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177: The Dark Side of Social Media
56 Plays2 months ago
Social media has been a huge part of our lives for the last 20 years, with its ability to connect people from all around the world to brightening someones day with a viral video or meme. Todays ep features 2 cases when social media platforms were used for a far more sinister reason. Kelsey covers a series of Death Lists that appeared on Facebook in early 2010, targeting almost 100 young people in Columbia it led to the death of 3 people before police took it seriously.
Alanna details the case of Claire Miller, who stabbed her older sister in a sudden attack, and then uploaded videos to tiktok before she was arrested.
Thanks for tuning in, make sure you balance out your doom scrolling with something lighter, like unlikely animal friend videos or videos of people falling down!
Our Darkcast spotlight this week is A Hateful Homicide, a true crime and investigative journalism podcast dedicated to covering the stories regarding the murders and hate crimes involving our Transgender, Gender Non-binary/Nonconforming, Intersex, and Two-Spirit communities in the United States and abroad.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:03
Speaker
Darkcast Network. Indie Pods with the Dark Side.
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome back to Castles and Cryptids, where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck. And I'm your host, Alana. And I'm Kelsey. And I think this is episode 177? Yeah. I just had to check. Wow, we've been doing this for a while.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, you would think we'd get almost 200 better at it, but nope.
Caffeine Preferences
00:01:00
Speaker
I'm like frantically going back. but quietly while the intro is playing because i realized i flipped ahead in my book because we were picking the other episodes oh yeah because we gotta get ahead you guys we gotta we gotta to record and advance that's how these things work you know that you're here listening to podcasts look at you go oh my god it's uh we haven't recorded this early in a while too so i apologize for uh i just had a cup of tea eat maybe we'll be a little
00:01:33
Speaker
ah awake this episode it'll be nice oh my god you're so funny it's the fact that you can have so much of a reaction from drinking tea you're like i just had caffeine i had a cup of tea and i'm like i'm drinking the equivalent of like seven iced coffees a day and That's true. I'm never one of those girlies, but at least I'm not like, some people have a cup or two and they're like shaking. But I'm more meant like, at least we won't be like, hopefully Kelsey won't be yawning. now No, it all it's psychosomatic. It's like we record I yawn. No, we're just like shots fired at each other. No, oh it's okay. Yeah, it's like, is that Pavlovian?
00:02:19
Speaker
Pavlovian response, is that right? Uh, yeah. And it's contagious. Anyway, because if we start saying the word Jan...
00:02:31
Speaker
I'm going to yawn. I can feel it that I want to right now, but I'm trying to hold it in. No.
Past Episodes Recap
00:02:37
Speaker
Anyway, how did you guys like last week's episode? We'll just move right along. ah It was terrible, but also no, it wasn't that terrible. The one before that was pretty bad. I loved it.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, the true crime ones are always a little um hard to get through. So then we go, okay, let's do something that maybe will be more fun, we hope. Yeah.
00:03:04
Speaker
ah And that's, yeah, that's why we did the occult themed episode, which yeah, it was kind of fun. Yeah, it was a lighter one. Exactly. We went in different directions like tarot and like incense and fragrances and stuff. It was very,
00:03:21
Speaker
It was informative. And it's not what you think of because people do, you know, maybe hear the word occult and think of like something different and more sinister. So I hope we're helping the end the stigma there. That's what we'll do with our tiny platform. Yeah, were
00:03:41
Speaker
yeah like we're learning lots. We're learning right along with you guys. And then like we want to share what we're learning. We're researching topics. Exactly. it's It is. That's always the way this one's been. It's like, we don't really know a lot, but we'll look some stuff up and and share some fun facts and yeah creating our own little oral history of folklore that we find along the way. Oh man. It's our own specific brand. We don't even know what it is. Anyway.
00:04:15
Speaker
Um, yeah. Do I have a fun fact or
Patreon and Bonus Content
00:04:19
Speaker
anything? What should we talk about? Do we have anything to talk about before we get into the episode?
00:04:28
Speaker
I put out, I was just telling Kelsey, I guess I should say, I put out our, um, cause we did our horror movie recap on Patreon for last month.
00:04:39
Speaker
and yes then we ended up talking about the substance quite a bit for the second half of the last episode but then I cut it because I was like it' this is quite spoilery and kind of went along with our horror movie one because that was before we had recorded that one before I had watched the movie which is the one with Demi Moore that everybody was talking about and getting all the awards and so yeah well deserved they acted their asses off yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't know it's not news to anyone to go watch that I guess but like yeah but go check out our patreon if you haven't and you can get that one at the five dollar level or up because that's where most of the mini-sodes and all the bonus episodes live yeah and the video so it's that there are um yeah go check that out let us know what you want for I don't think we pick next month's patreon so
00:05:38
Speaker
We're open to our ideas. We would like feedback. Those people are listening if they have certain types of episodes they like. I have seen some likes from there. It's hard to tell sometimes. It helps.
00:05:55
Speaker
It's hard to tell sometimes, even with our regular episodes, ah yeah what ones kind of are getting like a little more recognition or more listens and
Listener Engagement
00:06:08
Speaker
that kind of stuff. So that's true we we do appreciate any reviews or comments, suggestions that you guys can leave for us. Five-star ratings. Yes, Good Pods is a good place, but you can also rate on like Spotify. and iTunes and all the other Majolas.
00:06:29
Speaker
Good Puts does something weird now where if you recommend something and someone listens to it, they give you a sway score. It's bizarre. but Yeah, I'm still getting used to it. I'm like, okay.
00:06:43
Speaker
um so i'm trying to make sure i still listen to some episodes of things on there and make sure we're out there because yeah then i don't know you can't really rate it there but you could recommend it so i'm sure that's got to be good for the we're like number three in the top indie history on good pods still for some crazy reasons so at the histories that's what we don't get we hit history i don't know i guess we're history coded Who knows? But it's the castles in the title. Maybe. Maybe. Could be. That's okay. We like doing historical type crimes and episodes. What classifies something as historical?
00:07:25
Speaker
Like, more than 50 years old? Like, what's considered historical? I know a historical building is like 100 or so years, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Depends on context. Yeah, for sure. Damn. I was like, I don't think we've done that many things that are that historical. We've done enough episodes to have an IMDB page, so figure that one out. Yeah. We still gotta fix it. We're not American, if you can't tell.
00:07:53
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, once we're big enough to have a Wikipedia page, that's wrong about us. Then we'll know we've made it.
00:08:02
Speaker
oh Oh my God. Yeah, it says we're American and that the podcast is distributed out of America. And it's like, no, it barely clearly in our- America? Yeah. Well, it specifically says like the United States and I was like, no.
00:08:20
Speaker
Good God. Oh no.
Distribution Error Joke
00:08:23
Speaker
That's wrong. Sorry. Sorry to tell you. I don't know about that, eh? A boot that, eh? Oh my God. We'll have to start talking in our Canadian accents so people know. Talk about it. We'll have to start each episode like instead of whining and crying when they say we're in our Minnesota accents. We'll unleash our worst Canadian accents, eh? Eh?
00:08:49
Speaker
How about that baked milk, eh? Never had baked milk. Not being nice to our country right now, so let's not go there.
00:09:02
Speaker
I went on to the Superstore app to check if I wanted to, I don't know, see what was in the flyer, or see if I wanted to go grocery shopping. so And they were just spamming me with a whole bunch of stuff that they were saying proudly made in Canada. And I was like, oh yeah, they're they're really harping on this tariff thing. They're just like, here's the Canadian product. yeah yeah And I was like, wow. It was like, here's 45 things that are Canadian. We can just shove in your face. And I'm like, half of this isn't even good.
00:09:30
Speaker
we're on sale like god damn it oh that shit's all it was all a farce anyway but whatever whatever same with the the tiktok ban if somebody creates the problem and then solves it themselves doesn't mean they did any work don't get me started on tiktok i can't get into our castle's encrypted account oh no
00:10:00
Speaker
and whatever that's a whole nother bottle of fish because every time i try to reset it it just keeps trying to do it with my phone number which then just resets my personal account i don't even know it was a bitch to set up a second account i recall that much yeah facebook was uh facebook and youtube were a little annoying too when i was trying to set them up and yeah it's like use a different email address okay fine but then they want to use your like same phone number for everything or whatever and you're like what okay and then it's like you can't use this phone number it's already in use by this account it's like well ah i know gotta have some sort of override being like i know ignore oh my god if i have to create another account that's castles and cryptids podcast number one then i'll let you guys know or something like that we're number one we're number one
00:10:57
Speaker
Make sure all um two of our followers can go over to the new account.
00:11:04
Speaker
ah Oh my god, I'm not bitter. I'm just being funny. That's what we do here. It takes a lot a lot of effort and stuff even to do something that seems like it's just taking a couple minutes to throw together a post. it's like okay trying to figure out what you want to put and pictures you want to use and oh this is the wrong size oh this looks pixelated oh or just like do something with people that just do something crazy to go viral i mean i can't yeah just it's like oh i've just spent half an hour 45 minutes on this post that like one person's gonna share cool yeah yeah yeah we're not better guys it's fine it's fine it's a fun job i swear
00:11:53
Speaker
If you want to get into podcasting, recommend it. But yeah, it will take up a lot of time. Yes. Oh my god. Any who's
Social Media Crimes Intro
00:12:05
Speaker
it? Any who? Don't end on Patreon. So we can all pay us full time. And then maybe we'll bitch less. I don't know. Probably not, but we'll see. So what are we talking about this week?
