Woman wants to be killed, finds willing accomplince on Net (fwd)

[Rolf Weber <weber@iez.com>]

Forwarded message:
>From owner-fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Fri Nov  1 09:44 MEZ 1996
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 01:21:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@vorlon.mit.edu>
To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Woman wants to be killed, finds willing accomplince on Net
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.961101012034.2918N-100000@vorlon.mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Precedence: normal
X-Fc-Url: Fight-Censorship is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/
X-Fc-Url: To join send "subscribe" to fight-censorship-request@vorlon.mit.edu

[More backlash, anyone? --Declan]

X-URL: http://www.cnn.com/US/9610/29/internet.murder.ap/index.html
                                        
       Woman expected to be killed by man she met via Internet, police say

                          October 29, 1996
                          Web posted at: 9:30 p.m. EST
                                        
     LENOIR, North Carolina (AP) -- When Sharon R. Lopatka left her Maryland
    home, she wrote a note telling her husband she was going to visit friends
     in Georgia and would not be coming back. She also asked him not to seek
                                   vengeance.
                                        
   Lopatka, though, planned on going to North Carolina, where she expected to
   be sexually tortured and killed by a man she had corresponded with over the
                         Internet, police said Tuesday.
                                        
                          Apparently, she got her wish.
                                        
     Her body was found in a shallow grave last week behind a mobile home in
         Collettsville. The home's owner, Robert Glass, was charged with
               first-degree murder and is being held without bond.
                                        
    "If my body is never retrieved, don't worry, know that I'm at peace," she
   wrote her husband. She also asked him not to go after her attacker, police
                                      said.
                                        
    An autopsy showed the cause of death was strangulation, but initial tests
          were inconclusive on whether she had been sexually tortured.
                                        
    Investigators said computer messages from Glass, recovered from Lopatka's
    home computer, indicate that she traveled to North Carolina knowing what
   awaited her. Why she willingly went along with a plan that would result in
                 her death remained a mystery to police Tuesday.
                                        
   Lopatka, 35, of Hampstead, Maryland, had three Social Security numbers and
    operated three World Wide Web pages out of her home. One offered to write
   classified advertisements for $50 and promised such success that customers
                   would "literally watch the orders pour in."

[...]
                                        
   Messages from "slowhand" -- Glass' apparent Internet alias -- "described in
    detail how he was going to sexually torture ... and ultimately kill her,"
    according to the search warrant application investigators used to search
                                Glass' property.
                                        
   "There's no way to know precisely what was in her head when she came here,"
   said Capt. Danny Barlow. "The only thing we can see is the e-mail messages
   and there they discussed in detail as to what they expected to happen when
                                she got here. ...

[...]