4 Chan Killers

4chan is a large internet bulletin board that hosts topics on a wide array of subjects. While they sometimes have the reputation of being dangerous or malicious hackers, that is only a small subset of the site. A lot of the posts on the site are just simple prank jokes, memes, creepypasta or green text.

There is some truth to the darkside, though. Like on August 21, 2015 when an anonymous user posted this topic:

“I have killed several women for pleasure. If you can guess a name, I will upload a picture. If you can guess a name of any of these women I will upload their photo. No more than ten names per post. Any more than that will be ignored. Some are Polaroids and others were taken with a disposable camera. I also have pictures of them before death when I was able to do so. If you guess all of the names I will show you were I dumped a body in 1999. The first one is free as her name is unlikely to be guessed.”

He then played this “game” with the other anonymous 4chan users. They’d guess names and he’d occasionally post a picture of a dead person. The pictures seemed to be smartphone pictures of developed photos, some with a person alive next to a picture of that same person who was dead. The 4chan users scoured the internet and used other image tools to find if these images existed elsewhere on the internet. Their searches turned up nothing.

The thread was quickly deleted but internet sleuths were already on the case, going through these images in an attempt to catch a serial killer. One of the victims was identified as Shauna Maynard, a 17-year-old who was killed in 1998. The 4chan user posted photos both before and after her death. There is some debate as to whether this person is Shauna Maynard, but if it is NOT Shauna Maynard, it leads to even more questions. Who is the person in the photos? Is the photo of the living girl the same girl in the photo of the dead body? He claimed that these pictures were taken on a disposable camera, developed himself and then put online. The result is photos that are grainy and low-resolution and hard to pick apart.

What is clear, however, is that these photos do not look like crime scene photos. No one has been able to track down the source of them. They look like amateur photography and lack the markers, lighting and other markers a crime scene photo would show.

A month later, the killer returned to 4chan and this time, posted photos of a man he killed. This man was harder to identify because his face was obscured in the photos, but they had the same amateur quality to them as they did before. And worse, these photos seemed to depict the man dying. In one photo, his hands were being held up. In the next, his hands were down, face a bit more mangled and substantially more blood underneath him.

In the background of these pictures, you could see even more photos of dead people, printed out and very similar looking. Other images he posted included women loaded into cardboard boxes. Some looked recently dead, some looked long dead. Some included photos of them alive and dead.

Once the original girl posted was identified as Shauna Maynard, another 4chan user called the FBI and reported it.

This story doesn’t really have a happy ending. Or any ending really. The killer promised to return, but never did. It’s been 2 years now, and no confirmation has ever come from the FBI or anyone else about whether that girl was Shauna Maynard or not. None of the other photos were ever identified.

Personally, I have a lot of questions about these photos. Assuming that it is all a hoax, how were these photos obtained? They don’t look like crime scene photos or evidence photos. If the photos were fake or staged… why? The original 4chan thread didn’t gain much traction initially, and both threads were deleted very quickly. It seems like a lot of work to go through as a hoax, not to mention just heartless and cruel.

A reddit user did claim the entire thing was a hoax, then quoted text that appears to be taken from a news website. This text reads,

“A shocking online claim is bringing new attention to a cold case murder in Las Vegas. Someone posted graphic pictures and claimed to be the killer of Shauna Maynard, a runaway found shot to death back in 1998. It appears to be a hoax, Las Vegas Police officials tell Action News the claim is not valid but they wouldn't elaborate. The disturbing photos and outrageous claim were posted to 4chan, it's a user-generated content site much like Reddit. It was put up just over a month ago and it is disturbing. The anonymous poster set it up like a sick game, claiming to have killed several women then urging other users to guess names to go along with the disgusting images that appear to show dead bodies. "Whoever could do something like that just shows that it's a sick sick mind, you know social media unfortunately can be so abused in manners like this," said Retired Metro Lieutenant, Randy Sutton. One of the first pictures shows a dark haired woman covered in blood but her face isn't visible. Next to it there's a high school photo that users quickly identified as Shauna Maynard. "The cruelty of that is beyond belief, I mean if you think about how the woman's family has been suffering for all theses years."

The weird thing about this article is that I could not find it online anywhere. The only existence of this text that I could find was on the reddit thread itself. So where did this text come from? Why is this user claiming it is a hoax and quoted text from “Action News” without a link to their site. And why can’t I find confirmation of this article anywhere online? I did Google Randy Sutton, the retired Las Vegas police officer quoted in the story. He does exist, but I couldn’t find this quote anywhere other than this reddit thread.

So unfortunately, that’s where this story ends. Not a happy ending. Not a sad one. Just… no ending at all, really. This will go down in history as a contributor to this freakshow on the internet, whether it was real or a hoax. I want to believe it is a hoax, although some killers have definitely been proven to post their kills on 4chan.

On November 4, 2014, a user posted several photos of a nude woman with blood around her neck and the text, “Turns out its way harder to strangle someone to death than it looks on the movies.”

Users claimed these were fake or staged photos, but the user pressed on. He said, “Check the news for Port Orchard Washington in the few hours. Her son will be home from school soon. He’ll find her and call the cops. I justy wanted to share the pics before they find me. I bought a bb gun that looks realistic enough. When they come, I’ll pull it out and it will be suicide by cop. I understand the doubts. Just check the fucking news. I have to lose my phone now.”

Unlike the previous killer, this one turns out to be true. David Michael Kalac murdered Amber Lynn Coplin and posted the photos on 4chan for everyone to see.

He had placed her drivers license near her head and written the word “dead” on it. He also wrote, “She killed me first” on the bedroom wall, and “bad news” on the window blinds. Just as the killer predicted, her son found the body and alerted the cops. The killer had stolen the victim’s car and tried running, however, eventually surrendered to the police.

He was charged with second degree murder, which was later elevated to first degree murder. He claimed he killed her simply because he was drunk and she “pissed him off”. He was eventually convicted and sentenced to 82 years in prison.

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