Murder.com by Christopher Berry-Dee, Steven Morris Page A
Authors: Christopher Berry-Dee, Steven Morris
Ads: Link
remember Suzanne Michelle Gonzales.
On a table at the front of the room there are dozens of framed pictures – one of Suzy coquettishly pulling up her yellow high-school graduation gown to expose knee-high athletic socks; another where she is a bright-eyed toddler gripping her mother’s hand. Near by, the nameless two-headed cat leans against a red scooter. One of the feline’s faces is happy – the other not.
Suzy’s parents walk into the chapel with a beige urn and place it at the centre of these mementoes of their daughter’s life. That same urn had rested between them on the front seat of a U-haul truck as they drove back to California with the contents of Suzy’s Florida apartment.
Nancy Hickson, Suzy’s high-school speech teacher, recalled for the crowd how Suzy gave her a purple wig after she lost her hair to chemotherapy.
‘When I met her, I thought, “Finally, a teen who isn’t afraid to be different,”’ she recalled. ‘Suzy had a creative streak a mile wide.’
John Bohrer, the local Southern Baptist pastor, compared Suzy’s quirky humour and zest for life to that of the actress Lucille Ball.
Her best friend, 19-year-old Desiree Sok, described Suzy as a spontaneous fun lover, someone with whom she’d cruise around Tallahassee in the middle of the night blaring ska music and eating doughnuts. Someone who’d swerve on to the shoulder of a dark road and jump out of the car just to chase fireflies.
‘I don’t think she realised all the memories would stop,’ Desiree said, her voice trailing off.
As the slide show of Suzy’s life was screened, James Taylor’s haunting words and melody provided the soundtrack.
This new and morbid phenomenon of internet-inspired suicide is not confined to the USA. Because of the medium’s huge reach it has become a global issue, and yet internet service providers continue to host these sites.
The discovery in 2004 of the bodies of four young men in a car at a viewpoint near Mount Fuji in Japan appeared to be more evidence of a grim new trend in this prosperous country – group suicides of strangers who meet over the internet. The suicide pacts, which have resulted in at least 18 deaths in Japan since February 2004, are shocking to experts, even in a nation already plagued by an astronomical suicide rate.
The victims are normally young and meet over the internet through a growing number of suicide-related sites, chatrooms and bulletin boards in Japanese – sites where participants go online not to dissuade but to support one another in their desire for death.
In the latest confirmed case in early May 2005, the victims were a man of 30 and two women of 22 and 18. None had apparently known the others before meeting online, where they started planning their suicide. As in several other cases, they diedof carbon monoxide poisoning from a coal-burning stove after sealing themselves in a room using plastic sheeting and duct tape. Others have taken their lives by the same method – promoted by websites as fast and painless – in cars parked in remote mountain areas.
Some suicide pacts have been averted, or ended in injury but not death, as in the case of two girls, 14 and 17, who jumped together off a five-storey building.
The group WiredSafety, which has 10,000 volunteers around the world visiting online chatrooms watching for people who prey on children, reports that it has come across many Japanese suicide websites, including ones that encourage participants to overdose together in front of webcams.
‘We are picking up lot [of suicide sites] that are just in Japanese,’ says Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety. ‘We report them to local law enforcement, or the ISP to have them take down the sites. But they just pop up someplace else.’
Some websites are expressly for meeting suicide partners, while others suggest the best ways to commit the act, including, for example, where to get the coal stoves and how to prepare the car or other
On a table at the front of the room there are dozens of framed pictures – one of Suzy coquettishly pulling up her yellow high-school graduation gown to expose knee-high athletic socks; another where she is a bright-eyed toddler gripping her mother’s hand. Near by, the nameless two-headed cat leans against a red scooter. One of the feline’s faces is happy – the other not.
Suzy’s parents walk into the chapel with a beige urn and place it at the centre of these mementoes of their daughter’s life. That same urn had rested between them on the front seat of a U-haul truck as they drove back to California with the contents of Suzy’s Florida apartment.
Nancy Hickson, Suzy’s high-school speech teacher, recalled for the crowd how Suzy gave her a purple wig after she lost her hair to chemotherapy.
‘When I met her, I thought, “Finally, a teen who isn’t afraid to be different,”’ she recalled. ‘Suzy had a creative streak a mile wide.’
John Bohrer, the local Southern Baptist pastor, compared Suzy’s quirky humour and zest for life to that of the actress Lucille Ball.
Her best friend, 19-year-old Desiree Sok, described Suzy as a spontaneous fun lover, someone with whom she’d cruise around Tallahassee in the middle of the night blaring ska music and eating doughnuts. Someone who’d swerve on to the shoulder of a dark road and jump out of the car just to chase fireflies.
‘I don’t think she realised all the memories would stop,’ Desiree said, her voice trailing off.
As the slide show of Suzy’s life was screened, James Taylor’s haunting words and melody provided the soundtrack.
This new and morbid phenomenon of internet-inspired suicide is not confined to the USA. Because of the medium’s huge reach it has become a global issue, and yet internet service providers continue to host these sites.
The discovery in 2004 of the bodies of four young men in a car at a viewpoint near Mount Fuji in Japan appeared to be more evidence of a grim new trend in this prosperous country – group suicides of strangers who meet over the internet. The suicide pacts, which have resulted in at least 18 deaths in Japan since February 2004, are shocking to experts, even in a nation already plagued by an astronomical suicide rate.
The victims are normally young and meet over the internet through a growing number of suicide-related sites, chatrooms and bulletin boards in Japanese – sites where participants go online not to dissuade but to support one another in their desire for death.
In the latest confirmed case in early May 2005, the victims were a man of 30 and two women of 22 and 18. None had apparently known the others before meeting online, where they started planning their suicide. As in several other cases, they diedof carbon monoxide poisoning from a coal-burning stove after sealing themselves in a room using plastic sheeting and duct tape. Others have taken their lives by the same method – promoted by websites as fast and painless – in cars parked in remote mountain areas.
Some suicide pacts have been averted, or ended in injury but not death, as in the case of two girls, 14 and 17, who jumped together off a five-storey building.
The group WiredSafety, which has 10,000 volunteers around the world visiting online chatrooms watching for people who prey on children, reports that it has come across many Japanese suicide websites, including ones that encourage participants to overdose together in front of webcams.
‘We are picking up lot [of suicide sites] that are just in Japanese,’ says Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety. ‘We report them to local law enforcement, or the ISP to have them take down the sites. But they just pop up someplace else.’
Some websites are expressly for meeting suicide partners, while others suggest the best ways to commit the act, including, for example, where to get the coal stoves and how to prepare the car or other
Similar Books
