I will go back to my roots, I promise...just not today.
I've been making a point of pulling stories from national newspaper headlines and showing how a good majority of the players involved have access to and are frequent participants in Social Networking sites like Myspace (I won’t go through the whole list, as Myspace is currently the biggest) to help you in an area that we, as Criminal Defense Investigator's really need to focus on...utilizing social networking sites PRODUCTIVELY in our investigations.
In the past when doing background investigations or mitigation type work on cases, we were forced to start from scratch and most of the initial grunt work was done on the ground, going to family members and friends. This is, and in my eyes always will be the best way to do most investigations: In person and in the field.
With sites like Myspace, we are given access to entire families and contacts that we might never have in real life or EVEN KNEW EXISTED if we had just stuck to punding the pavement!
In this weeks example, I'm going to briefly introduce you to the story of a young, 22 year-old Iowan that is alleged to have killed his entire family, Father, Mother, and three sisters over the past weekend. I’m also including the Myspace page of one of his sisters (Sheena).
Henry C. Jackson (AP Reporter) writes in the Washington Post:
Okay. In my preliminary searches I was unable to come up with any pages for Shawn Bentler. If I had more time, I'd be able to do a more thorough search, but here is the Myspace page belonging to that of his deceased sister, Sheena Bentler:That call went unanswered.
Sheena talk's about the normal teenage girl stuff on her page and it seems that she only has a couple of comments she has made on friends pages. So it’s hard to get a good read on her, especially since she doesn't provide a whole lot of information about herself.
It's ironic that enjoys Action, Horror, Suspense (and lots of good fights) in Movies and Murder Mysteries and suspense in Books…considering the death of her and her family could become a bit a mystery itself.
As an investigator, I would see that I now have a (short) list of friends that I may never have heard about, had I limited myself to just talking to the state's witnesses. The friends might be able to shed additional light on Sheena's relationship with her brother and also provide possibly useful insight into Shawn.
The real nitty gritty comes from the myspace page of an ex-girlfriend who writes some interesting blog posts about her relationship with Shawn.
Meet Kayla H., a twenty year-old, pretty little bleached blonde from Illinois.
It is hard to tell from her blog posts but she appears to have started dating Shawn Between February 13, 2005 and May 1, 2006.There are really only two posts talking about Shawn, the first being:
This is actually a little sad, but the important part is that Kayla noticed that Shawn was depressed and, Down in the dumps. Obviously Kayla will be a fantastic source of what Shawn was like on a day to day basis and also give us some ground to work with into his state of mind.
Her next post is more of the same:
More insight into Shawn? Maybe, maybe not, You can read the rest of her blog to find out whats going on in that 20 going on 12 year-old head of hers.
It seems that there is always the inevitable ex-girlfriend that comes out of the woodwork to say that she remembered "Johnny" wanting to off his entire family when they were dating because his kid brother forgot to put the ice-cream back in the freezer. Sometimes these folks are trying to help and sometimes they just want the spotlight on them. If for some reason Kayla turns into that ex, then you might find that her Myspace page can also be used to show that she was a chick that liked to drink a lot…and I do mean a lot and if she is going to be considered a witness ALL factors about her background need to be considered.
I could go further but I don't want to bore everyone to death. This is really just the tip of the iceberg on this case and maybe even your own! We PDI's and private CDI's need to start getting creative on where we start looking for info because lord knows we don't have the time, money, and all around general resources of the District Attorney and every Law Enforcement agency in the nation.
We need to put our heads together whenever we can, and share information like this in the hopes that the new tools we learn to use can help give our client's the best representation possible.
That being said, I'm also going to use this space to say you might want to think about joining The Public Defender Investigator Listserv of the user group of any other defense investigator related site...there are a lot of them out there and its a good place to meet other investigator's to share questions and ideas!
Ciao for now, I promise to stop writing about Myspace Investigations soon.
5 comments:
Wawh wah wah I kinda like the myspace things myself.
I appreciate your posts about My space and Icerocket because I learn something useful.
Can you tell me how you found the my space of Shawn's ex girlfriend. from her posts it looks like she only mentions him by his first name.
I'm glad they're useful to somebody!
If you pulled up the VIEW ALL COMMENTS page, you'll see that a friend of SHAWN'S named TRAVIS mentions him by his full name. This is also the area in which SHAWN was living at the time of the incident.
Shawn's ex-girlfriend has posted a new blog, a letter to Shawn.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=7941102&MyToken=19fab6ec-9e63-44a6-b76b-fbf9c250e60cML
**sigh** i knew shawn. well. i spent 55+ hours a week with the guy working at shottenkirk chevrolet. he even taught me how to drive a 5 speed cobalt. this whole situation is crazy. obviously HE went crazy, one doesnt kill their entire family, and end up being sane... but i guess what they say is true, you never can tell. i loved shawn, he was a great friend, funny as hell, and generous. not saying hes not currently batty, but you cant spend THAT much time with someone and not know them. it saddens me that he had to go to such extreme measures, but something went wrong with him. i couldnt even begin to guess what. he had a wonderful family, his mom adored him. i dont think the whole truth behind the murders will ever be known publicly. they already have enough evidence, he doesnt ever have to utter a word to anyone about the motives, or events leading up to he 911 call. hes already pretty much convicted. and for his family, i cry.
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