Tonight I watched The CraigsList Killer on Lifetime. The movie was pretty interesting. It's a true story about the CraigsList Killer in Boston. I am always interested in watching movies that are based on true stories. Having studied psychology in college, I love getting insight on what makes people do the things they do. In the movie and real life, Philip Markoff is a straight A Med student engaged to get married. He was the kind of person that people looked up and would never suspect he was capable of being a killer or would be living a secret life. It makes you wonder, how could his fiance' not see anything strange going on? But then again, the people closest to them are the ones who least suspect them. Woman are criticized for not knowing and they are criticized if they suspect something and try and find out what is going on. A man is currently being charged with a federal crime for getting into his wife's email account and discovered she was cheating on him with someone he considered to be a threat to her and his child. Now, if it turned out that she committed a crime, people would ask him "How could you not know? or "If you were suspicious, why didn't you look into anything or ask questions?"
The CraigsList Killer killed one woman and robbed and tied up fifteen other woman that they knew of. He found the woman who posted CraigsList ads and met them in hotel rooms. Some of the ads were for massages and some were from the erotic ads. It's a scary thought when you think about. How much of our personal information do we put out there on the Internet? Making ourselves vulnerable to just about anyone. It's a digital world and all of our information is out there for anyone to see. Too many people have become trusting of people they meet on the Internet. People use the Internet for making friends, socializing and dating. Putting too much trust in the hands of strangers.
That is one of the reasons I put so much emphasis and watching what children are doing on the Internet. Almost all the websites designed for children have live chat. You think your children are safe because they are on neopets or barbie.com, but when your not in the room they could be going into chat rooms chatting with what they think is anther child and they could actually turn out to be an adult. All they need to do is ask them simple questions, like "where do you live?" and the child thinks it is completely innocent.
I worked with someone who's son was abducted by someone they had met on the internet. Her son was kind of a loner. He started chatting with someone he thought was a teenage boy, actually turned out to be a man. The man had invited him to hang out. Her son went because he thought he was meeting another teenage boy. The man abducted him and tried taking him to the bus station to take him out of the state. Thank God, they caught him before he could actually leave the state with him and do something terrible to him.
So, the movie just goes to show you can't trust everyone you meet online. Somebody who looks completely normal could actually turn out to be a rapist or killer. You never know who the other person is sitting on the other end of the computer. Look at the CraigsList Killer, he was someone no one suspected of being a killer. He was described as looking like a prep school boy. Last year a man was robbed by meeting a woman online. He set up a date with her and she met him at his home. While she was waiting she asked to use the bathroom and opened the bathroom window for her friends to get in and rob the man. Then let her friends know when they were leaving and he was robbed while he was out on what he thought was a date. Serial killers and rapists have turned to the internet for their victims. It is easier to lure them in and get them in secluded places, making them easy victims.
