Go on, top yourself!
Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:13 pm
"Encouraging people to kill themselves", is it a crime?A former US nurse has been charged with goading a British man to commit suicide by masquerading as a woman in internet chartrooms.
William Melchert-Dinkel is accused of encouraging the suicides of Mark Drybrough from Coventry in 2005 and Canada's Nadia Kajouji in 2008.
Dyrborough, 32, hanged himself after making a suicide pact with a young female nurse he had met on the internet called “Li Dao”.
It is now alleged that Li was actually 47-year-old Melchert-Dinkel, from Minnesota, who US prosecutors believe has encouraged at least five people to kill themselves.
Investigators claim the family-man spent years trawling the internet contacting more than 100 people across the world and used his experience as a former nurse to advise those contemplating taking their own lives.
Using pseudonyms, like Lia Dao, Falcon Girl and Cami D, they claim he would persuade people to enter pacts in which they would hang themselves in front of internet webcams and watch each other die.
At the crucial moment there was always a problem with Li Dao’s webcam so that it was just “her” watching as the other person fulfilled their side of the pact.
Dryborough, an IT technician with a history of depression, had become increasingly withdrawn in the months before his death and was spending much of his time surfing the internet on his home-built computer.
His mother Elaine Drybrough, 61, of Coventry, said: ““When Mark was ill I noticed he was using the computer a lot and I was worried what he was doing.
“This man appointed himself Mark’s executioner. He whispered in his ear each time he logged on to the computer. Because of his medical experience he knew exactly who he was looking for, what he was doing, the buttons he needed to push.”
Melchert-Dinkel’s alleged involvement was only exposed after a 64-year-old British woman took it upon a herself to investigate, after becoming concerned for a teenage friend who had told about an online death pact with a female nurse.
Celia Bray, enlisted the help of another friend Kat Lowe, a mother of two from Wolverhampton to contact Li Dao and secretly gather information, including Melchert-Dinkel’s home address in St Paul, Minnesota.
British police and the FBI refused to take her seriously but the Minnesotan police eventually took the case.
A criminal complaint against Melchert-Dinkel has been filed in Rice County, Minnesota today, charging him with encouraging the deaths of Drybrough and Kajouji, who drowned herself in Ottawa's Rideau River in 2008.
Melchert-Dinkel, who has not publicly commented on the charges, is due to appear in court on 25 May.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 107061.ece
