An Online Gaming Murder?
MagicEmpress - Lost City
Posts: 795 Arc User
****Now here's proof you need to protect your online Identity.****
Published - Dec 09 2011 11:14AM EST
By WINSTON ROSS - The Daily Beast
David Grubbs was on his way home from work Nov. 19, just a few blocks away from the site of Ashland, Oregon's world-renowned Shakespeare Festival, where actors in elaborate costumes often parry and thrust in faux swordfights.
But on this night, just as darkness had fallen along the popular Central Ashland Bike Path, someone chose the 23-year-old for a real-life swordfight, though Grubbs carried no weapon. A passer-by found his prone body and flagged down a woman riding her bike along the path to call for help, thinking Grubbs had passed out.
Upon closer inspection, the two Good Samaritans discovered that his head had nearly been chopped off. The stuff of Shakespeare, albeit a gruesome modern-day remake.
Autopsy results confirm that Grubbs died of "sharp-force trauma" from a finely honed blade, longer than a typical knife, which struck him repeatedly. Maybe it was a machete, maybe a sword. And as shaken residents wonder whether Ashland, where the last homicides took place in 2004, is still safe enough to leave doors unlocked, the killer remains on the loose.
"There's a lot of concern in the community," said Ashland Police Chief Terry Holderness. "We can't put an officer on every corner."
Despite interviewing as many as 300 people in the wake of Grubbs's death, the police have few leads. To a man, those who knew him say Grubbs, who traversed the bike path to get to and from his job as a grocer each day, was as nice a guy as anyone, that he had no enemies, that no one who would want him dead.
"This couldn't have happened to a more innocent and genuinely wonderful human being," wrote Grubbs's best friend, Garrison Mau, in a recent Facebook posting. "My world is shattered."
And at least in part because murder is almost never random, Ashland police have turned to a new lead, one with no links to Shakespeare but tied directly to modern-day role-playing: videogames, among them a popular Ubisoft creation known as "Assassin's Creed."
Holderness said the game is one of many Grubbs liked to play in his free time. He battled it out with other online gamers, communicating via headsets over an Internet connection. The game includes a decapitation scene, the chief said.
"Did you game or communicate with David online?" asks a bulletin on the city's website. "If so, where and who else participated?"
Bloggers tracking the case at WebSleuths.com also are discounting the possibility of a random killing. "I understand David was a 'big' kid, 6 foot something. Young and fit," wrote one. "If we go on the premise that this was a random thrill kill, why pick a big strapping man?"
Another reason to focus on the gaming community? In the past, irate gamers who feel they have been slighted somehow in cyberspace have decided to take their grudges offline. Earlier this year in nearby Eugene, a SWAT team broke down a man's door after one of his videogame rivals called 911, claiming he was at that address, had just shot his father, and was about to kill himself. The two gamers had an Xbox feud while playing FortressCraft, and the hoax caller found a way to obtain the victim's identity and interest the police.
"I can see where, if you have people who may be on the edge in terms of mental stability, giving them constant exposure to something that's violent, I can see why people may connect the dots, that they may be something someone's trying to emulate," said Greg Lemhouse, chairman of the Ashland City Council and a police officer in next-door Medford. "Until it's proven otherwise, I've got to believe this is someone who had some type of connection to the victim."
Holderness also is reaching out to Grubbs's virtual pals because even the cops' high-tech crime fighters may not be able to track down his online competitors. Grubbs used a game console, not a computer, and they do a much better job of cloaking a player's identity than a Mac or a PC. Users go by aliases, and their participation in a particular session isn't recorded, so there's no archive of threatening text or emails linked to Internet Protocol addresses allowing sleuths to hunt Grubbs's virtual enemies.
This difficulty also pours some water on the idea that it was a gamer who decided to kill Grubbs in the first place, however. If police can't find people he played with, then people he played with shouldn't have been able to find Grubbs, unless he somehow revealed his identity outside the game. Plus, the players Holderness has reached so far say he played Assassin's Creed with no particular brand of snark and was unlikely to have enemies online.
"I've never been terribly enamored of that theory," Holderness said.
But it remains a possibility, especially against the rarity of random acts of violence and the assertions that Grubbs got along just fine with everyone he met.
