The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: March 14, 2010

Official News page 7


REAL LIFE NEWS: THE DANGERS OF FACEBOOK

by Hazed

Here's a nasty little story about how the connectivity provided by Facebook and other social networking sites isn't always a good thing.

A woman was murdered by her ex-lover after he saw a picture of her with her new boyfriend on Facebook. Paul Bristol, and IT technician living in Trinidad and Tobago, flew to London and stabbed Camille Mathurasingh repeatedly.

The two of them met during the three years she worked in Trinidad. After she returned to London in 2008 they continued their relationship using emails and telephone calls, but last year she began having doubts about their future and decided to go out with her new boyfriend. But she tried to let her ex-lover down gently, and didn't tell him about the new man in her life.

He found out about it when he saw the Facebook pictures. He couldn't accept their relationship was over and wanted to try to win her back, so he travelled to London and murdered her.

He has been found guilty of murder and is awaiting sentencing.

Of course, my headline is misleading. This story isn't really about Facebook - it just so happens that the social networking site was the method by which the jilted lover found out about Camille's new boyfriend, but it did not cause the murder. Facebook didn't make him do it. You can't blame Facebook any more than you can blame airplanes for bringing him to London in order to carry out the crime. But it makes a good hook for journalists to use when reporting the story.


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