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I am probably not up to the task of this post for it invovles a deeply involved murder mystery. A mystery, I might add, that is still at its height. I got tipped off to this situation by one of those annoying bulletins that you quickly disregard. This one read, “Girl killed by man she met on myspace”. I read that thinking, “god, the shit people you like send you.” But I was curious. So I checked out the link to find…. that it was kind of true. I never really assesed whether the 17 year old victim, Taylor Behl, actually met her alleged murderer, 38 year old amateur goth skateboarder Ben Fawley on myspace, but it was a bonafied internet murder.

Now, I am not one that typically is drawn in by this sensationalist macabre trash, but I am in now. I’m deep. At this point, I may be one of the leading experts on the case in my opinion. Here is the thing with this murder. Many of the key witnesses involved were all these internet folks who posted incessently on live journal and myspace. As such, a lot of clues are all over the net. So, you can actually go to their live journal pages and read up until the point of Taylor Behl’s disappearance. It’s an entirely new form of Hercule Poirot!

I can not go into all the sordid details, but this story is amazing. This guy, Ben Fawley, is such the epitome of internet goth. Question: are a majority of internet folks goth in some manner? Is goth the default internet identity? Anyhow, he has a variety of screen names many of which contain the word skulz. He collects skulls by the way. Hooray. He’s also an amateur photographer! of course! and skateboarder! huh! This all takes place in Richmond Virginia I might add. Did I also add that this Laura Palmer-like 17 year old girl’s screen name was tiabliaj which is jailbait spelled backwards.. woe!

Her young innocence fades in the face of the porn infested juvenalia that is myspace. Well, here are some good sites:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/taylor_behl/

here is a great one where you see Ben Fawley looking like Johnny Depp

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/taylor_behl/6.html

here is Ben Fawley’s livejournal page

http://www.livejournal.com/users/skulz67/

here is Taylor Behl’s myspace link

http://www.myspace.com/doowop

There are a ton more and if anyone starts fishing around in this let me know. See, what this really is about in my opinion, is that a threshold has been crossed. It’s one of these moments where you realize yet another strange world is opening up. Like the moment you noticed cell phones were growing, or the moment that the impact of email really hit you, or the moment where you understood the soviet union had just disappeared… now, what is this moment… it’s the moment where you realize that increasingly people’s lives are recorded on the net (particularly in the younger,up to their ears in livejournal folks) and that we can start playing detective with these pieces. Hypertext was always a sort of wierd unrealized literary endeavor, but now we have hypercrime. you can click from one piece of evidence to the next. There is even this annoying dude named Steve Huff who fancies himself the sherlock holmes of the internet sleuth variety. he does get a lot of info, but he’s not very good. i suspect any of you could do a better job. get on the case! tell me how it goes!

I’m feeling pleasurably morbid these days. It’s the rain for sure, but what a blessing it is. I’m not depressed in the slightest. I’m just enjoying a season change where the pungent smell of leaves feels like the backdrop to a film noir sensibility. I finally saw Werner Herzog’s Grizzlyman last night and I am just blown away. I sure loved it. Hearing Herzog’s overblown, dead-serious voice over in relation to this California-style ex-alchoholic ecological maniac was too precious. The juxtaposition of a Dostoyeviskian perspective and the Red Hot Chili Peppers tickled me pink. I think I related to both characters.

The story, in a nutshell, is about this guy, oh what is his name, Timothy Tredwell. A somewhat effeminate nature enthusiast who takes it upon himself to save the Grizzly Bears of northern Alaska. It’s a noble task that Herzog is set to implode. Herzog found all this footage after Tredwell met his fateful end about a year or so ago. Tredwell and his girlfriend were inevitably eaten by the thing that Tredwell loved (I think the girlfriend was just on the worst date of her life). Tredwell is a tragic figure who sets out on a DIY nature film of the most unthought out kind. It’s basically amateur nature film. He names his bears (Saturn, Chocky, Matilda), attempts to teach us things, goes to teach the children (always be wary of ex alchoholics that direly want to save children) and eventually gains a modicum of notoriety after ten years (he appears on David Letterman at some point). Herzog loves exposing how canned the whole thing is. What really struck me in the films was the manner in which Tredwell increasingly finds his inspiration in his absolute antipathy for humanity. His love for bears is fueled in large part for his hatred of the "civilized" world. This sense of animosity and then supposed animal empathy are definitely factors evident in Becoming Animal. It’s something I relate to quite well. Herzog will often say enigmatic nihilisms like, "I differ with Tredwell on this point. While he sees a world of compassion, I see a world of chaos, death and murder." I mean, I had to love that. Where have all the nihilist nature voice overs gone? And of course, Herzog loves Tredwell. This bleach blond ex-actor surfer gone native is the epitome of a postmodern de-centered ball of self-destruction. Tredwell is Herzog’s agonized core of dissolution. There is this great moment, where we are apparently looking at some of the last video shot of the bear that killed the couple. As the camera closes up on the bear, Herzog says something like, "Tredwell saw a world of caring and compassion in the eyes of this bear. When I look into these eyes, I see the uncaring world of nature whose only feeling is a bored sense of hunger." Woe!