That leaves police no closer to catching his twisted killer, though not for lack of trying. Over the weekend, police interviewed a man from Fullerton, Calif., after he was picked up on an Ashland police warrant Dec. 1, a "decorative sword" in his possession and a history in Ashland that includes once threatening officers with a pair of pruning shears. But Holderness said Monday the sword isn't the murder weapon and that the man has been ruled out as a suspect, with an alibi in Eureka, Calif., on the day Grubbs died.
The Central Ashland Bike Path probably won't be seeing many solo travelers anytime soon.
"Don't be there if you don't have to be," Holderness told the Ashland Daily Tidings recently. "But if you do, don't go alone."
Published - Dec 09 2011 11:14AM EST
By WINSTON ROSS - The Daily Beast
David Grubbs was on his way home from work Nov. 19, just a few blocks away from the site of Ashland, Oregon's world-renowned Shakespeare Festival, where actors in elaborate costumes often parry and thrust in faux swordfights.
But on this night, just as darkness had fallen along the popular Central Ashland Bike Path, someone chose the 23-year-old for a real-life swordfight, though Grubbs carried no weapon. A passer-by found his prone body and flagged down a woman riding her bike along the path to call for help, thinking Grubbs had passed out.
Upon closer inspection, the two Good Samaritans discovered that his head had nearly been chopped off. The stuff of Shakespeare, albeit a gruesome modern-day remake.
Autopsy results confirm that Grubbs died of "sharp-force trauma" from a finely honed blade, longer than a typical knife, which struck him repeatedly. Maybe it was a machete, maybe a sword. And as shaken residents wonder whether Ashland, where the last homicides took place in 2004, is still safe enough to leave doors unlocked, the killer remains on the loose.
"There's a lot of concern in the community," said Ashland Police Chief Terry Holderness. "We can't put an officer on every corner."
Despite interviewing as many as 300 people in the wake of Grubbs's death, the police have few leads. To a man, those who knew him say Grubbs, who traversed the bike path to get to and from his job as a grocer each day, was as nice a guy as anyone, that he had no enemies, that no one who would want him dead.
"This couldn't have happened to a more innocent and genuinely wonderful human being," wrote Grubbs's best friend, Garrison Mau, in a recent Facebook posting. "My world is shattered."
And at least in part because murder is almost never random, Ashland police have turned to a new lead, one with no links to Shakespeare but tied directly to modern-day role-playing: videogames, among them a popular Ubisoft creation known as "Assassin's Creed."
Holderness said the game is one of many Grubbs liked to play in his free time. He battled it out with other online gamers, communicating via headsets over an Internet connection. The game includes a decapitation scene, the chief said.
"Did you game or communicate with David online?" asks a bulletin on the city's website. "If so, where and who else participated?"
Bloggers tracking the case at WebSleuths.com also are discounting the possibility of a random killing. "I understand David was a 'big' kid, 6 foot something. Young and fit," wrote one. "If we go on the premise that this was a random thrill kill, why pick a big strapping man?"
Another reason to focus on the gaming community? In the past, irate gamers who feel they have been slighted somehow in cyberspace have decided to take their grudges offline. Earlier this year in nearby Eugene, a SWAT team broke down a man's door after one of his videogame rivals called 911, claiming he was at that address, had just shot his father, and was about to kill himself. The two gamers had an Xbox feud while playing FortressCraft, and the hoax caller found a way to obtain the victim's identity and interest the police.
"I can see where, if you have people who may be on the edge in terms of mental stability, giving them constant exposure to something that's violent, I can see why people may connect the dots, that they may be something someone's trying to emulate," said Greg Lemhouse, chairman of the Ashland City Council and a police officer in next-door Medford. "Until it's proven otherwise, I've got to believe this is someone who had some type of connection to the victim."
Holderness also is reaching out to Grubbs's virtual pals because even the cops' high-tech crime fighters may not be able to track down his online competitors. Grubbs used a game console, not a computer, and they do a much better job of cloaking a player's identity than a Mac or a PC. Users go by aliases, and their participation in a particular session isn't recorded, so there's no archive of threatening text or emails linked to Internet Protocol addresses allowing sleuths to hunt Grubbs's virtual enemies.
This difficulty also pours some water on the idea that it was a gamer who decided to kill Grubbs in the first place, however. If police can't find people he played with, then people he played with shouldn't have been able to find Grubbs, unless he somehow revealed his identity outside the game. Plus, the players Holderness has reached so far say he played Assassin's Creed with no particular brand of snark and was unlikely to have enemies online.
"I've never been terribly enamored of that theory," Holderness said.
