Friends With A Killer

Social Media. Everyone has it. It's a place meant to bring people closer together. A place where you can be whoever you want. There are groups for anything and everything you can think of. There are subcultures for people who are obsessed with vampires. Platforms for every interest like eating tons of food and recording it. Doing your makeup. Reviewing products. Literally ANYTHING you can think of, the internet has a place for you. It's the one place in the world where it is impossible to not fit in somewhere.

Back in the days of Myspace, I found myself visiting a lot of the message boards. Anyone remember those? I was a lonely home school kid who wasn't allowed to go anywhere or do anything. I wasn't allowed to visit friends. Friends weren't allowed to come over. The one place I found the social connection I was so desperately lacking was the internet. Chat rooms. Message boards. Social media platforms.

At the age of 15, I found myself on a message board on Myspace that talked about another social media platform. Back then it was called LostCherry.com. I read over the conversation in the message board. Lost Cherry was an "online bar" for people ages 18 and over. I wasn't a bad kid. I never acted out. But I wasn't strictly monitored online, so I decided to make a profile. After all, my mom didn't have to know what it was, right? It was social media. That was all I divulged. I left out the 18 and over part.

Lost Cherry turned out to be a huge social community with so many enticing things for a kid who felt alone. So many new people were talking to me. It had a rate bar. A like button. A game called Hot or Not where you could rate peoples pictures. A crush option. You could use virtual money to send fake online drinks or gifts to friends or just random people. It had games. Chat rooms. Video chat. I was hooked. I easily made over a hundred friends in under 24 hours. I added everyone who sent me a request. I had an open profile. All of my content was public.

So many people were telling me how cool my page was, How much they loved my taste in music. How pretty I was. This was everything I was looking for and more. I made a few friends that I talked to daily and had a ton of random acquaintances that would often just send a drink and rate some of my photos. I was a part of that community for two whole years before they changed their name and introduced the salute feature.

Lost Cherry became CherryTap.com. The salute feature was something that was supposed to weed out fake profiles. You had to use your own member number and write out a paper with your username, member ID number, and a clear unedited photo of your face. It was around that time that I was exposed for being under age 18. My whole profile was taken down. I lost the links to all of my friends profiles. I was mad.

The name Cherrytap didn't last long. CherryTap eventually became Fubar.com and to this day, that is what it remains to be called. I wasted no time starting a new profile. I was 17 at the time. Almost 18. It is literally the easiest site to make accounts on. You don't HAVE to have a salute. But having one definitely gives you advantages in the community. I chose to not have a salute until I was 18. Having one let people know you were real and it takes a lot to get one approved. Some of my old friends found me and I was able to maintain my social life.

One friend that reached out to me after creating my new profile was a friend I had made named Chris. Chris and I didn't talk to much but when we did, it would be for hours on end. We talked about music and movies. One topic of interest was Insane Clown Posse. I liked them... but Chris was obsessed. He talked about them a lot. He told me about concerts he went to and how he would love to take me to one. I indulged the fantasy. That's all I thought it ever would be. A fantasy. He lived in Ohio. I lived in California. There was no way it was gonna happen. I was 17. My mom didn't let me do anything.

We talked off and on for a few more years. Always the same conversations. Chris: "Let's meet!" Me: "When?!" Chris: "I'm up for any time anywhere! Cali seems great. I can come to you!" I had moved out of my moms house by this time. I was in a relationship with some dude that I had ironically met on the internet.. who turned out to be a major jerk, but that's a whole other story.

I was becoming bored with the topic. With Fubar in general. Guys always sending messages about how I was a goddess... the same ones they would send to all the other girls and wait for one to respond. It was boring. I told Chris I probably was going to pull myself away form social media for awhile. He didn't like that. He begged for my phone number. I told him I didn't get cell phone service. That was true. I lived on a mountain in Yosemite at the time and it's nearly impossible for cell phones to get any service up there.

He settled for having my MSN messenger name. We continued talking. He continued to ask when we could meet. I told him I had a boyfriend and that he probably wouldn't like me meeting another guy. He insisted it was friendly and that he would "Pretend" there was never an attraction if it made my boyfriend happy. I politely told him no for the thousandth time.

