one of the most annoying and hated people in the community, the show was dedicated to declaring Viper’s innocence and helping prove Kody’s guilt. One of their pieces of evidence was an anonymous email they had received. It read, “I just got the full dox of kody1206 (blackmailer of many like Peyton, Amanda, blah blah blah), Kody Maxson. Dedicate a huge portion of 1 of your shows to him and the details in that pic.

Will get lots of attention…and eventually a lulzy arrest.”

What was so interesting was that this email was sent back in December of 2010, nearly two full years before Amanda’s death, and the person was already claiming Kody as Amanda’s blackmailer. The picture in the e-mail contained the same information that was eventually released by Anonymous. Whoever was behind the show seemed absolutely convinced of Kody’s guilt, as was Anonymous, and basically the entire internet. So why did the police let Kody go?

Well they didn’t let him go completely. After all, he was still blackmailer of the year and a massive piece of shit. Even if he wasn’t responsible for blackmailing Amanda, he had blackmailed a whole lot of other young girls. On October15, 2012, Kody was charged with sexual assault and sexual interference of a person under 16.

However, you won’t find any information about a conviction related to those charges. In fact, those charges no longer show up in public records at all. Kody has a 2012 conviction that effectively amounts to petty theft and another in 2015 for trespassing, but there are no other records related to arrests or convictions for him. Yet what you will find are a whole lot of records about changing conditions of parole, dating back to 2013.

So despite Kody collecting and distributing nude images of underage girls and blackmailing dozens of them at minimum, he was free on parole within a year.

That’s beyond infuriating, and it probably has you wondering what the Hell the police are doing up there in Canada. While lenient prison sentences often defy reason, for once I can actually explain why he got off so easy.

To start, when Kody won the award for blackmailer of the year, he was only 16 or 17 years old. Since he was 19 when Amanda died he’s always talked about as an adult, but for most of this he was a minor as well. That doesn’t change the fact that what he did was completely fucking disgusting and deserves punishment, but does it deserve the same punishment as the 42 year old we mentioned getting arrested earlier? Because Kody’s crimes were so horrible I actually don’t know the morally correct answer to that, but typically there is some amount of leniency granted for crimes a person committed as a minor.

However there was something else at play here, something far more important. Anonymous, The Daily Capper, and public opinion all got it wrong, and the police really were right. According to an IT expert who investigated the case at the time, Kody Maxson was essentially a fictitious person created to throw investigators off the scent. That probably sounds confusing, since Kody was a real person that we’ve just been talking about, so let me explain.

All of the digital evidence used to tie the alias Kody Maxson to Amanda’s blackmail was anonymous and untraceable. And if you’re going to use an alias to commit crimes, why not just use the same alias as someone else who is already committing those exact same crimes? While you’re at it, why not gather up a bunch of evidence linking their alias to your crimes, combine it with an actual dox of that person, then e-mail it to a news show that enjoys mocking these people whenever they get arrested? And if that doesn’t work, just send that information to Anonymous and let them handle it.

So even though Kody was a disgusting piece of shit who ruined a lot of girls’ lives, in Amanda’s case he was actually being framed. And that, in addition to being a minor for a lot of this, is why Kody got off so light: because he turned state’s witness to help bring down someone even worse than he was.

That man was 33 year old Aydin Coban, a dual citizen of Turkey and the Netherlands. Aydin’s treatment of Amanda was nothing new for him, as he would frequently torment his victims for years on end. However, while a lot of the cappers were careless and easy to apprehend, Aydin was much more tech savvy. Not only did he have hundreds of dummy e-mail addresses and Facebook accounts, but he obscured his real location using proxy servers (kind of like VPNs, but not as secure).

He would also wipe all of his browsing history and cookies every time he left his computer to make himself harder to track.

Even once it reached the point when authorities were certain of Aydin’s guilt, they were having difficulty finding proof. That was when controversial tactics had to be utilized. A covert team of Dutch police broke into Aydin’s home when he wasn’t there and installed keylogging software onto his computer, allowing them to remotely see everything that he typed. Once they were able to monitor his online activities, they were able to get a proper warrant.

And the evidence they uncovered was massive. Not only was there a lot of illegal pornography, but Aydin had a database of 5,800 names and associated social media accounts, all representing potential targets. He was arrested in 2014 at the age of 35, and he was charged with extortion, internet luring, criminal harassment, and possession and distribution of child pornography.

