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Speaker 1: We talk all the time about online amateur sleuths. Some

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Speaker 1: of them are not operating on the best of intentions,

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Speaker 1: and that is the subject of today's True Crime Tuesday.

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Speaker 2: Day Day Day. Tuesdaydayday. The story is true, that's true. No,

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Speaker 2: it sounds made up.

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I Parry and Shannon present True Crime.

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Speaker 1: Well, you remember those awful murders of the four University

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Speaker 1: of Idaho students. It was November twenty twenty two. Seems

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Speaker 1: like a lot longer ago than it was. Well, in

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Speaker 1: the weeks following those murders, where everyone was left in

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Speaker 1: this vacuum of non information, a lot of information started

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Speaker 1: raising its hand, good information or not. Online there was

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Speaker 1: a TikTok psychic among them, a TikTok psychic based out

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Speaker 1: of Texas that accused a respected history professor of orchestrating

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Speaker 1: the killings to cover up an affair with one of

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Speaker 1: the victims. She said that her claims were based on

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Speaker 1: her spiritual research through tarot ratings. Okay, now, obviously it

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Speaker 1: sounds crazy, preposterous, obviously false. But this woman, in the

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Speaker 1: process was able to amass one hundred thousand followers. She

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Speaker 1: developed quite the following on her fake claims over the

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Speaker 1: gruesome murders of these four students.

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Speaker 2: By the way, the professor that she accused of orchestrating

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Speaker 2: all of this to hide the affair has sued for

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Speaker 2: defamation and is going to jury is going to determine

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Speaker 2: punitive damages coming up February of next year. Federal judge

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Speaker 2: already ruled in that professor's favor, calling the woman's tiktoks

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Speaker 2: primarily self serving, motivated by on line viral attention, and

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Speaker 2: made with an extremely harmful state of mind. Given the

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Speaker 2: nature of the statements about professor Rebecca Scofield, Well, think

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Speaker 2: about this.

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Speaker 1: That post was to the tune of two point five

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Speaker 1: million likes. So every time this professor named Rebecca googles

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Speaker 1: her own name, it's going to come up Rebecca Showfield,

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Speaker 1: and then it's going to say murder of University of

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Speaker 1: Idaho students forever, right, she's always going to be connected.

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Speaker 2: True crime content creators as they're called, and other people

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Speaker 2: who would post on social media about these cases, they're

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Speaker 2: just posting bs. In many cases, they're just spitballing. And

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Speaker 2: because we have kind of lost our ability to have

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Speaker 2: any sort of examination of what we see online that

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Speaker 2: just once you put something out there, it's it's very

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Speaker 2: tough for someone who's interested in one of these cases

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Speaker 2: to trace back what the origin of what a theory

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Speaker 2: might be. So they may assume that these theories came

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Speaker 2: from official court documents or interviews with police or other

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Speaker 2: things that you might see in a real journalists a

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Speaker 2: real reporter's purview. But these are just, like I said,

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Speaker 2: stuff that people throw against the wall to see what sticks.

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Speaker 2: They don't realize there's no basis to it.

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Speaker 1: There's nothing to keep a so called sleuth from making

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Speaker 1: false assertions, ruining lives in the process, just for likes.

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Speaker 2: So there are that's one of the cases, right, the

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Speaker 2: Idaho murders. If you remember also the Delphi murders. This

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Speaker 2: is where thirteen and fourteen year old girls were kidnapped

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Speaker 2: and killed. And if you remember, this was the girls

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Speaker 2: were able to capture an image of who did it

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Speaker 2: as he was walking a walk across a railroad trestle.

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Speaker 2: And there are all kinds of theories that still exist

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Speaker 2: to this day. Even though they've already caught the guy

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Speaker 2: and put the guy in jail forever, the girls' families

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Speaker 2: have to deal with the repercussions we're talking about on

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Speaker 2: True Crime Tuesday. These online sleuths who claim that they're

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Speaker 2: just trying to help solve cases and can actually cause

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Speaker 2: a whole lot more damage on top of what's already

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Speaker 2: been a travesty or a tragedy or both for some

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Speaker 2: of the people involved.