00:12:23
Speaker
on Like, I don't know, social media. Social media stars. And they're horrible hate crimes. I guess mine didn't end up really being like a social media star. It just had to do with the social media website, I guess. Yeah, but yeah, social media crimes is the looser way we could maybe just... Yeah, it was kind of like...
00:12:50
Speaker
Uh, I don't want to say weaponized, but I mean, but she did. Okay. And it happened more than once. There's like a few that came up like little listicles when I first Google that were, um, yeah, kind of more on the not murders, but maybe from petty crime to various amounts of destruction and there's like yeah, chaos. Obviously there's like what, um catfishing things that's very popular on social media. Specific also, we've done that one I think on Patreon.
00:13:30
Speaker
a like yeah or not spamming but like phishing emails that kind of stuff here download this hey yeah phishing yeah oh my god okay i'm sorry it did yeah it's hilarious about pronouncing all the um the silent letters in the English language. I can't remember if I sent it to you or Ressa. Oh, it was pretty fun. I think you did, but I was in a place where I couldn't listen to it out loud or anything. And then I think I forgot to go back to it. So I'll listen to it. Oh, that one is one who's kind of like, yeah, you have to have the sound on because he's saying hour instead of like, why don't we say pronounce it hour like the H. And anyway, it's so funny. Stupid.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah. Because we already have the word hour. Oh, you are. And it's pronounced the same as hour. That's H-O-U-R. Hour, hour, hour, hour. A silent letter day where they all get pronounced. where It'll be very subtle. It's just a little British accent. Yeah. Okay, I'm fine. Schedule. Schedule.
00:14:52
Speaker
and you she That's a rough one. I hate you. Yeah. They say it with such confidence. Schedule. I'm like, no. Oh, I don't like that either. You sound stupid. I'm sorry. Schedule. Yeah, it doesn't hit my ears right either. Yeah. Okay, for 20 minutes. That's funny. It's okay. We had almost 10 minutes before we did the intro music, I think so.
00:15:21
Speaker
It's not that bad. That is entirely possible. I don't know what I'm talking about half the time. So for mine, have you heard, uh, I guess this has happened like a few times, but of a Facebook death list. Have you ever heard of that? Facebook death list. No, specifically. Yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker
Cause it and came up in mine, I ran across a little listicle and it had like Facebook death lists, a couple of them that came up, but this one kind of caught my eye out of it. Yeah, there was some podcast going around that was like some sort of internet kill list, but I think it was called kill list or something equally simple. Oh, creepy. Yeah, that's basically what this is. Like it's, it's scary.
00:16:19
Speaker
There's not a lot of information on this. I read probably 15 or 20 sources that all had ah about the same information. I was like, this is kind of crazy. I had that sort of same problem with my art research. Yeah. It all started on August 17th in 2010. So not too long ago. Okay. i sort of Earlier days of social media. Yeah, like,
00:16:49
Speaker
kind of peak I'd say peak Facebook was like 2009 2010 like the grower ship I think you're like yeah what Instagram membership was relieved yeah barely um yeah because I know I made my account like in high school and that was about this time so well yeah makes me feel a little old there was no social media when i was in high school well it was just for about to be birthed i suppose if i yeah but it was starting earlier but people weren't really on it yeah yeah yeah there's this video of rain as a baby trying to sit up on my early facebook oh that's so cute yeah does it show up on your facebook memories every year
00:17:42
Speaker
Oh gosh, no. But it's fun to go back and look at. Yeah, I don't know if I would have taken it like if it had even been more. I'm kind of glad she wasn't, you know, their social media wasn't there like there's not a million photos and stuff of hers a baby all over the internet. I don't think she'd love that. So yeah, it depends. Like, yeah, my niece likes it when you when she knows it's a picture of her or She thinks you have a ah picture of like somebody she knows on the phone. She goes, let me see, let me see. And then you'll show her and she'll be like, that's me. And like she knows what she looked like as a baby. So she'll be like, that's me. Sweet. And it's like, yes. Yeah, she likes it. And then she'll like turn the phone and be like, did you see him? She thinks it's cute for now. yeah Oh, yeah. We'll see when she gets older. It's all blackmail material. That baby we have of her when she's standing in the window still,
00:18:36
Speaker
um My brother built a really nice fake fireplace in their living room and there's a window on each side of it and they put it kind of a bench seat under each window and she's like standing ah with one hand on the wall and one hand on the fireplace like in the little like on the bench seat but like in the window and then she's dancing like a red light district girl she's like like i don't know it's hilarious she looks like she's dancing in the box at the red light district well that's not where my mind was going somebody come here yeah she's just like dancing weird and then she does this weird like twerking thing and it's really jerky and uh
00:19:18
Speaker
my sister-in-law like superimposed it in like different layers so it looks like some like weird montage for dancing and it just uh it's gone now she took it down but it was hilarious the one time I watched it I was crying I was laughing so hard and that's giving me vibes of like George Michael doing the lightsaber um video in Arrested Development you're like this is blackmail yeah
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, it was amazing. um Yeah. All right. that's Anyway, yeah, I know we gotta to get we're like, wow we gotta get serious guys. Okay. really Okay. buckle up So August 17 2010,
Colombian Facebook Death List
00:20:02
Speaker
the a list appears with the names of 69. I think some stuff said 63 or 66.
00:20:12
Speaker
ah young people who lived in Southern Columbia, and the original list I guess was published on a paramilitary like-style death list.
00:20:28
Speaker
um Yeah, so I guess this had been happening. There's different, like, um, gangs and stuff that would publish these, like, lists. um Yeah. That's real bad. Yeah, but I mean, it was it was happening, so authorities didn't take it too seriously, because they're pretty young people. um They thought maybe it was a prank or a hoax.
00:20:58
Speaker
And again, this was August 17th. They aren't really thinking too much of it until they review the list more thoroughly, because again, it's like 69 people on it. And they realized that two of the victims, or two of the people on the list had just been found shot dead ah two days prior, and they were listed the first and the second place on the list.
00:21:23
Speaker
oh no Yeah, so they were killed two days before the list was ah published the first time.
00:21:33
Speaker
um Yeah. And they were the first spot and the second spot on the list. So they really started kind of being like, okay, we got to take this a bit more seriously now. It was the first person was Diego Ferny Jaramillo, who was 16. And then Ebert Munoz Alejandro Ruiz. He was 17. So young.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, right. 16 and 17. That's brutal. ah They were shot and killed on August 15. And they were actually together riding a motorcycle on the road between the towns of Porto Assis and Porto, I want to say, Cecito. And Porto Cecito, I don't know. Yeah, I have no idea. but I forgot to look up pronunciations. I'm sorry.
00:22:35
Speaker
It's a tough one. They said it's sounding all very Spanish though. So you're doing great. Yeah. I was like, I know a lot of their C's are at ah or like pronounced sicidos. So sorry if it's wrong. Uh, but their shooter, I guess was also riding a motorcycle. Um, ah wow so they weren't shot in separate ah attacks. Like they were together at the same time. And then like they were both shot and they were first and second on the list. And then their shooter was like.
00:23:05
Speaker
on a motorcycle and fled the scene. They didn't get caught. Wow, a drive-by shooting on a motorcycle. Yeah, that's crazy. Right? Well, they're on a motorcycle, and yeah. There was a movie that was all Fast and the Furious, but with motorcycles, it was called Torque. Oh, I've never heard that. Oh, because it's bad. they They covered it on how to get made.
00:23:35
Speaker
and Adam Scott's in it and it's funny because he's been on other episodes where they covered Fast and the Furious movies. They're like he's great in this but like it's it's yeah it's not so bad yeah a good actor in a bad movie right when the Fast and the Furious franchise um did so much better you know this one was not not great yeah uh according to the Colombian paper LS Basio ah The Facebook message that had since been or had since been blocked. um Okay, when like it really started picking up. Yeah. And yeah, okay. What had it, I guess, the people who had originally seen the list ah stated that it have warned families to leave the area or face the consequences.
00:24:32
Speaker
And part of the message said, please, as a family, urge them to leave town in less than three days. Otherwise, we will be obligated to realize such acts as those of August 15th. Which is when the two were shot. As a family. What does that mean? Yeah, they wanted like, um,
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I thought at first. It was like getting trying to encourage whole families to leave, but most of the stuff was saying it was actually encouraging the families to convince the people named on the list to leave town. But like get your whole family to convince them to leave, which was a little confusing. And extreme. like You think that's going to convince people to do that? I don't know, man. Well, something else. Couple other things happened and then... Yeah, bodies are piling up. It's not great. Okay.
00:25:36
Speaker
um Next person, there's Norby Alexander Vargas. He was 19 and he was killed on August 20th, so ah three days after the list was published and five days after the other two were shot. ah He was also killed by a gunman who was traveling on a motorcycle and his name was the third name on the list.
