Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(87)
“This guy is strong,” the FBI’s Metz said. “We think he literally breaks their necks with his bare hands or in an armlock maneuver of some kind. It is a horrible and painful way to die.”
The Shrike takes his online name from a bird that is known as one of nature’s most brutal killers. The bird silently stalks its prey—field mice and other small animals—and attacks from behind, gripping its victim in its beak and viciously breaking its neck.
The killings and the investigation are sure to impact the quickly growing and multibillion-dollar genetic-analytics industry. A FairWarning investigation determined that the industry, which falls under the control of the federal Food and Drug Administration, is virtually unregulated as the agency is in the midst of a long-running effort to promulgate rules and regulations for the industry. The strong indication that measures to protect the anonymity of DNA samples have been compromised is sure to send a shock wave through the industry.
“This is a game changer,” said Jennifer Schwartz, a life-sciences professor at UCLA. “The whole industry is based on the principle of anonymity. If that is compromised then what do you have? A lot of scared people and a whole industry that could start to wobble.”
The FBI shut down the Dirty4 website and is actively attempting to contact women whose identities were revealed and sold by Hammond and Vogel. Metz said that there are strong indications that the suspect has multiple profiles that he retrieved from Hammond’s lab computer after killing him. He said that GT23 and Orange Nano are fully cooperating with that part of the investigation.
“That’s the priority at this moment,” Metz said. “We have to find this guy, of course, but we need to reach all of the unsuspecting women so we can warn and protect them.”
Metz said it was unclear why Hammond and Vogel were murdered but that it is likely the two men held the keys to identifying the Shrike.
“I think he got wind of the investigation and knew that the only two people who could help identify him were these guys,” Metz said. “So they had to go, and they ended up with a dose of their own medicine. There is not a lot of sympathy around here for them, I’ll tell you that.”
Little is known about the relationship between Hammond and Vogel but it is clear that the two men met at UC-Irvine, where they were roommates. Students from that era say the two men may have crossed paths in an informal and unsanctioned group at the school that was involved in digital bullying of female students.
“It was a forerunner of these incel groups you are seeing today,” said a school official who requested anonymity. “They did all kinds of things to female students: hacked their social media, spread lies and rumors. Some girls left school because of what they did to them. But they always hid their trail. No one could prove anything.”
Incels are primarily men who identify themselves as involuntarily celibate and on Internet forums blame and disparage women for their romantic problems. In recent years there has been an uptick of crimes against women attributed to incels. The FBI has listed the groups as a growing concern.
The Dirty4 website appeared to be fueled by similar attitudes and sentiments, Metz said.
“These guys were women-haters and took it to an extreme limit,” he said. “And now seven or eight women are dead and another will never walk again. It’s horrible.”
Meanwhile, authorities fear that the hit-and-run killing of Vogel yesterday may indicate that the Shrike is changing his methods, which could make him more difficult to track.
“He knows we are on to him and the best way to avoid the net closing in on him is to either stop the killing or change his routine,” Metz said. “Unfortunately, this guy has a taste for killing and I don’t see him stopping. We are doing our very best to identify him and take him down.”
JACK
41
One hundred days after our first story was posted, the Shrike had still not been identified or captured. In the course of that time Emily Atwater and I wrote thirty-two more stories, staying with the investigation and running out in front of the rest of the media that descended like locusts after our first dispatch. Myron Levin negotiated an exclusive partnership with the Los Angeles Times and most of our stories were carried on the front page above the fold. We covered the expanding investigation and the confirmation of two other victims. We posted a full take on William Orton and the rape case he beat. We wrote a piece about Gwyneth Rice and later covered a fundraiser to help meet her medical expenses. We even wrote stories that captured the sickening online deification of the Shrike by incel groups who celebrated what he had done to his female victims.
Myron Levin’s concern about losing half his staff came true, but for unexpected reasons. With the Shrike still out there somewhere, Emily grew too fearful that we would become his next targets. As the story started to lose oxygen because of the lack of developments, she decided to leave FairWarning. We had gotten offers for a book and a podcast. We decided she would take the book deal and I would record the podcast. She moved back to England to an obscure location that even I wasn’t privy to. She maintained that it was better that way because the secrecy meant that I could not be forced to reveal her location to anyone. We communicated almost every day and I emailed her the raw reporting for the final stories she would write under our names.
The one-hundred-day mark of the story was also the end point for me at FairWarning. I had given notice and determined that whatever updates came about I could report on the podcast. It was a new form of journalism and I enjoyed going into a sound booth and telling, rather than writing, the story.