Ontario woman exposes Internet suicide pact

[Tami]

Ontario woman exposes Internet suicide pact
Informant contacts police in Oregon about plot by 32 people around the world

By Mark Hume

They met in an Internet chat room, engaged in bleak dialogues, and planned a mass suicide for Valentine's Day.

But the suicide pact, which involved 32 people around the world, unravelled this week when a woman in Ontario called the Klamath County Sheriff's Office in Oregon to expose the plans.

"The Canadian connection is that the informant that decided not to go through with the suicide pact . . . is in the Toronto area. She became disheartened and backed out of the situation, notified us here directly after she learned . . . there was a woman who was going to bring her two kids to this suicide thing and kill them first," Klamath Country Sheriff Tim Evinger said yesterday.

He declined to identify the informant and said police were still trying to track down those who took part in suicide dialogues to prevent them from following through with the pact.

"The clock's ticking here," Mr. Evinger told the Klamath Herald and News.

Mr. Evinger said a local man, Gerald Dean Krein Jr., 26, has been charged with solicitation to commit murder. He said police had not yet located the woman who posted notes indicating she planned to kill her two children before taking her own life.

"We have no idea where she is right now," he said.

Captain Chris Montenarl, one of the Klamath investigators on the case, said he had read all the e-mails in the chat room, which started last December, and is convinced the suicide pact is real.

"This was serious," he said. "I truly believe we saved some lives here."

Capt. Montenarl said participants in the chat room were in touch over several weeks as the plan developed.

"On multiple days, not just, you know, one shot and get off. They kept coming back to the same chat room." Capt. Montenarl did not want to elaborate on why Valentine's Day had emerged as the date of the mass suicide.

"We're trying to downplay that, obviously, but you can draw the conclusion that you will because, you know, we're talking about some folks that had some severe personal issues. There are some reporters calling it 'scorned lovers' and 'lonely hearts' and all that, and I'm not willing to go that stretch, but there's some significance there."

A woman identified only as Jamie, from Portland State University, said in an interview with KATU-2, an ABC and CTV affiliate in Portland, Ore., that when she joined the chat room one of the first things she was asked was if she wanted to commit suicide.

"From the very beginning, you know. Have you ever thought about it? Do you want to join a suicide party? That was like the third thing he [the person in the chat room] asked me," said the woman whose face wasn't shown on camera.

During the interview, Jamie scrolled through her e-mail revealing a lengthy conversation about suicide.

Asked when she started to think the suicide pact was serious, she replied:

"When he started talking about the woman and her kids, is what freaked me out. . . . And then he started giving me the real gory details about how everybody wants to hang themselves. I asked him what we'd be hanging ourselves from, and he said the tall beam."

Jamie said the plan was for a group of people in the Oregon area to get together and commit suicide all at once.

Asked what motivated the plan, she said: "It was because he didn't have a girlfriend and he was really sick, he said he was just sick of being alone."

It's not hard to find discussions about suicide on the Internet. But usually the postings are by desperate people who are looking for help. In the Klamath County case, however, police believe people were encouraged to commit suicide.

[url=\"http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050214.gtsuicide12/BNStory/Technology/\"]source[/url]

[Josh]

...Wow.. Kind of scary :|

[Rift]

who wants to join me this easter:P

[us3rX]

i do i do, *huggles uncle rift* i am not drinking the punch first tho o.0

us3rX <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... /ph34r.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':ph34r:\' />

[Tami]

would you like a new pair of Nike's? or maybe you are the one who is to watch for the comet...............

<img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... /blink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':blink:\' />

[Jim]

Weird people out there on the internet <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... shifty.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'(shift)\' /> i'll join you rift <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... iggrin.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':D\' /> edit: jer gets to drink the punch before i do