00:26:03
Speaker
oh damn okay yeah so yeah they're not deescalating at all nope and i remember there's like 69 names on this list and they're all young people like this is crazy right it's yeah it's really creepy to me uh another young man a 16 year old student named Juan Pablo Cembrano and uh and a Kona. He was wounded in the same incident. No. I'm so sorry. I don't know what to do. This is terrible. Like they're so young.
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah, ah Juan, he was wounded in the same incident when he actually tried to chase down um the gunman that had killed Vargas, so I don't think he was like specifically targeted, but when he tried to chase the motorcyclist who was fleeing the scene, um he got he got ah wounded in some manner. There was no details about it though, and he was only mentioned in a couple of the sources even.
00:27:14
Speaker
okay so he didn't die i don't think so but he was injured i feel better now because yeah but three yeah three people three people are dead yeah yeah ba um so that's yeah that's on the august 20th then later in the day August 20th, another death list, this time containing the names of 31 young women, ah was circulated on Facebook and also circulated by email.
00:27:56
Speaker
okay so who's all this going to and the police know if it's going by email um people were reporting it to the police and now they're taking it seriously but they don't know who's sending it like it's really weird like where's the sent like where's the from email um where's the facebook original poster account like all that kind of stuff it's really bizarre to me can be hard to track down i the the actual ip address i guess I don't know. It should be that hard in 2010 for them to do this. I have no idea. I just read yeah and watched the girl with the dragon tattoo. Yeah, I'm hacking into the mainframe.
Community Fear and Gang Involvement
00:28:41
Speaker
I always felt like that when I was using the old travel system because it was invented before the mouse. So everything was like type, type, type, tap, tap, tap, you know, like whatever. Very archaic. Yeah.
00:28:55
Speaker
our ah one old insurance program that we most of us didn't even have logins to it was like the supervisor and manager that could access it still yeah it was like that it was like you had to ah press R to select and E to escape and all that kind of stuff because yeah it was no mouse you had to you had to know all the key shortcuts you had like a manual of how you navigate it like the codes the way it would sound and insane when people would come over to help you in that system and you'd be like
00:29:27
Speaker
Trying to price tickets or something. Well, did you T colon dollar be it? call this disgrace It's like that saves the fair you got to do that. Okay, you know, it just sounds insane like you're like what god Yeah, you're like, what are you saying right now? so i still remember that god travel in Years oh my god That's hilarious. Did you take all of it? Yeah, my mom's like, I remember. She's like, I remember the shortcuts that you had to use in ah when you were typing before like word and everything was invented when you were typing to like, make brackets around something or bold something or put something in a talent. It was like,
00:30:10
Speaker
commands a yeah commands you had to put at the beginning in command you had to put at the end to close out like that command it was like oh my god no so crazy looking back now right the knowledge that has been lost by things improving just like me not being able to spell because of suggestions and spell check i was like no i can't spell
00:30:38
Speaker
And when spell check doesn't have a suggestion for me on what I'm trying to say, I'm just like, guess I gotta come up with a different word. Oh, sometimes you could be one letter off. It's like, I have no fucking idea what you're trying to say. You're like, okay. Really? Yeah. It's suggesting a totally different, like, yeah word that's like six more letters long. And you're like, why do you think I'm trying to say that instead of just like replacing the E with an A? like Right.
00:31:02
Speaker
So stupid. Why is the technology smarter? Yeah. Yeah. So this time, yeah, now there's a second list that's been published. This time for sure. I know this one was on Facebook. I think the other one also, it said it was like a paramilitary death list. um And then other sources said it had appeared on Facebook as well, but I'm not sure on that one. But this one definitely was put on Facebook um around the same time. sorry Yeah, there's like paramilitary like gangs and groups and stuff that would post these kind of like death lists, but it was mostly like activists and um political figures that they wanted that they were planning on like attacking. It wasn't 16 year olds.
00:31:57
Speaker
Okay, yeah yeah. This is wild. oh Yeah. ah Young people around this time in Columbia, in this ah town, started reporting, receiving threatening phone calls. ah Leaflets were printed out and like left on vehicles around town, telling people to like leave ah if somebody had seen the names published on the list. like Those people were getting harassed.
00:32:25
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Have you seen the list? your Yeah, if you had seen the list, um so you knew who was being targeted, like they started harassing the people that were on the list and the people on the list didn't even know why they were on the list. so But they're getting harassed by everybody in town being like, you should leave. like Why are you still here? Oh boy. smoke Uh, as a result, many of the young people and even their families ended up fleeing the town following all these threats from like everybody. I mean, it would be terrifying if you saw your name or something like that. Like, I don't know. You wouldn't want to have to leave, but at what point do you, for the safety yeah of yourself and your family? That's tough.
00:33:19
Speaker
Some people named on the lists were suspected of being involved in petty crimes. Some of them were suspected sex workers and ah so like they were getting harassed for those reasons. And then other people were like known to be community activists.
00:33:38
Speaker
and
00:33:41
Speaker
that kind of stuff so yeah it wasn't focusing on like people committing crimes or activists it was just like a weird group of almost a hundred young people being named and like we're gonna kill you what the hell so we don't even know why it didn't really seem to have a motive of like oh we're trying to clean up the streets or oh we're trying to get rid of activists because we don't like what you're promoting or something like that it was just like a random Right, because I keep thinking, oh, you know, it's, I guess this is something maybe we think to dismiss things, but gang on gang violence, right? Then you're like, oh, these are the type of people that are into this sort of thing. They're targeting. Or maybe that's, I guess I have something that was talking about some similar stuff in my research into, I don't know, general social media crime shit. But like, whoa, none of this. Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
any of this case which is crazy yeah there's been some other facebook death lists but this one whoa i thought it was kind of interesting that um there was like a second list that was published and um no yeah it was just weird yeah it's never even mentioned this in passing it's like what right that would be baker Um, so there's an Ombudsman.
00:35:09
Speaker
I hate that word um that when I worked in insurance. Um, they're kind of like a government official that like is kind of like a regular regulator. Um, but from Wikipedia, cause it said like the Ombudsman got involved in Columbia. And I was like, what does that even mean? Cause I was like, I'm used to like insurance Ombudsman. And you like, if you have a complaint about your insurance company, you can like take it to the Ombudsman and they'll like investigate. um So sort of overseer, sort of. Yes, exactly. It's one of those words where I see it and I'm like, I never remember what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, so hard to say Ombudsman. Ombudsman.
00:35:52
Speaker
So from Wikipedia, the Ombudsman's office of Columbia is the national government agency that is charged with overseeing the protection of civil and human rights within the legal framework of the Republic of Columbia.
00:36:09
Speaker
ah The ombudsman or people's defender is an official appointed by the president and elected by the Chamber of Representatives of Columbia to head this agency. ah So they got involved um because they're protecting civil and human rights and they're like these people are like getting targeted.
00:36:28
Speaker
we got a Figure out what figure out what's going on because from what all I know about Colombian crime from my glorious It's terrible no i read I Read something. I know don't know if I had it. No, I don't even have it in my notes. Um, I Ran across something one of the sources that said that over five about 550 maybe people are displaced from their homes every day in Colombia due to like drug activity and stuff and I was like holy shit like 500 and some people every single day the drug cartels are are pretty bad probably yeah yeah and like the paramilitary groups and yeah all the activity and everything that's going on like she's scary
00:37:28
Speaker
Um, yeah, so that's what the ombudsman does. They called on the youth protection authorities um to get involved why and be requested in a bit. Sorry. Yippa! I think it's the sugar. I've determined my problem is I get too much sugar and then I just can't stop myself. I'm going to tamp it down.
00:37:52
Speaker
ah They requested an investigation be started and the Ombudsman also noted that the, I'm definitely not going to say this right, the Los Rastrogos gang, it was a drug cartel and paramilitary group. but ah They said that they were present in some of the towns yeah ah towns of Porto Aces.
00:38:16
Speaker
ah So like because the first list that listed like the 60 something boys on it, ah and because that was like a paramilitary list. And then the second list was like a Facebook list that targeted 31 girls. ah They thought like maybe this gang was involved um because they were in the area at the time. Okay, sure. Check them out.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, so he kind of like appealed to the public saying like obviously um this group is dangerous, they execute ah violent acts, they spawn community conflicts, they impose their will through intimidation and dispensing punishment against those culturally and socially stigmatized.
00:39:05
Speaker
They also said that they were also known for threatening community leaders, merchants, and even cab drivers. So they're just like... Oh great. Yeah. Pillars of the community. Totally. Not spreading terror around at all. Uplifting members. ah Jewels. Jewels of the town. Good the Lord.
00:39:29
Speaker
And then I guess other reports at the time say that the Ombudsman's warning also mentioned the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia or FARC, F-A-R-C. I love it. FARC. Which was also in the area at the times. They're like, they could have been involved. Okay. I mean, yeah, that's just where do they turn? Like they have no information to go on. That's just so scary.
00:40:00
Speaker
Um, there was a little thing from ABC News who said, Vanda Felbab Brown, an expert in illicit economies and Columbia at the nonprofit Brookings Institute,
00:40:17
Speaker
said that the Facebook death list was reminiscent of the hit lists distributed by the paramilitary groups that terrorized Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s. So I think she's kind of saying that like they had just evolved to incorporate Facebook in some way instead of... So they've been doing this for a while. Yeah, that it seemed to go along with that.