But it remains a possibility, especially against the rarity of random acts of violence and the assertions that Grubbs got along just fine with everyone he met.
That leaves police no closer to catching his twisted killer, though not for lack of trying. Over the weekend, police interviewed a man from Fullerton, Calif., after he was picked up on an Ashland police warrant Dec. 1, a "decorative sword" in his possession and a history in Ashland that includes once threatening officers with a pair of pruning shears. But Holderness said Monday the sword isn't the murder weapon and that the man has been ruled out as a suspect, with an alibi in Eureka, Calif., on the day Grubbs died.
The Central Ashland Bike Path probably won't be seeing many solo travelers anytime soon.
"Don't be there if you don't have to be," Holderness told the Ashland Daily Tidings recently. "But if you do, don't go alone."
Post edited by MagicEmpress - Lost City on
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Comments
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and bevis and butthead made me burn down my middleschool
what were the violent video games that hitler played?[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]0 -
it's kind of sad that the only clue they have to go on is that the victim played a video game with a decapitation scene and that there was a decapitation scene in Assassin's Crede. It's especially sad that they fail to realize that there was a Renaissance Festival or whatever that Shakespeare thing was they mentioned in the beginning of the article was, and that often times at those types of events you can in fact buy REAL swords at these events from certain vendors with enough money and proper identification.
I fail to see any reason why this simply couldn't have been a case where the victim was in the wrong place at the wrong time.Acc 1: TolanSky ~ ● Seeker / Daearena ~ Mystic / ThornLily ~ Veno
Acc 2: Veilana ~ Sin / QueenBlubrry ~ Cleric / Lemondrop ~ Psychic0 -
SashaGray - Heavens Tear wrote: »
what were the violent video games that hitler played?
Risk?0 -
Frogger[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]0
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Yay for completely blaming a problem on violent video games through the tiny tiniest link.
*cough* columbine *cough*[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
|Active: Coalescence - Lost City, Wizard|
|Inactive: StormHydra - Sanctuary, Archer|
|Call of Duty: Black Ops|League of Legends|Forsaken World|Perfect World International|The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim|0 -
As disturbing as this story is, it has nothing to do with Perfect World International. Thus, moved to Off-Topic.0
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As disturbing as this story is, it has nothing to do with Perfect World International. Thus, moved to Off-Topic.
I disagree... if the people in the police department in question decide to go on a which hunt against all MMORPG's, then this could indirectly affect Perfect World International whether we like it or not. Thus it is important for people to be at least somewhat aware of the facts of this murder and the case surrounding it.Acc 1: TolanSky ~ ● Seeker / Daearena ~ Mystic / ThornLily ~ Veno
Acc 2: Veilana ~ Sin / QueenBlubrry ~ Cleric / Lemondrop ~ Psychic0 -
Small town police departments are painfully incompetent. The article points out that the town hasn't had a murder since 04. So they get one, they have no practice at this and they love finally getting attention. And they mess it up.AKA PermaSpark, Heartshatter0
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Small town police departments are painfully incompetent. The article points out that the town hasn't had a murder since 04. So they get one, they have no practice at this and they love finally getting attention. And they mess it up.
probably the case. However that doesn't mean we aren't going to be seeing campaign slogans like "Stop the Violence, kill the video games!" or some such **** like that.Acc 1: TolanSky ~ ● Seeker / Daearena ~ Mystic / ThornLily ~ Veno
Acc 2: Veilana ~ Sin / QueenBlubrry ~ Cleric / Lemondrop ~ Psychic0 -
**** like this always pisses me off. humanity has been killing eachother over the smallest things for thousands of years now>_>. it irrates me to see statments like the ones in this post.
oh yeah i been playing games like GTA from i was 12, saints row, assassins creed, COD MW, and a host of other violent games i can't remember......oh i guess that means i want to kill you all>_> if you ask me, the whole "games invoke violance" non-sense is just a fail blame game. parents want to place blame on something so they do it on games, when they should be blaming themselves and the fail *** society we now live in that would have police breathing down your necks for SPANKING
*takes deep breath* okay, claiming down. sorry for the rant. you guys have NO idea how much this topic pisses me off lol.0 -
I took the story as a warning to protect your personal information while playing online, not as an indictment of gaming itself. I see so many people posting their Facebook page on guild chat boards anybody can find out who and where you are in no time flat. b:sad0
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MagicEmpress - Lost City wrote: »I took the story as a warning to protect your personal information while playing online, not as an indictment of gaming itself. I see so many people posting their Facebook page on guild chat boards anybody can find out who and where you are in no time flat. b:sad
indeed. it's for that reason i generally never even reveal my real name in online games. (cos i heard ppl can even steal your info from that alone, altho i'm not sure how true that is)0 -
Outlaw_Arch - Heavens Tear wrote: »indeed. it's for that reason i generally never even reveal my real name in online games. (cos i heard ppl can even steal your info from that alone, altho i'm not sure how true that is)
revealing your first name alone won't be enough for people to steal your identity unless that first name is so unique as to make it so that absolutely no one else in the world has an identical name (a near impossibility with over 6,000,000,000 people on the planet).
