For the first Craigslist murder.
Katherine Ann Olson responded, via e-mail, to an ad on Craigslist in Minnesota for a babysitting job. She accepted the job and showed up expecting to look after the children of a woman named Amy. A day later, her body was found in the trunk of her car, ankles bound with red twine. Her killer was a cold-blooded nineteen-year-old named Michael John Anderson. He lured her into his house and shot her. Police say Anderson killed the twenty-four-year-old woman in his parents’ bedroom.
According to Craigslist, this was the first murder involving the widely used online resource for classified advertisements.
Okay, Mr. Creative, ever watch CSI? First off, computers are highly traceable. And why couldn’t you just have been a normal serial killer? You know, someone who leaves a calling card like bugs in your victims’ throats. Or someone who owns an albino pet. Besides, you should’ve waited until you were highly educated and entirely off the grid before you got caught. You could’ve toyed with the cops by burning off your fingerprints and FedEx-ing severed heads to the desert. Or you could’ve just stapled an I DID IT note to your forehead while lying on your victim’s trunk. But maybe that would’ve made it harder for the police to find you…
I guess it was inevitable that someone would eventually die as a result of our beloved Craigslist. But it still makes me shake my head in denial. So we must blame Anderson for leaving us wondering if we’ll be the next victim. Now we are scared even when we want to sell an old stained couch online to a couple of college freshmen! I still wonder if it was a contract killing. I smell a conspiracy here. Did eBay hire you? Someone get its marketing department on the phone…