00:40:46
Speaker
um Then there was also something interesting. I only saw this on one source. It was P. PK Ling on WordPress, who said, and they were a little right up, it was all basically the same kind of information, but they had a little thing saying that last year the former president's son was a target, this is in Columbia, when a Facebook group appeared that was called I Will Kill ah Geronimo Uribe. Wow.
00:41:20
Speaker
And a university art student was arrested but released in March after the legal deadline for his trial had expired. So like the, yeah, like that was another time that in Columbia, um, Facebook had been utilized. This time was like a threat against the president's son.
00:41:40
Speaker
Wow, but nothing really came of it other than the arrest. No, because the legal deadline for his trial had expired, so he hadn't gone to trial. And then they're like, oh, it's been too long. He's probably been in prison or something for too long before his trial, so we had to release him. It's difficult to convict something like that, because we haven't had social media that long, so there's no specific laws. Probably in 2010, too.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That was like, I guess that would be 2009. Cause they said like last year. Right. Yeah. That'd be about 2009 sometime. Yeah. So they were probably still trying to figure out all that kind of stuff. It'd be different now. we are um well It'd be like issuing verbal threats or something, which you can get charged with. I guess.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah, like I would love to hear someone like sinisterhood cover some social media crimes.
Unsolved Crimes Impact
00:42:42
Speaker
I'm sure they have but like it's it's it's with one of them being a lawyer. You can sometimes speak to some of that about how it could yeah call it this or but how do you connect something someone said online to you know, that case if you don't have a clear cut defense I don't know or could not defend cuz I mean prosecution okay it's hard to say because yes you can like track something back to somebody's IP address and that kind of stuff but how do you prove it was them sitting in front of the computer at that moment like that how do you prove that was them it was just like driving offenses you can get a photo radar ticket and that goes against like
00:43:27
Speaker
um your vehicle because they can prove your vehicle was there but it doesn't go against you necessarily because they can't prove it was you and sometimes it wasn't and sometimes it's your spouse so yeah so yeah yeah it's like who's to say it was you that created that facebook group using your computer who's to say somebody was was like using your computer or right anything like and that if they can yeah i can see how that makes it more difficult yeah because there's ways you can obviously um disguise yourself and yeah where everything's coming from yeah i can't think of the words you know the words um yeah they hide yeah that was like yeah another time uh i guess abc news had gotten
00:44:22
Speaker
They were about the only one that I saw that had a comment from a Facebook spokesperson. you spoke so Spokespersman? Persman. It's cool. We reached out to Facebook for comment and they declined or we did not hear back. But this is the only one I saw that had something.
00:44:45
Speaker
Um, and it's just a very generic PR statement. We take user security very seriously and reached out to local law enforcement as soon as we became aware of the issues or issue in Columbia. So like a very, they're, they're saying, saying something by saying nothing, I guess. And it's difficult because yeah, with these new things like social media, they,
00:45:08
Speaker
like One, you know, a couple of college students or whoever take event, the whole thing. Don't know all the ways, all the far reaching like repercussions it's going to have and how we're going to have to deal with that. Like we need so many smart people to figure all that out. Yeah. That's rough. Police were working on all their investigations and even ended up offering a reward of five million pesos.
00:45:31
Speaker
around $2,750. I assume that's American. I was way less impressed. Sorry. Yeah. I assume that twenty about 2,700 is also American. so um and That was for information on the killings like and probably the lists too, because they still couldn't really figure that out. More money, yeah.
00:45:57
Speaker
And that's kind of where this all ends, wildly. ah The individual or individuals responsible for the three killings and for the two death lists have never been officially identified, which is wild to me.
00:46:14
Speaker
uh don't like it oh facebook uh facebook cares but it's like how how much did you help the investigation because like the lists were posted to there so like how do you not have the user's information and then the ability to find that out
00:46:34
Speaker
Um, yeah, so this is all unsolved. They have no, nothing. Like they all had to leave town. No, nobody else. Just the three of them. And then a bunch of people left town. So anywhere first, second and third on the list. So very long like It's So technically it remains unsolved. um They believe it was some sort of paramilitary group, but they can't say definitively because they don't know. And nobody like came forward and took responsibility, which normally people would. They'd be like, oh, we're um we're doing this for a reason or for a cause or something. And nothing like that ever happened.
00:47:20
Speaker
you're on our turf. I don't know. Mm hmm. Yeah, they weren't just type people targeted. No, like, it's at the what um some of the girls were involved in sex work that were on the second list. um Yeah, some people had been involved in like petty crimes, like minor crimes, and then some people were known to be like community activists. So like, we're um yeah but like, outspoken or wanting change or that kind of stuff. So it was like a ah wasn't like people just crimes or
00:47:56
Speaker
Um, just activists. It was like, yeah just anybody that they wanted to put on the list, I guess they just put on there. Random sampling almost. Yeah. And yeah. And then again, like the first list was like demanding them to leave town. Um, and saying like your families should be convincing you to leave town. And then after like, obviously the.
00:48:23
Speaker
Um, second killing, uh, or I guess the third death. Uh, they really took it seriously and were like, okay. And then a bunch of people fled. It's totally horrible that they had to leave. Yeah. Yeah. It stood out to me cause I was like, Oh, everything was like, yeah, it's unsolved. They don't ever really figure out who did it. And I was like, that's wild to me. Everything else was basically solved.
00:48:52
Speaker
I was like, this is so weird. And then they're like, yeah, there's other times that um like Facebook was used like this or that kind of stuff. um And then emails as well. Yeah. Yeah. They said one of the, the second email was getting, sorry, the second list was getting emailed to people as well. It's like, so you can't track down the email sender? Like, yeah. I don't know, man.
00:49:21
Speaker
They have stuff to go on, but it's like, they say they investigated it, but there's no information that I could find about what they actually investigated.
00:49:32
Speaker
I have no, I don't like it. It's pretty. I know, yeah. Unhappy ending. That's why I wanted to cover it. To bomb us all out? No. Oh boy. To spread awareness. Yeah, for sure though, really.
00:49:49
Speaker
Because, yeah, it seems weird to me that in, what, almost 15 years, they haven't figured this out. and It's like... And it's not your typical case that gets covered on podcasts like ours, that people, they cover your... I wrote it down because I was like, this is when I keep hearing about Ruby Franke and they're her partner and them had six kids. and they were like, Oh, we're vloggers. Look at our lovely family. And then they would like abuse their kids and withhold food from them and horrible things. Yeah, right yeah people were like, that's not right. And like, yeah, like, yeah, those are the ones I find I tend to hear about anyway. Nothing like
00:50:37
Speaker
I haven't heard anything about this one, so. Yeah, I thought this one would be a little bit different to do. I was like, oh. Right. It is different. It's different from mine. Yeah. They're both horrible. We'll have variety. Yeah. Horribly different. We'll take a differently horrible and horribly different. We'll take a mental health break. Yeah. We'll get refills on our tea or something.
00:51:06
Speaker
We'll get a refill of some kind and we'll need that. We need more water. Yeah. All right. And we will probably play a lovely promo. So take a listen and we'll be right back. Yeah. Hi, my name is Mallory Jenner Robinson. Join me on a hateful homicide, a true crime and investigative journalism podcast.
00:51:33
Speaker
dedicated to telling the stories regarding the murders and hate crimes of our transgender, non-binary, intersex, and two-spirit community members in the United States and abroad. This is A Hateful Homicide.
00:51:54
Speaker
And we're back. Yeah. Thank you for listening to our wonderful dark cast promo that we just played. I don't know which one it was. figure it out for you. They're all friends. Yeah. Um, yes. So social media star crimes or whatever you want to call them. I looked up ballistical and found this one hadn't heard of it. And it's at least I can say it's solved. There's one good
00:52:34
Speaker
I know I had another one that I thought ah about covering because I saw a Netflix a thing about it and it was oh and then I was like oh my god maybe I shouldn't cover it it's bad no we just I feel like the video and uh because it had to do with like people that posted to like instagram and tiktok a lot uh And it had a lot of really good interviews with friends and family and people that knew the criminals. So I feel like it was really well done. I was like, I don't think that would translate as well on a podcast format as it did being able to watch it visually. So yeah, I was like, oh, great. What was that one called? Do you remember? It was about the, it was like a Bitcoin scam. Oh, with the crazy couple or whatever? Yeah, it was like the greatest.
00:53:33
Speaker
Yeah. but Okay. Yeah. I think we watched that. They posted like these. She was like a terrible rapper. Rapper. Yeah. Terrible white rapper. i should say Yes. Okay. That was so funny. Yeah. I thought about covering that one. I was like, Oh, that would be a little hard. Oh no. But you guys should watch that though. That was crazy. yeah Sorry. I'm going to pull up the name. Hold on. Oh, for sure. I do not remember the name either.
00:54:02
Speaker
I thought, yeah, Bitcoin. us Yeah, I can't remember anything. ah Biggest heist ever. Oh, that's probably why would the name drew us in. Yeah, their crimes earned them the nickname Bitcoin Bonnie and Clyde because they steal like so much money. It's like right billions, isn't it? It was pretty, yeah, it got pretty big, which I was surprised. It's just like these guys are They seem like idiots. I don't know. Right? Yeah. Crazy.
