# BASTARD (!) pulls a hoax on parents of kidnapped girl... **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 30, 2004, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bastard-pulls-a-hoax-on-parents-of-kidnapped-girl/237347 "2004-03-30T17:25:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RumMunkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@RumMunkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RumMunkey)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2004, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bastard-pulls-a-hoax-on-parents-of-kidnapped-girl/237347/1 "2004-03-30T17:25:23Z")
[Here’s the article](http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1080601811843&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154). The summarization: Back in October, a 9-year old girl went missing during the night from her bed in Toronto. Vanished. A second-story window screen was found peeled back & bent, but no other evidence was found. Later that morning, the family received 2 phone calls from area payphones. The caller said nothing (or so the police are currently saying). Just last weekend, 2 days shy of her 10th birthday, the girl’s body was found in a wooded area. She had been dead for some time, her body was hidden under snow & underbrush. News comes out today that some **sick mother fucker(s)** had contacted police, the family & some lawyers back in February cliaming to be a mediator on behalf of the kidnappers and were looking to negotiate her safe return. He/they claimed the girl was alive and provided a photo of her as proof (we know know they Photoshopped a photo released by the family). When pressed for a video or answers to questions only the girl would know, the would-be mediators vanished. We now know she was dead long before this hoax, and that the ‘mediators’ had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Tell me again why we don’t need public execution?? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2004, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bastard-pulls-a-hoax-on-parents-of-kidnapped-girl/237347/2 "2004-03-30T17:38:24Z")
That is just fucking sick. I’m from Toronto, and the whole city is in grief over this death. What kind of bastards pull this shit? I don’t have any words strong enough. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2004, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bastard-pulls-a-hoax-on-parents-of-kidnapped-girl/237347/3 "2004-03-30T17:51:07Z")
Then we have “psychics” like [Sylvia Browne](http://www.randi.org/jr/030504newsweek.html#10). > [@](#): > > Years ago on Montel Williams’ show, she spoke to the grandmother of a local missing child, a six-year-old named Opal Jo Jennings who disappeared from her home in north Texas in March of 1999. Browne told the distraught woman that the child was still alive but had been sold into white slavery and was currently being held in Japan. She even gave a city name, but there is no such city in Japan. Moving ahead three years and nine months, we find that the body of little Opal was recovered — just seven weeks ago; she had been killed by a blow to the head. Currently, there is a man in prison in Texas who has confessed to, and been convicted of, Opal Jo’s abduction and murder. > > Think about what’s happened here: Sylvia Browne callously raised the hopes of the family of this little child, placing the fictitious location on the other side of the world. She did this well after a comprehensive search had already been performed in Texas, so she was pretty sure that the girl would never be found. She thought she was safe against exposure. She wasn’t; the body was found and definitively identified. That was a callous, cruel, manipulative act by Sylvia Browne. But no one calls her to account for it, and her supporters continue on in Lotusland cooing over her wonderful powers. You have to wonder how someone can do such a heartless act. Sylvia can, and does. ---
**Author:** ![htns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ba8739/32.png) [@htns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/htns)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2004, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bastard-pulls-a-hoax-on-parents-of-kidnapped-girl/237347/4 "2004-03-30T17:57:37Z")
> [@DakotaDog](#): > > Tell me again why we don’t need public execution?? Simply because we’re civilized, even if those scammers are not. I agree with you on a visceral level, true, but I also know that the fact that the scammers did a scummy thing doesn’t give us the right to do scummy things. I don’t want to live in that sort of society. What would the scammers deserve? I’d say a lawsuit by the family for intentional infliction of emotional distress (USD$250,000 sounds about right) then five years in a State lockup for obstruction of justice, with ten years’ supervised probation to ensure that they stay in line after they get out. That’s civilized. Not very emotionally satisfying, true, but keeping the system civilized. You say the scammers deserve something tougher? Viscerally I’d agree, but as I wrote earlier, I don’t want a vengeance system to replace our justice system. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2004, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bastard-pulls-a-hoax-on-parents-of-kidnapped-girl/237347/5 "2004-03-30T17:59:32Z")
I’d like to wear out a pair of steel toed boots kicking these twisted fuckers to within a millimeter of their worthless lives. ---
**Author:** ![cowgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cowgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cowgirl)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2004, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bastard-pulls-a-hoax-on-parents-of-kidnapped-girl/237347/6 "2004-03-30T18:10:18Z")
Great. Just when I thought this story couldn’t get any sadder. Sick fucks. I’m usually not the sort to cry about other people’s tragedies I read in the paper, but I sure did this morning when I read about her 10th birthday party today. Well, at least we can thank the powers that be that now her parents can begin to move on. The thing is, though, when we talk about getting revenge on the unspeakable bastards who did this, all I can think of is that other witchhunt for a child-killer that ended up with [Guy Paul Morin](http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/facts/wrong_convicted.html) (later found innocent) being thrown in jail in order to satisfy bloodthirsty citizens. That story is one of my earliest memories, it happened when I was a little girl around the age that Cecilia and Christine Jessop were, and the injustice of it sickens me. And I think of Orwell’s [Revenge is Sour](http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/revengesour.html), and know that even if the right guy ends up behind bars, it won’t make anything better, beyond preventing similar tragedies in the future. May her soul rest in peace.