It took almost three years for the case to go to trial and some of the charges were dropped, but Aydin was convicted in the Netherlands on charges of internet fraud and blackmail involving 39 different victims, which was by no means a comprehensive list. Among those victims who were excluded from this trial was Amanda. Instead, Canadian authorities requested Aydin’s extradition so that he could be charged and tried in Canada. In the Netherlands he was sentenced to 10 years and 8 months for his crimes, which seems really low especially given the number of victims and the extent of his torture.

In 2020, Aydin was finally extradited to Canada (while still serving his sentence) to go on trial again for his crimes against Amanda. He was found guilty on all four counts: extortion, child luring, criminal harassment, and distribution of her photos. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Unfortunately, even though the trial was held in Canada, the sentence was to be served in the Netherlands. This meant there had to be a conversion hearing, where they basically ensure that the sentence is in line with the laws of the country where the prisoner will be serving. And it wasn’t. It was decided that under Dutch law, Aydin would only serve 6 years for his crimes against Amanda.

All Amanda had wanted was to make friends and sing for people, but instead she was taken advantage of, exploited, and tormented to the point of taking her own life. And for his actions that can only be equated with murder, the Dutch legal system believes that 13 years is too much for Aydin to spend in prison, despite showing a complete and total lack of remorse for his actions. He is set to be released from prison before the decade is over. All that can be done now is to hope he doesn’t make it that long.

There are a lot of violent criminals behind bars who have children of their own, children that they love, and you know what they do to guys like him in prison. Maybe one of them will wind up nominated for hero of the year.

Key Takeaways

• Natalie McNally was a 32-year-old activist and marketing professional in Northern Ireland.
• Stephen McCullagh, Natalie’s boyfriend, was charged with her murder after evidence showed he faked a YouTube stream as an alibi.
• Chyenne Kircher, a 14-year-old girl, was murdered by her stepfather, Terry Abbas, after years of abuse.
• Amanda Todd’s suicide was the result of extensive online blackmail and harassment by a group known as cappers.
• The Daily Capper was a YouTube show that celebrated and promoted the activities of cappers, who targeted underage girls.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Natalie McNally?

Natalie McNally was a 32-year-old woman living in Lurgan, Northern Ireland. She had a law degree and a master’s in Marketing and Business from Queen’s University Belfast. She worked in marketing at Translink and was involved in activism for public services for people with type 1 diabetes, women’s rights, and the LGBT community. She was pregnant and had a boyfriend named Stephen McCullagh.

What was Natalie McNally’s cause of death?

Natalie McNally was viciously beaten and stabbed to death in her home.

What was Stephen McCullagh’s alibi for Natalie McNally’s murder?

Stephen McCullagh’s alibi was a prerecorded six-hour YouTube livestream of him playing GTA4, which was supposed to cover the time of Natalie’s murder.

What evidence was found on Stephen McCullagh’s computer?

Digital forensics found a deleted video file on Stephen’s computer containing the prerecorded stream. The video had Easter eggs and suspicious timing that suggested he was not actually live streaming during the murder.

What was the motive behind Natalie McNally’s murder?

The purported motive was jealousy. Stephen allegedly saw WhatsApp messages between Natalie and an ex-boyfriend and recorded his fake livestream the same day.

What happened to Chyenne Kircher?

Chyenne Kircher, a 14-year-old girl, disappeared on October 13, 2011. She was later found to have been murdered by her stepfather, Terry Abbas, who strangled her to death after sexually abusing her.

What was the significance of Chyenne Kircher’s YouTube videos?

Chyenne’s YouTube videos contained hints that she might have been abused by her stepfather. One video showed her warning him that she was on a live stream, and another video had her brother making comments that suggested he knew about the abuse.

What was The Daily Capper?

The Daily Capper was a YouTube show that reported on the activities of a community of people who took screencaps of underage girls exposing themselves on cam sites, often blackmailing them. The show was known for its contemptuous tone towards both the victims and the cappers.

Who was Amanda Todd?

Amanda Todd was a 15-year-old girl from Coquitlam, British Columbia, who committed suicide on October 10, 2012. She was a victim of online blackmail and harassment, which led to severe bullying and mental health issues.

What was the role of The Daily Capper in Amanda Todd’s case?

The Daily Capper had mentioned Amanda Todd in one of its episodes, which encouraged more predators to harass her. Amanda had tried to contact the show to report her blackmailer but was unsuccessful.

Sources

• Original Casual Criminalist video: An Anthology of Dark Internet Murders (Part 2)
• Hero image source by IAEA Imagebank / openverse, by.