00:54:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I thought about covering that one at first and then I was like, yeah, that would be a little hard to do. I feel like I couldn't do it like justice, you know? ah you Right. It's like when I did that one. And I guess it's good because you had also heard of it. so would been Right.
00:54:57
Speaker
Well, it can be good sometimes. You can be like, oh, I kind of can talk about this, but then go watch this. Yeah. Yeah. um Watch it just for the terrible rapping videos and that even the one guy that's the director or like co-writer of some of the rap songs is also like just sitting there cringing, having to listen to it.
00:55:20
Speaker
And they're just like, they're like, yes, you helped co-write this song. Like, what do you think? And they play it and everybody else was like, and their interviews was laughing. And then the co-writer sitting there and it was like, it has good parts. And you're just like, oh, he hated it too. Don't ask me about this. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Entertaining for sure. Oh, that reminds me. Yeah. And we had talked about on our Patreon when we were talking about like the good in the mediocre and whatever horror movies we'd watch that we should do a bad movie rewatch because we were talking about then you were talking about like the evil bong series that you had found or like yeah what was it like 10 movies for like three dollars or something bin yeah there's all these sets uh i haven't seen them at walmart but that's where we got them like
00:56:13
Speaker
over 10 years ago now uh yeah they would have like a 10 movie bundle at the the bin and it would be all these like b b horror movies yeah but it would kind of have a theme it would have like these are creature feature ones and these ones are zombies or that kind of thing yeah No, I know they did that on um Sinisterhood's Patreon because they said they did it. I think they ended up watching something called, like, Cocaine Werewolf. And I was like, that sounds intriguing. I've seen Cocaine Bear, which I enjoy. Right. It's hilarious. But not Cocaine, not Cocaine Werewolf. No, I'll have to check it out. All right. um So the fun stops here and
00:57:03
Speaker
I don't know, this one, I actually had a problem where I don't usually have where I got
Case of Claire Miller
00:57:08
Speaker
done and that was all the information and I was like, do I add more stuff? So oh it might be a little like quote heavy at times. I don't know. We'll see. That's okay. I think quotes are ah better sometimes, like especially if it involves people that are directly involved.
00:57:32
Speaker
Yeah, then you can trust that a little bit more than just people that are just putting information in you're like, okay, well, this person supposedly actually said this. Right, right. We kind of know.
00:57:44
Speaker
but exactly what happened and I don't have much backstory or aftermath really but I know mine was light on the information too so maybe this will be a shorter episode do you never know um so this is the case of Claire Miller yeah doesn't sound familiar no it's I don't think well known but um And also, yeah, it's just a minor so that doesn't help the information gathering. Same with mine. i Most of the sources I read didn't even name the the victims and I was like, well, at least gotta to confirm their names. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Like the first one I read didn't even didn't even list their names or anything.
00:58:38
Speaker
Oh great, that's not nice. You should at least name the victims that were killed, like all their other listicle ones had their names.
00:58:50
Speaker
So Claire was born Claire Elena Miller to her parents, Mark and Mary Miller. It's spelled E-L-A-I-N-A, which I thought was an interesting spelling. I haven't seen it before.
00:59:06
Speaker
yeah
00:59:10
Speaker
The family also had another child, which was her older sister, Helen, and they lived in a small town in Pennsylvania.
00:59:19
Speaker
Which I don't know if I spelled right. No, it's not. Anyway, it doesn't matter. She and her sister attended Lancaster, I guess, country day school? I always thought it was county, but it said country, so we're going with that. No.
00:59:38
Speaker
it Yeah. I don't know. It was a small school, though. It's only about 550 students, so you could tell it's kind of a small town. That's very small. Yeah. I think even my high school had like several thousand. And I'm from small Fredericton. Yeah, like our graduating classes were normally Like each year we're normally over a thousand people graduating and there was like three grades in school at a time. Right. Yeah, it's crazy. um So her older sister went there as well, but she also did suffer from cerebral palsy. So she was a ah wheelchair user and and required quite constant care. She was 19 though.
01:00:33
Speaker
um So Claire enjoyed playing guitar, singing and making videos for her TikTok account. She made lip-sync videos, sort of silly little videos where she would catch her dad on camera and I don't know, just kind of, I don't know. Annoy him, I guess. Just kind of like like random stuff. and and That's nice. Yeah, like,
01:01:02
Speaker
anime she also enjoyed anime meme like recreating them in videos which i couldn't name an anime meme if i tried so yeah i i mean i watched like a couple like japanese anime ones like okay me and my friends were we're into fruits basket
01:01:29
Speaker
a while but yeah and then i think vampire night we watched for a little bit and read the mangas for some of them but yeah i could not tell you what any of the memes are from anything it sounds like a tough thing ah type of meme to recreate i'll say yeah but that's i guess the type of videos she put out but and and she she had a decent following i mean what did i say or more than we have she's got uh how much more is this it's 22 000 so yeah she's she had a few followers um but yes obviously things were going to take a turn at some point so
01:02:21
Speaker
um she's uh 14 at the time and oh wow that is young yeah so i don't even know what well it said the year she was born which was uh the same year my daughter was born was 2007 so i guess she's the same age as rain so she must be 17 now spoilers okay let's get into it um
Murder Details and Family Shock
01:02:46
Speaker
okay so it's like so it's Obviously really recent I guess I should have clued in for the fact that like it's tick-tock which is fairly it's stick ah Yes, it's tick-tock. It's now the night of February 21st 2022 Yeah,
01:03:03
Speaker
um yeah we're just coming up on three years now then so um Claire just got up in the middle of the night and and crept into her sister's bedroom and looked down at her sleeping form. And you know, trigger warning, she then stabbed her dispenseless sister several times before placing a pillow over her face.
01:03:29
Speaker
I think I may have heard about this actually. Oh really? But not not in details, but when you said like TikTok and then something about a wheelchair, I was like, it wasn't clicking, but now it is. I know like yeah the outlying like sprinkle of headlines probably, but not details. Yeah. Well, unfortunately the details are obviously horrifying.
01:03:55
Speaker
um Yeah. it she yeah just for no apparent reason stabbed her to death um it said then she calmly called 911 and informed them that she had just killed her sister that is so bizarre yeah i think they thought she was um confused joking yeah having some sort of episode um most sources said miller would later claim she heard voices in her head that night
01:04:29
Speaker
must have been encouraging to like act on i guess those voices in your head that tell you to do bad things maybe i don't know wow did she have yeah like mental illness like a history of hearing voices or did it just start one day in an hour later her sister's dead uh we'll get into it a bit with the trial okay they talk about it a little bit um So Claire then waited for the police to arrive and when they did, her her like her parents' lives were then turned upside down, who at that point had no had not known anything was even happening. ah So down ah yeah when police arrived, Claire was literally just standing outside in the snow barefoot and bloody.
01:05:20
Speaker
I'm so sorry. This one sucks. So she, Helen had been stabbed seven times twice in the neck. Uh, Oh, where was it? It was John somewhere else. I put for some reason I had to go back and find it, but I didn't, it was just, yeah, excessive. And, Oh, another person detail that the knife was still in her neck when they got there, but her the pillow was over her face. So you couldn't tell at first what had happened to Helen.
01:05:50
Speaker
um and also her hands were up near her head but she didn't have any defensive wounds because she couldn't even take care of herself there's no way she could have done anything yeah she had been asleep too yeah probably didn't know what happened until a fatal wound had already been delivered you know yeah i would hope it would have been very quick she and not horrifyingly scary
01:06:18
Speaker
um Yeah, she was definitely truly a helpless victim, which her sister obviously knew, which does make it all the more horrible. um Obviously, resuscitation efforts were then unsuccessful, and she was pronounced dead at 4.13am. She had called the police at like 1-1.08 or something, I think. Okay. Yeah, the millers were just in complete shock and trying to understand what had happened with their only two children under the very name. Yeah. It's like bad. Yeah. When a like a sibling kills like somebody in the family or anything, it's like you're like, it doesn't just affect the family. It is the whole family. Like the whole family is done. It's not like somebody outside attacking the family. It's like well your own attack them. Like it must have been horrible for them.
01:07:16
Speaker
i can't imagine yeah oh yeah there's no way like you can't imagine like she's always going through something because no one just unprovoked stabs their sibling you can't imagine no like you just that's not we don't let it get to that yeah like i for the amount like siblings argue or get in fights or that kind of stuff. I feel like that, I don't know, blows off the steam or like um tension or that kind of stuff. Like specifically that female girls don't usually physically fight and escalate. Yeah, but I feel like that.