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Speaker 1: The family members of thirteen year old Abby Williams and

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Speaker 1: fourteen year old Libby German say their lives were nearly

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Speaker 1: destroyed when the girls were kidnapped and killed. This was

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Speaker 1: in Delphi, Indiana, back in twenty seventeen. Abby's mom, Anna said,

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Speaker 1: when you rep a whole piece out of your life,

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Speaker 1: you'll never be the same. They have shown up at

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Speaker 1: these conventions some of the family members which this happens,

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Speaker 1: and some people find whatever they need to find when

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Speaker 1: they go on stage at crime con for example twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty five, this was last month in Denver and tell

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Speaker 1: their story and maybe it's a way of keeping their

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Speaker 1: daughter's memories alive. It was at that Crime con convention

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Speaker 1: the family member shared memories of the girls, opened up

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Speaker 1: about their grief, discussed their reaction to the man's conviction

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Speaker 1: and one hundred and thirty year prison sentence last year

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Speaker 1: for the murders. They also talked about what's not always

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Speaker 1: talked about, and it is that shocking online harassment that

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Speaker 1: they have endured for years. They said that there are

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Speaker 1: a certain a number of amateur sleuths that are just

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Speaker 1: obsessed with solving the case themselves, even at the expense

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Speaker 1: of traumatize the victims' families, the mothers, interfering with law

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Speaker 1: enforcement investigations. That was a case that went on solved

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Speaker 1: for more than five years, and as I mentioned, when

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Speaker 1: you don't have information for an amount of time, a

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Speaker 1: vacuum exists and people want to fill it.

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Speaker 2: Plus, the family is in this awkward position of they're

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Speaker 2: subjected to these online taunts, online theories, outright accusations that

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Speaker 2: they had something to do with it. But they're still

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Speaker 2: trying to keep the story in the spotlight. They want

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Speaker 2: to draw attention to the case because they want any

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Speaker 2: lead that's possible, but it comes with just an overflow

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Speaker 2: of this detritus, this fire hose of awful that comes

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Speaker 2: from social media.

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Speaker 1: Libby fourteen year old Libby Germans grandma Becky says she's

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Speaker 1: a most upset by what she calls the vicious online

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Speaker 1: harassment of Libby's older sister, Kelsey. It was Kelsey who

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Speaker 1: dropped the girls off at the trail where they were

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Speaker 1: abducted less than a half an hour later. There's some

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Speaker 1: out there who are horrible to hear. Grandma Backy says,

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Speaker 1: it hurts me to see what they're saying about her.

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Speaker 1: Say what you will about me, but leave my family alone.

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Speaker 1: Kelsey tweeted in February after the murders, I'll never understand

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Speaker 1: how people can be so awful the people they've never met.

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Speaker 1: And somebody wrote back, stop trying to spin your sister's

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Speaker 1: murder into an fing career and go to the police

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Speaker 1: station right now and come clean again.

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Speaker 2: I think a lot of this has to do with

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Speaker 2: this something that computers have done to us in general,

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Speaker 2: which is lessened our ability to understand there is a

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Speaker 2: human being on the other side of that.

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Speaker 1: We've seen it on our own. People write awful things

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Speaker 1: about us to us on social media. And if we

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Speaker 1: write back, because we do read that stuff and it

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Speaker 1: does hurt your feelings, and if we write back like hey,

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Speaker 1: not cool or wow, you know that wasn't that wasn't

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Speaker 1: nice or anything, people will be quick to pull a

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Speaker 1: one eighty because I don't think they understand. There's like

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Speaker 1: this weird veil that comes down, and as soon as

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Speaker 1: people realize, hey, you hurt somebody with what you said,

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Speaker 1: it's like, oh, okay, wait, I didn't.

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Speaker 2: Mean to do that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: It's it's someone standing on the edge of the Grand

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Speaker 2: Canyon and yelling right, hello, Hello, and hear the echo.

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Speaker 2: But it's when somebody says something back that they go, oh,

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Speaker 2: my gosh, I wasn't expecting that. I didn't know there

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Speaker 2: was somebody down there or over there or whatever.

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Speaker 1: Right, It's like when you shout just ridiculous things into

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Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon. You know.

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Speaker 2: What would you shout? I would shout apple fritters for days.

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Speaker 1: And if somebody was like, you shouldn't have apple fritters

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Speaker 1: mix in a solid, it'd be like, I didn't mean

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Speaker 1: I wanted apple fritters every day for days. I just

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Speaker 1: meant I worried one. Right now, it sounds good.

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Speaker 2: You know what Elmer would say, what roll tied?

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Speaker 1: That's right,