We had some conversations here and there. Played a few games together. Stayed talking about ICP. We would video chat over MSN messenger. He would ask me for pictures all the time. Particularly foot pictures. I would decline. He would insist he was joking. He finally told me that he was going to come to California. That he wanted to see me but there was no pressure. He told me a place we could meet up which wasn't too far from where I was living and told me he would be fine whether I showed up or not. "No pressure at all." He clarified.

I never went.

Then one day, he just disappeared. His account was still on Fubar. He had actually made quite a few by this time. Years went on and I hadn't heard a peep out of Chris. No likes. No rates. No picture uploads. Nothing.

It stayed that way for a few years. I was on Fubar again, but just hit and miss. I had decided to make my profile private. I wasn't accepting all of the friend requests the way I used to. I had become a pretty private person. I signed onto my account to check my messages and noticed I had a few friend requests to either approve or decline. I clicked the notification and who did I see? Chris. He already had four accounts that were on my friends list, but he had sent me a new one that said, "Hi stranger!" I didn't accept it.

He sent a few more. I rejected those as well. I didn't reply. I didn't do anything.

It was 2017 and I had become quite active on social media again. Particularly Fubar. I was living in Texas now. I had been in a new relationship since 2012. We had moved in together, had a few kids. I had just laid my little ones down for a nap and was playing a game called Fumafia on Fubar and had a show called Killer Post playing in the background.

The story was about a girl named Jessica Rae Sacco. Anyone heard of her?

I was playing my game and listening to the tv. It was mostly background noise until I heard them mention things about Insane Clown Posse. That was what peaked my interest at first. I started to pay more attention. I kept my Fubar page open but stopped playing my game and focused my attention on the tv.

This episode was about a group of people that killed and dismembered a girl named Jessica and scattered her body parts across a few states. The show said that she was killed by her boyfriend, Matthew Puccio. He didn't do it alone though. He had help. Help came in the form of four friends named, "Sharon Cook, Andrew and Kandace Forney, and Christopher Wright."

Pictures were flashed across the screen of the killers. And that's when I almost threw up. Christopher Wright. I knew his face immediately.

That was Chris. There wasn't a single shred of doubt in my head. I immediately looked onto my Fubar friend requests and went to the Fubar bouncers. I told them about it they said that there was nothing they could do. I started looking at his profile. His profile picture was taken inside of his cell. He had a friends list full of women. He had a status up looking to meet women.

The bouncers said to leave it alone. That he had done his time and there was nothing more to be said. Yeah, sure, he did his time, I guess. He was sentenced to four years and a $500.00 fine. For using a sword and knives to cut up a woman's body over several hours. They took a break to go to Mcdonald's during that time.. then they scattered her dismembered body parts through Ohio and Kentucky. Four years. That's it.

I ended up talking to someone who worked on the case and she told me that one term of his probation was that he was not allowed to be on social media. She also told me that he most definitely deserved more time than he got. That he was so cold and emotionless that it made her extremely uncomfortable in the court room. That she felt he was more at fault than he admitted to being and that she felt he deserved just as much if not more time than Matthew Puccio himself.

The new account got deleted but it didn't matter. He still makes them. I don't know how active he is on the account, and honestly I am not going to post the link for safety purposes. You can find it if you want to. The point of sharing this story with you all is to tell you to be safe on the internet. In a world where you can literally be anyone you want, keep in mind that others have that ability as well.

You never truly know who is on the other side of your computer screen and you never know their intentions. I wonder what would have happened if I did take the opportunity to go and meet him. Could I have been killed? I don't know. I honestly don't even know if he ever showed up. All I do know is that throughout all the people I have taken a chance in meeting online, I have been lucky. Lucky that though some of the meetings have been strange, none have been deadly.

Ironically, I am married to a man I met on that site. We have been together since 2012. We have three amazing kids together... but I have never met a single solitary person off of the internet since that episode of Killer Post and probably never will. I have some amazing online friends, but that does not change my mind. Please, please, be safe out here. Keep an eye on your kids, even if it makes them mad.

Here is a link to the news story if anyone wanted to read it.

https://www.fox8live.com/story/17323973/landlord-found-dismembered-body-in-bathtub/