01:08:06
Speaker
like this kind of attack seems more like the person like bottled it up where you don't I wouldn't necessarily say you see that with siblings like stuff being bottled up over a long time and yeah you would think they just snapped something in them snapped yeah a switch was flipped so to speak but jeez it's rough because it it obviously must take a toll to big be the sibling that is able-bodied and then your other sibling is not and they require more care but like there's pictures of them happy smiling together you know it's like obviously yeah they probably had a good relationship i don't know it's very sad
01:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, it just seems so weird to me because like yeah um we have, well not in our family, but like extended family. They have friends where yeah the younger kid has like a bunch of um health problems and stuff. and then um have like stuff that's very very like serious and quite rare and stuff so they require like extra schooling and assistance that way and um medical they have to see like certain types of doctors and everything and right I don't know like there's probably a resentment there but there's also I don't know like
01:09:46
Speaker
like celebrating the milestones of like, oh because you're the you're the older sibling. So it's like, hey, like, for you used to not be able to do this, but now you now you can or um that kind of stuff like when the uh girl started like talking more because she used to basically it was just like the mom and dad and her sister that i could understand her when you would try and talk and be like oh you i like your your shoes and she'd be like thanks but she like you couldn't communicate with her any more than that um and now she's speaking in like full sentences and it's only it's only been like a year or so so when you tell her something she'd be like thank you my mom picked it out or i picked it out and
01:10:30
Speaker
everything and you can actually have a conversation with her so instead of it feeling like such a burden you're like really celebrating like all the milestones and like any happy things that happen because it's like oh so like I can't imagine I don't know like just like living in that resentment of it because it's like the person's doing the best they can like oh for sure And I don't know that that that necessarily she was, it's just something that might have played a factor and they kind of talk about that a bit. But yeah, because it's like, I totally agree with you. It's like, it's still your sibling. I mean, yeah, they can't help it. Right. Like, yeah, but I guess like a 14 year old probably doesn't quite understand that. Maybe the same way. I i don't know.
01:11:26
Speaker
um i oh It's not gonna get any better. I'm sorry. I'll just say that. Well, I mean, no one else dies. Is that good?
01:11:43
Speaker
A little. Yeah. So, OK, where were we? Claire was and arrested and take it into custody to await trial.
Trial and Mental Health Debate
01:11:53
Speaker
There was to be but next to planned preliminary hearing, and this would help determine if she would be tried as an adult or as a juvenile. Yeah, I mean, that's a really serious offense. Yeah, and I think every state even treats it differently because I have a little bit oh yeah i think it's a i think you kind of gotta go case by case almost they yeah it depends if it's like a petty crime and whatnot obviously it's not um but yeah she treats it very
01:12:31
Speaker
callously at first and like like nothing happened. um wow because like this Some of these salacious details are like probably what people remember most of. While being held for questioning in the aftermath, Claire was hurt to utter some extremely disturbing and callous remarks that would be in my words, repeated in the press ad nauseam. So I'll just keep it brief. She said they brought her food while she had been held because it was remember it was the early morning and then whatever. So they brought her McDonald's and she said, Oh, McDonald's, I would have killed someone sooner if I knew I would get McDonald's. So there was that. Yeah. And like,
01:13:18
Speaker
I thought yeah she was going to complain that it wasn't cooked properly like me and Karbina. Like what? I'm running away because I don't like your macaroni and cheese.
01:13:32
Speaker
Oh god, no. And that's coming from someone. yeah that's no I would never even joke yeah I don't even yeah that's I love McDonald's breakfast and most people know that about me but that's just too much yeah that's like brutal to say oh yeah and then like later her like sorry later her cell phone rang and she said this remark because it was this her phone went off and it was like the Halloween
01:14:09
Speaker
he hallow movie themes or some Oh, I think that went straight into the Jeopardy theme. Sorry. No,
01:14:23
Speaker
no I can't. No, no, I can't do it. no like do do do do do Oh, yeah. it's Anyway, it's iconic. And she goes, I'm Michael Myers, my sister. That's what she said.
01:14:39
Speaker
Oh, cool. Right. Great job, Barry. So you think that's something she might come to regret saying once she's been medicated?
01:14:52
Speaker
ah So this quote said in the state of penitentiary. Nope. This is why we write out words. And God, it's always best last week where I could not say the word eucalyptus.
01:15:10
Speaker
my god yeah was It was frustrating when I was editing. You're like, ah just couldn't. Oh, fuck. So in the state of Pennsylvania, it's usually treated as an adult crime unless the minor defendant petitions to have it moved. ah Juvenile focuses on rehab and includes supervision until age 21 if it serves the public interest.
01:15:37
Speaker
and
01:15:40
Speaker
Well, and that quote. Quote. During a preliminary hearing, Judge David Workman said that Miller had multiple mental health diagnosis diagnoses, including gender dysphoria and hallucinations. So that came up. Yeah, the hallucinations are probably what was pretty important to the case. Yeah. Yeah. Although they don't specifically say what how they manifested, I guess.
01:16:14
Speaker
Robert D. Byer, Miller's attorney, said that after the hearing that Miller has shown market improvements and is still being treated. um And then he went on to speak about how the pandemic has worsened mental health issues in kids and young people. Oh, yeah. Obviously true.
01:16:32
Speaker
And that, you know, fear, depression, anxiety. Yeah, it all, yeah, we know. It's not good. Like people are like, I got to relearn how to, like, ah how physical body language works. Cause you weren't around people sometimes, especially if people were like, uh, working remotely, they just don't like, it's just different. Yeah. Yeah. Going to school remote. Oh yeah. That was rough.
01:17:00
Speaker
I think that was a rough time. So at that hearing, oh here's another quote at that hearing. Byers said that Miller believed she was stabbing a hallucination of a woman, a version of herself that told her she was ugly and to failure. Okay, so I guess that's as much as they really get into the oh hallucination defense.
01:17:26
Speaker
So she I thought I don't really know. I hadn't seen her sister. It was a hallucination of herself. But if that's the case, then why was she so callously like Michael Myers, my sister? Yeah, that. I didn't think you were doing that. Yeah, or saying you would have killed somebody sooner for McDonald's. Like, that doesn't. Those two don't.
01:17:52
Speaker
uh work together really it doesn't seem to add up but i'm like i'm not a mental health expert by any means but oh this is a rough one it's hard to put myself in her position yeah and like it was yeah that's really weird yeah sorry um it was decided to leave it in adult court and by the time it was decided that like she's i think 15 By the time it goes to trial, which is in early 2023, she is 16.
01:18:28
Speaker
wow thanks Getting closer to being an adult, anyway. yeah The trial was presided over by Judge Jeffrey Wright. And in the meantime, Claire was held at the Youth Intervention Center.
01:18:49
Speaker
um in a statement after the hearing district attorney heather adams said that prosecutors don't dispute that miller suffered from a mental health event at the time of this offense but it legally did not excuse the yeah we gotta help her accountable and get her the mental health help she needs yeah exactly you can you can do both because if she like actually understood what she did like killed her sister yeah then the jokes about it afterwards that a person wouldn't have made those like if you were if you didn't realize what you were doing because you didn't see your sister whatever you shouldn't be making jokes like that yeah once you but quote unquote come out of it or come yeah once you realize or like
01:19:46
Speaker
you're more aware of like the situation or circumstance you're in i feel like you wouldn't have made those kind of jokes yeah i don't know if she's still quite unstable at that time or not um yeah hopefully we'll Yeah, it's hard to say. hard to do better yeah um So that DA went on to say, the sentence holds her accountable for the crime committed, but balances the nature of this offense, her young age, her mental condition at the time, and the protection of society. So I think they were trying to consider all the factors. but Yeah, I can appreciate. like you You have to treat both, right?
01:20:33
Speaker
It's not all about retribution. and Punishment. Punishment, yeah.
Guilty Plea and Sentencing
01:20:40
Speaker
So Claire Miller pleaded guilty but mentally ill to third-degree murder. That was on a Friday afternoon, March 10th, for fatally stabbing her sleeping 19-year-old sister, Helen, in the family's Mannheim Township home two years ago. Oh, that was a time of...
01:20:57
Speaker
that article probably. I found a quote about how what the that means under state law guilty but mentally ill means Miller as a result of mental defeat disease or defect a defect sorry, lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law.
01:21:22
Speaker
So I guess like it's diminished maybe responsibility and that sort of vein, because she should have known it was wrong, but there was still stuff going on with her at the time. That's how I can understand. Yeah, like if she thought if she thought it was a hallucination of like her or something, then yeah, like some sort of manifestation of something. Yeah.
01:21:46
Speaker
um And just the they touch on how hard it was for the parents during the trial here. Yeah. the usual Yeah. Yeah. Right. Sorry. Yeah. It's obviously doubly hard for them. Yeah. It said the usual chasm between the prosecution and defense tables collapses today, Wright said. Mr. and Mrs. Miller face the heartbreaking challenge of sitting in support of both the victim and the accused.
01:22:22
Speaker
For a family who has already faced such great loss, today's proceedings undoubtedly risk intensifying the pain that has defined the past two years. I mean, they lose either way. It doesn't matter what they decide. that It's lose-lose in every situation. Yeah, they can at least hope to get this daughter back and healthier, sorry, at some point.
01:22:48
Speaker
Yeah. The mother, the mother testified to say, we love both of them. I know Claire did not mean to do this. We lost Helen and we don't want to lose Claire too. Just like you said. We don't want her to be punished, not get help and be put away for a long period for something that was out of her control. We can't lose her too.
