Suicide Plotter Targeted Women For Five Years
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PORTLAND, Ore. – A man who used an Internet chat room to try to set up a mass suicide on Valentine’s Day had been trying to persuade women for at least five years to engage in sex acts with him and then kill themselves, a sheriff said yesterday.
Gerald Krein faces charges of solicitation to commit murder, but prosecutors are expected to increase the charge to attempted manslaughter today, said Klamath County Sheriff Timothy Evinger.
Combing through old chat room records, investigators discovered that Mr. Krein had been enticing women across North America to commit suicide as far back as 2000, Sheriff Evinger said. Mr. Krein told investigators he elicited more than two dozen suicide pledges for the Valentine’s Day plot, authorities said.
“The common theme is that these were women who were vulnerable, who were depressed. He invited them to engage in certain sexual acts with him – and then they were to hang themselves naked from a beam in his house,” the sheriff said. “He was indicating in these chat groups to these women that he had a beam and that it would hold multiple people.”
No deaths had been found that were linked to Mr. Krein, the sheriff said, but he said he would not be surprised if someone had killed herself as a result of Mr. Krein’s alleged activities.
“My concern is if he’s been doing this for some time, it’s my hope that he hasn’t been successful – but it could turn out that he has been,” he said.
Mr. Krein, 26, was arrested Wednesday at his mother’s home in the southern Oregon town of Klamath Falls.
Detectives learned of the Valentine’s Day plan from a woman in Ontario, Canada, who said she saw a message in a Yahoo chat room that had “Suicide Ideology” in the title. Chat room participants supposedly planned to commit suicide on Valentine’s Day while logged on with each other. The chat room is no longer active.
The woman told detectives she was going to take part in the suicide but had second thoughts when another chat room participant talked about killing her children before taking her own life, Sheriff Evinger said earlier.
Mr. Krein told investigators at least 31 chat room participants agreed to the suicide pact, authorities said. So far, investigators have tracked down four women: the woman who came forward in Canada and three others living in Oregon, Missouri, and Virginia.