Additionally telling people the general geograpic region or even the town you live in so long as you don't tell them your physical address or last name should likewise not prove to be problematic. The problem arises when people start telling people their facebook profile pages (assuming said facebook profile page has their physical address, phone number or any other information they may not want people to get ahold of on it), or other similar sources of information about their private life. Sharing minor private details won't be problematic in the least.
In my case I would be unsurprised if my first name were so common as to have at least 1 million other people with the same first name or a virtually identical first name as I have. So sharing my first name is not a problem for me.Acc 1: TolanSky ~ ● Seeker / Daearena ~ Mystic / ThornLily ~ Veno
Acc 2: Veilana ~ Sin / QueenBlubrry ~ Cleric / Lemondrop ~ Psychic0 -
Assassins Creed FTW b:victory
my explanation (or trollplanation) would be that sometimes just gaming is not enough. ppls want a real deal sometimes. you cannot do it in game all the time, you'll reach a point where you want to do it in real, to feel it with your own skin. especially when everybody calling you nolifer.
btw, GTA is still the best murder of all b:victory0 -
Perfect World teaches us to to kill people and steal their loot. Perfect World is breading a generation of violent criminals with no remorse or empathy for another's loss.0
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Hideori - Lost City wrote: »Assassins Creed FTW b:victory
my explanation (or trollplanation) would be that sometimes just gaming is not enough. ppls want a real deal sometimes. you cannot do it in game all the time, you'll reach a point where you want to do it in real, to feel it with your own skin. especially when everybody calling you nolifer.
btw, GTA is still the best murder of all b:victory
I would suggest to anyone who feels this way that the best way to express this frustration is to join their nation's military and take their aggression out on their nation's enemies instead of out on their would be friends. Not that in the grand scheme of things this is really any better morally speaking, but at least it is considered patriotic instead of being considered outright murder.Acc 1: TolanSky ~ ● Seeker / Daearena ~ Mystic / ThornLily ~ Veno
Acc 2: Veilana ~ Sin / QueenBlubrry ~ Cleric / Lemondrop ~ Psychic0 -
There will always be some mentally unstable person killing for whatever reason the feel appropriate b:surrender
Yes, It's bad. But compare it: There's so many people playing games and they don't do ****.
It's just the media blowing up scandals and ofc jumping like vultures because we all know violent video games are soo bad. But yea, that's the media. Good news don't spread as well so you're not likely to hear about someone who experienced something good.
Imo they should start researching WHY that person did it. Sure, he played games. But that was just the trigger. I bet he had a mental illness before it. Maybe even the newest action mopvie could have pushed him over the edge.
But yes 'OMG those bad video games* sells better.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]0 -
I learned loads of English form my fac mates! /positive thing about video games/
Either way.. yeh.. that's 1 person XD and the media jumps on it as if it's EVERYONE who plays games...
I agree though to not share personal information. I do share my first name, since well.. who cares? XD I share what country I am from and if asked what region of it depending on who it is.
The part I live in of my country contains like.. 1/5th of the people here anyway XD[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Thanks Silvychar for the awesome sig
Characters:
waterfal - lvl 90 demon ferrari veno
Hazumi_chan - lvl 9x sage seeker0 -
Jack Thompson is gonna have fun with this one >_>.0
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Alsiadorra - Sanctuary wrote: »Jack Thompson is gonna have fun with this one >_>.
wasn't that **** ***hole disbarred from courts? seriously if he wormed his way back into these matters i WILL be pissed
p.s yes i HATE that ignorant fool VERY much0 -
Yeah he was, but you know he's probably ranting and raving his *** off saying "I TOLD THEM ALL BUT THEY WOULDNT BELIEVE ME".0
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