01:23:11
Speaker
um prosecutors argued Claire's text showed a desire to hurt someone the defense argued she had been suffering psychosis depression and anxiety it's the teenage cocktail no i mean i don't know i try and think about it normally like there's some sort of warning signs or anything like that or right especially like I feel like hallucinations or psychosis or something there's like who events before this like that would have seemed off or that you could normally with like ah yeah looking back on it you'd be like oh like these situations seem different but it doesn't seem like they have any examples of that
01:24:03
Speaker
right like her videos didn't get darker and she wasn't yeah like that we know of talking but even like the family doesn't say oh yeah like leading up to it or in the weeks leading up to it some of the behavior started to escalate or something just yeah it just came out of nowhere sorry yeah their text they said her text shows a desire to hurt someone but they don't say what those texts entailed at all which is annoying um Okay so at trial it said Miller her brown hair pulled into a ponytail spoke in a strong voice as Wright asked her a series of questions to ensure she understood what she was pleading guilty to and that what she did was was and that she was doing so knowingly intelligently and voluntarily.
01:24:54
Speaker
Yeah but I mean how much does even somebody at 16 understand about the justice system and spending like going to prison or something like it's a lot to process oh that's for sure if i was charged with a crime and somebody was like do you knowingly and willfully i'd be like i don't know like how long did you study a law like i feel like you need that level to actually understand thoroughly anything you're doing that's why you rely on like lawyers and stuff like that but yeah to tell you to plead guilty or not yeah damn
01:25:34
Speaker
Um yeah. So Miller told Wright when he asked her if she had a mental illness that she had depression and an unidentified psychotic disorder for which she was being treated with medication. She responded no thank you your honor when Wright asked if she wanted to say anything. So that was the end of that and she was sentenced uh Judge Jeffrey Wright sentenced Miller um to 12 and a half to 40 years to be served in prison. So it's a 12 and a half to 40 for zero. Yeah. That's quite the stretch. It's quite the like, let's see how she's doing mentally. I think I, you know, let's monitor. She probably maybe, I don't know if that means she would be up for parole after that. Maybe she could be
01:26:32
Speaker
begin to be eligible at that time, but maybe they're not going to push for it. for It's like 10 to 20 where it's like, yeah, only half, but I've never heard like 12 and a half to 40. Like that's such a huge spread. That's what most things said. I know it's crazy. Yeah, like.
01:26:55
Speaker
Unless you I guess unless there's the saying what 25 to life or something like. I guess that's kind of also a huge thing. I think 25 is life here in Canada. Yeah. You don't even get more than that. Yeah. Like, because there's some law about not keeping people in absurdly long as to, I don't know, ruin their whole life or something.
01:27:21
Speaker
it Yeah, that seems such a weird. Yeah, it's pretty arbitrary when you put it like 12.5 to 40. Yeah. Yeah.
Social Media Aftermath
01:27:33
Speaker
But she's now serving her sentence at Muncie State Correctional Institution, an all-female prison about 80 miles northwest of Lancaster, located in Lycoming County.
01:27:46
Speaker
and And one more chilling detail about the TikTok account, the social media of the crime. She had two last posts that came out Well, I guess see, that's funny. We were just talking about no other indications. But like at the time or of the murder or whatever, I guess is when this these showed up. It was a bloody plastic glove discarded on the ground in one and the other one showed a bloody stuffed giraffe toy. And that caused a bunch of people to flock to the account.
01:28:24
Speaker
to try and view it and follow her. And then the app was eventually, they shut down the account. So that was good. Damn. That was just kind of gross. I think I might've heard of that too. It's grisly, right? It just makes you think that my followers are going to love this. Yeah, you're doing it for the clicks. like Yeah. Jeez.
01:28:53
Speaker
oh you yourre um So that's basically the case. um Anything else I had was kind of, I guess, me trying to pad it out with me. I was like,
01:29:06
Speaker
what social media crimes are these like and the statistics up now like I don't know so like there's definitely discussions and like studies into it from what I could glean um there wasn't an article on from the Atlantic or whatever that yeah that was pretty good um that I have some stuff from oh yeah and then I was like clicked on one but it was like felt like a dissertation. It was called um Homicide and Social Media Global Empirical Evidence. And then like, most millions of pages, but yeah, like listen to the jargon if of the outline. Instead of just says, Hey, anybody read this far? yeah just continue Well, yeah, it's like just just the like um chapter notes or what are they called?
01:30:05
Speaker
Like the table of contents. Thank you. It's just like, oh my god. Study investigates the relationship between social media and homicide. The focus is on a cross section of 148 countries for the year 2012. The empirical evidence is based on ordinary least squares, Tobit, and quantile regressions. What are those words? I know it's like I'm speaking in the um but travel sleep thing again.
01:30:34
Speaker
T-colon don't be. There's a negative relationship between Facebook penetration and the homicide rate. The findings are contingent. I know I tried not to laugh. Trust you, I'm trying to be mature.
01:30:51
Speaker
And the findings are contingent on initial levels of homicide income levels and regions. And that's just yeah. I think income level has always affected everything. So that's very true. damn um Yeah, that Atlantic article also had us a story about a quick story of a case about two men who were killed.
01:31:18
Speaker
in a car sitting outside of ah one of their mother's houses just like mine in their own business, their own business. Jarell Jackson and Shah Jaha McCaskill. I've never seen that name before so I'm just gonna have to guess that's how it's pronounced. Sorry. Shah Jaha. They were only 26. They were sitting outside Jackson's mom house. The two men, both black, had just returned to West Philadelphia.
01:31:44
Speaker
Oh, and then raised. And then raised. I know, I can't help it. But they were like, they had just been on a trip to Puerto Rico. They just got back together or like from there. And ah they're both like, well, to like not well to do, but like, upstanding citizens. One was a mental health technician working in an adolescent psych ward, which like, good for you. Yeah. The other one, Shah Jaha worked at his own small cleaning business and as a bartender.
01:32:13
Speaker
And it's believed they were simply and sadly mistaken for a rival Southsider gang member by a Market Street gang, I guess. So that's why I kept having a gang on the brain, I think, when I kept hearing yours. um I kept getting a little confused. yeah But they had been fighting so openly on social media, an officer had been assigned to monitor the activity of these gangs.
01:32:38
Speaker
so yeah He believes they were targeted incorrectly um ah because of this. Within the hour, a North Sider posted a video on Instagram with a caption that appeared to mock the video victims and encourage the rival crew to collect their bodies. And it said, aha, pussy, pick him up. Pardon me. She is. Yeah. So it's like, I mean, that happens even with ah police officers when you have like a be on the lookout kind of thing and they don't know the person's name and it just has a description people get mistaken all the time. True. Yeah, just from faulty information going out on the police are like not faulty, but yeah, just generic I guess information. Yeah. Yeah.
01:33:27
Speaker
And it happens a lot you'd be shocked like in high school in our psychology class we were doing, I don't know, we called it kind of like the line game but basically like we moved all the desks and the chairs out of the way. And then there was a lot of the class that on one side and half the classes on the other and like if something um was relevant to you. You were supposed to come like step forward to the line and it was okay crazy. It was like, we probably did a hundred like scenarios, questions, all that kind of stuff. And it really like bonded everybody. And one of them was, have you ever been um
01:34:03
Speaker
detained by police or questioned or identity and everything. And there was probably 10 people out of 30 of the people in my class that went forward. And we're like, we we're high schoolers and this is already happening. And then we're comfortable like sharing the stories. And it was like, yeah, I was walking down an alley with my friends and like cops came and just like one of them like body checked me to the ground and like others that were happening where people just like teenagers just walking down the street um totally non-white teenagers unfortunately yeah uh
01:34:39
Speaker
Actually, no, it was a mostly white people. You just look poor. Yeah, but it was like, it was basically almost one in three people in high school. And this has already happened like that consistently in like a small city even. And it's like, can you imagine a big city? This is the city? yeah but we are A bigger city. Yeah.
01:35:08
Speaker
Oh, I know, but we're perfect. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, and the states even worse, obviously. Yeah, like, fortunately. am Yeah, so I guess it is according to some of the quotes from that article on the rise. um One part said that Jackson and McCaskill died in the first year of a nationwide resurgence in violence that has erased more than two decades of gains in public safety.
01:35:36
Speaker
Um, in 2020 homicides spiked by 30% and fluctuated around that level for the next two years. Uh, there are early signs that the 2023 rate could show a decrease of more than 10% from last year, but that was to leave it well above pre-pandemic levels. Yeah. it's kind of sex because Like general crime is kind of on the decline, but then it's like, oh young people it's on the rise and you're like no and then like yeah all this internet fluffing it all up and stirring it up the pod and everything it's not good well that's what happens when you when you think what do they call it um
01:36:14
Speaker
I recently saw something that was like the person that coined the term FOMO like fear of missing out. They just released a new um one that they say is almost like as bad now and it sounds stupid. It's FOMO, but it's a fear of better option. So like it's kind of the opposite like people that um always say yes to everything for like a fear of missing out and Um, all that kind of stuff. Sure. Bobo of fear, a better option is the opposite. It's like staying home, always saying no, because they don't want to commit to anything in case there's a better option. That's
Fear of Missing Out
01:36:54
Speaker
going to come along. So they end up just not doing anything. And they're, Oh, okay. Not out of just us being introverts. Don't want to leave our house. No, it's like actually like, um,
01:37:06
Speaker
Yeah. It's like a fear of being in something and finding out something better is happening. And so why do you commit to this when you could have been doing that? But that's probably not going to happen. So you said no to this. So now you're not doing anything. It seems so silly. Yeah. Just when you say it like that. But yeah, people ah do doing silly things with our brains, our silly little brains. Yeah. So it's kind of the opposite. But it yeah, it's like, oh, you're like just now you're just not doing anything you're not committing to anything even stuff you would enjoy like with friends and everything like that for a fear that like something better could come along when it probably won't so like if you were gonna enjoy that thing anyway and you would have said yes like why aren't you saying yes do things do things that scare you people yeah that's always good advice um i don't know yeah it was really weird to me i was like reading the thing and i was like i can see it
01:38:06
Speaker
But it's like, why, if you know you're going to enjoy the thing you got invited to, like, why are you saying no? Because
Social Media's Unrealistic Portrayals
01:38:13
Speaker
you're afraid something better is going to come along. It's like, well, then you can tell your friend about it and you can all go to the something better, like. Oh, or if we have like social anxiety and stuff, we're like, no, because it's scary because something could happen and I won't be at home in my yeah comfy clothes.
