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As the (Online) World Turns
Jesus — here’s yet another reason to be wary of online relationships and the damn Internet, in general. Brian Barrett — a nice 22-year-old Buffalo fella who coached Little League baseball — was shot three times at close range and killed in September of last year. His body was found two days later, and the killer remained a mystery until a lot of investigation revealed the sordid details.
It started like this: Forty-seven-year-old Thomas Montgomery was engaged in an online relationship with an 18-year-old girl, who had sent him lovely pictures and lingerie. Montgomery (pictured) had claimed himself to be an 18-year-old Marine who was to be deployed to Iraq, which I guess added a dose of immediacy to the affair. However, Montgomery’s wife soon intercepted a package from the woman, found out about the online affair, and contacted the woman via a return address label, resulting in an end to that affair.
The 18-year-old girl remembered that Montgomery had mentioned, a few times, a co-worker by the name of Barrett. So she started chatting up Barrett online, asking him if the story about Montgomery being an older, married man was true. This, of course, led to further communications, eventually leading to Barrett and the woman being fully engaged in their own online tryst.
After learning of this, Montgomery got jealous. So jealous, in fact, that he adorned a ski-mask, dressed in camouflage, and shot Barrett three times with a .30 caliber rifle. Nice guy, right?
The catch: The 18-year-old woman was actually a 47-year-old West Virginia mother who was sending pictures of her daughter to both men.
Man. These interwebs are all sorts of messed up.
