[NOTE: DBKP has examined the 'Megan Had it Coming' Blog and its last post, dated December 3, "I'm Lori Drew". We don't know who is behind the blog--Lori Drew or Internet troll.
However, we've asked Trench Reynolds, who has covered MySpace crime for the last eight years, to give us his opinion.
He makes some good points. Some we agree with, others: we're not so sure. But, he makes several of his points so persuasively, we thought you readers should get a chance to see them and decide for yourselves.]
Hey everybody. My name is Trench Reynolds. Some of you may know me from my blogs about crime, TheTrenchcoat Chronicles and MyCrimeSpace. At the Chronicles I've been blogging since 2000 discussing school shootings and at MCS I talk about MySpace related crimes.
Mondoreb invited me to Death by 1,000 Papercuts (which is the greatest blog name ever) to express my thoughts on the Megan Meier story, specifically the 'Megan Had It Coming Blog'. As a lot of people have I've been following the story closely since it broke nationally. And just like most people I was horrified to read what happened to Megan Meier by people who were supposed to be adults.
When the identity of the Drews were made public by bloggers and commenters I decided that I would not post their names in hopes of not facilitating some kind of vigilante justice. Also I did not want to interfere with the investigation into whether or not criminal files would be charged.
It was after I made that post that someone posted a comment about 'MHIC'. It was also on that same post that someone by the name of 'ANONYMOUS' was leaving comments in defense of Lori Drew and was leaving comments similar to the posts on 'MHIC'.
I conferred with a blogging friend of mine who is a cybersecurity expert and we both agreed that ANONYMOUS and MHIC were the same person. Of course the Internet being what it is a lot of people automatically assumed that it must be Lori Drew without doing any investigation.
Now that's not a dig at DBKP because their own investigation seems to be thorough. However whenever a tragedy like this breaks there's always people willing to take advantage of the situation in order to get some attention. That's what I think is going on with MHIC.
Getting back to ANONYMOUS the e-mail address used to place the comments at MCS traced back to the MySpace of 16-year-old African-American girl from Michigan. It is possible that the address was a fake that coincidentally belonged to this girl's MySpace. However once I made that fact public the MySpace in question disappeared.
The second thing that leads me to believe that MHIC is a fake was the IP address of ANONYMOUS. Every time someone posts a comment at MCS I receive an e- mail that has their IP Address in it. IP addresses are used to trace back to someone's Internet Service Provider (ISP). Through this information I can usually ascertain the person's relative geographical location.
ANONYMOUS' ISP traced back to Louisville, KY which is roughly 260 miles from where the Drews and Meiers lived. IP addresses can be spoofed but if the person really wanted me to believe they were Lori Drew and had the knowledge on how to spoof IP addresses they probably would have made the address trace back to Missouri and not Kentucky.
Lastly, which may just be wishful thinking on my part, after everything that has be relayed in the media and on blogs I'd like to think that Lori Drew would not be that callous or stupid to entitle a blog 'Megan Had It Coming'.
Recently Lori Drew's lawyer said that she had nothing to do with the blog. Mondoreb himself poses the question if it's a hoax why is still up because of Google's imitation rules. My answer to that is I think it's not really a high priority for Google. Not only that if it was Lori Drew I think her lawyer would have advised her to take it down by now which can be done as easily as clicking on a button.
Since civil charges are likely against the Drews I think since the blog is still up that the odds are in favor of MHIC not being written by Lori Drew.
More than likely MHIC was posted by a group of people just looking for the attention and to see how many people they can get to fall for it. In the end I could be wrong but that would mean that Lori Drew is really that stupid and callous and if she is I weep for humanity.
So what do you think?
Is 'Megan Had It Coming' the work of Lori Drew?
Or an Internet troll?
[Check out other Trench Reynolds reports on the MySpace Suicide story, as well as MySpace and school crime at TheTrenchcoat Chronicles and MyCrimeSpace. Crime buffs need to drop by for the latest.]
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