01:38:32
Speaker
No, but it sucks with the social media stigma. It's like video games. It's like violent movies. It's like it's not all bad and it's not all the reasons people do bad things. It can be very good. It can be a good way to connect and set that was the whole argument for like not banning TikTok and stuff is that it can be a good resource for people to see things that they wouldn't otherwise get to see like directly from the source. um I think they have to get better about like people under understanding and especially younger people that like that's not like realistic like
01:39:13
Speaker
the, like the people's lives that they're portraying on social media. Of course, but I think we kind of picture perfect life. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Like, the the kid like, I don't know, I know my kid, there's like the new generation, I feel like they're pretty smart and savvy, having grown up with all this stuff. I hope so. I have hope. Yeah, yeah, I do. I do. there did a good um There's a good wrong about episode of that was like, no, your phones aren't that bad for you or whatever. And then they didn't talk about how they there was a guy that wrote something about the youngs, this generation so anxious.
01:39:55
Speaker
But then like, I think they said he had flipped and like he had wrote something like completely the opposite or something, which I was just like, that's crazy. Like, do you even believe what you're saying? Like, it's and they're like, basically, I think the guests hosts argument or whatever was you know, maybe it's not that, you know, have kids on their phones or getting all anxious from being on their phone. It's the shit they're seeing on there. It's the shit that's on the news. It's like the shit that's actually wrong, you know, that's bothering them. Yeah. Well, just before, like, um you were focused on, I guess, what was happening more. So in your community,
Echo Chambers and Algorithms
01:40:31
Speaker
you're like maybe in your province or state. Right. A lot of stuff was, yeah, it was more local. It was stuff that
01:40:39
Speaker
Maybe you could have like an effect on or that affected you a little bit more. Sure. More control. Now because of like more access to stuff, it's good, but you're also getting bombarded with all the bad um around the world. And it feels very out of your control. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like, oh, like all these like conflicts that are happening, but you're not just hearing about like the big ones, like wars you're hearing about, like,
01:41:13
Speaker
smaller stuff like even some of these murder cases and that kind of stuff protests and oh yeah all of it yeah so it feels like of course the news wants to cover that kind of stuff but when that's all you're um focusing on or that's all you're being fed that's how you're perceiving the world is it's just bad all the time and all that kind of stuff can it can become a very dangerous sort of echo chamber thing yes and all the algorithms are designed that way because when you see something and interact with it then they're gonna show you more of that specific thing so maybe like for everybody's algorithm you gotta look out uh cute animal videos watch watch a panda falling down or something and then you'll get a few of those videos and you know it was how i and the the one to be on sort of that i'm like i must have liked a few videos like um
01:42:08
Speaker
sign languagey learning sign language videos. Okay,
Learning Sign Language
01:42:12
Speaker
one some of the ones that really make me laugh are the ones where they're like, like They're signing at like a ah concert for like a really dirty song. Getting low, getting low. Yeah. All these different ones. And like, I love those. And so now I get like a bunch of like also wholesome like sign language content. Like, do you want to learn ASL? Like all these different little videos. And I'm like, Oh, okay. I kind of like. I know we had, because in my high school, we had two individuals that needed an an interpreter and ah like they had hearing aids and everything, but it was just easier to always have an interpreter and everything too. So when we had ah people come to present to our high school, like the person would be behind them doing sign language. Exactly. All of the presenters would always be like, Oh, I want to
01:43:05
Speaker
I want to see what the signs are for certain words, so they just start rattling off words. And then it wasn't part of the thing, but they were just like, oh, hold on, I did ah just got to find out. Because sometimes they wanted to know, like, they're in animals where they but it kind of would distract them and see the girl, like, doing the sign language out of the corner of their eye. And they'd be like, hold on, what was that word? And they'd keep saying the word over and over again.
01:43:29
Speaker
don't abuse the interpreter no she was really fun um because i shared some classes with them so she didn't mind it um and i've met some yeah like we were with her from what for like grade 10 11 and 12 so like it was the same interpreter for like three years all through high school so like we all knew her every assembly every day she was there with them and yeah it's just funny because it happened so consistently all the presenters would be like oh my god this is so cool like how do you say that yeah i could totally get it it's fascinating to learn and watch and yeah maybe i should learn some yeah i always wanted to um because in high school when like language wasn't a requirement anymore and they're like oh do you want to keep going i was like i'm not really interested in learning any of these languages but i always said if there
01:44:20
Speaker
If like sign language had been part of it, I definitely would have taken sign language because that's something that like realistically would be beneficial. Yeah, it could come in handy for sure. Yeah, i yeah more so than like...
01:44:39
Speaker
I don't know. ah Yeah, like somebody, a lot of people like that maybe know enough words that you can basically communicate with them. But
Social Media and Conflict Escalation
01:44:49
Speaker
yeah, trying to um like, it's it's a lot harder, I find if you're deaf or anything like that, just like na communication. It's just a lot harder.
01:45:01
Speaker
Yeah, because there's there's a lot of writing. Sometimes we had the the one or two that would come into Edmonton West office and then like, yeah, you know, they just want a couple of movie tickets and then you're like, where's your paper? And you get a yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, go ahead and write down and then you write it back and forth. oh But yeah, differently to your point with the. I don't I'm really I'm done, I'm not really there was I don't have anything else, but there was, they talked about in the article in the Atlantic, kind of to what you were saying about how it's so much less of a little community now because of this, oh, this guy put it well. This violence violence prevention worker said, when I was young and I get into an argument with somebody at school, the only people who knew about it were me and the people at school, said James Timpson, a violence prevention worker in Baltimore.
01:45:57
Speaker
um not right now 500 people know about it before you even leave school and then you got this big war going on. So yeah, it was kind
Accessing Online Information
01:46:05
Speaker
of like they talked about you could have if a cop doesn't see something online and people are all talking rally and rallying they're like all of a sudden you got 1000 people out there armed in a space and there's no cops there because they weren't aware of it because they weren't monitoring the online chat or whatever. It's yes, definitely. It's very scary how it can blow out of control so fast.
01:46:27
Speaker
reach so many people now yeah so that sucks we gotta do something about it is it so easy to say all the problems and then it's like what do we do yeah i mean get a definitely having people fix your algorithm fixed oh yeah yes yeah don't your algorithm what did facebook do take off fact checking off news or something equally. Yeah. And then even this like thing about them blocking a whole bunch of news in Canada, even researching cases is hard. It'll say like, Oh, this isn't available in your country. And it's like, Oh, great. So we're
TikTok's Role in Society
01:47:07
Speaker
like, the internet is supposed to be available and you're not making it available for people. Exactly. this The speech is not all that free or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
01:47:22
Speaker
Um, yeah. I guess what we're seeing is TikTok is not the problem. yeah But not the solution either. I don't know. no Thanks for
Upcoming Episode Teaser
01:47:35
Speaker
coming to my TikTok.
01:47:38
Speaker
my yeah ah So what are we talking about next week? I think we have something a little bit more uplifting, as you were saying, when we were picking the topics.
01:47:50
Speaker
I can't remember what it is. Oh, you suggested because it was Black History Month, we focus on some ah great historical. Black history. Yeah, some black figures, some black people, man. Yeah, something to celebrate black history. We haven't narrowed it down, but it'll be something.
01:48:14
Speaker
Yeah, some of the people that have done something to benefit society. something like that. So that should be interesting. A celebratory episode. Yay. Maybe we'll learn something. Right. And this is the episode we weren't even drinking for. So that was the most depressing part of all. No, just kidding. All right. Well, hope you liked it and we'll catch you next week.
01:48:45
Speaker
Yeah. Bye.
Credits and Social Media Call to Action
01:48:47
Speaker
Keep it cryptic. Thank you for listening to Castles and Cryptids. We love all our listeners and appreciate every subscriber, every new review, every listen, rate, and download. Our music is by Cobie Affair and our cover art is by Antonio Garcia. We are also a proud member of Dark Cast Network where you can find the best and spookiest of all indie podcasts.
01:49:11
Speaker
Follow us on social media where we are at Castles and Cryptids on mostly all of the things, now including TikTok. Check out our bonus content on Patreon. Cryptid clashes, video mini-sodes of your hosts making asses of themselves, Ask Me Anything, quizzes, other special episodes and more. Starting at just $2 a month, you can get 1-2 extra episodes depending on your level.
01:49:36
Speaker
We produce, edit, and research everything ourselves, and any support you can lend helps us to keep it cryptic.