“What else did the conspiracy video show?” Chris asked.
“Nothing that makes sense. They ask weird suggestive questions like, ‘Why are some of the school CCTV videos only in black and white and others in color?’ as if that’s proof it’s all a fake. Then they doctor or make up evidence with photographs. So, for example—and wow, this is just so skeevy—a bot posted a photograph of someone who looks a little like Corey at a Mets game that took place after the shooting. Then they write, ‘Here’s the actor who played Corey Courter in the Northbridge High shooting at a ball game last week!”’ and then others comment stuff like, ‘Wow, this is proof it was all staged, he looks fine to me, it’s a fraud, stupid sheeple, stop believing what the mainstream media tells you, do your own research, Francine Courter is a traitor,’ whatever.”
“Awful as this sounds,” Polar Bear said, “it seems like we are talking about too many people to take meaningful action.”
“That was my worry too,” Giraffe said, “until I dug into the second video.”
“Second video?”
“So the first video posted on YouTube claiming that the shooting was a hoax was created by an account called Bitter Truth. Eventually it was taken down, but as always with these things it was too late. By then, it had over three million views. It was duplicated and spread, you guys all know the drill. But a second video came out under the name Truth de Bitter.”
“Not much of a nom de plume,” Chris said.
“No, not much of one at all. He wanted us to know it was the same guy.”
“You said ‘he,’” Panther noted.
“Yes.”
“So it’s a man?”
“Yes.”
None of them were surprised. Yes, women troll. But not like men. That wasn’t sexism. That was simple data.
“His second video…” The Giraffe stopped, overcome.
Silence.
Panther broke it. Tenderly they said, “You okay, Giraffe?”
“Take your time,” Chris said.
“Yeah, just give me a second. It was just hard to watch. The link will be in my report, but in sum, the guy goes to Corey’s gravesite. To the tombstone of a fifteen-year-old boy. The guy is wearing all ninja black and a mask, so he can’t be recognized. Anyway, he brings this device with him. It looks like a metal detector you see guys walking with at the beach. Heck, it probably is. He claims it’s a ‘BCD’—a Buried Corpse Detector. He demonstrates at other graves how when he hovers it over the ground, it gets a reading. A sound like static. That’s how the device knows, he claims, that there is actually a dead body buried underneath the tombstone. Then he waves the device over Corey’s tombstone. Guess what happens?”
“Oh my God,” Alpaca said.
“Exactly. He claims the reading says that there is no body underneath.”
“And people buy this?”
“If it fits their narrative,” Chris said, “people buy anything. We all know this.”
“Sadly, I’m not finished,” Giraffe said, letting loose a deep breath. “At the end of the video, the guy urinates on Corey’s grave.”
Silence.
“He then posts the video of him doing that on every page associated with Francine Courter.”
Silence.
Chris spoke first. “What’s his name?” he asked between clenched teeth.
“Kenton Frauling. It took me a while, but I traced at least ten of the bots to the same account as Bitter Truth and Truth de Bitter.”
“How did you track him down?”
“I sent an email pretending to be a member of the media who believed his story. He clicked the link, and well, you know the rest—”
“So not only did this Frauling guy create these awful videos—”
“He made most of the comments, yes. Carried on fake conversations with himself. Attacked in unison. He also hired a foreign bot farm to join him in the ceaseless barrage on Francine. Besides tons of posts on Twitter and Facebook and all that, he calls Francine’s phone at all hours. He sends letters to her home with graphic pictures of Corey, even put flyers on her car.”
“And what’s Frauling’s deal?”
“He’s a thirty-six-year-old sales manager for a large insurance company. Makes six figures.”
Chris felt his hands tighten into fists. This part, the fact that Kenton Frauling had a life, should have shocked him, but it didn’t. Most people assumed that the vast majority of destructive trolls harassing people were unemployed losers furiously posting from Mommy’s basement, but more often than not, they were educated, employed, financially comfortable enough. What they did have in common was carrying some sort of perceived slight, some sort of imagined resentment, some unwarranted feeling of victimhood.