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From viral manhunts to shocking evidence that broke our trust in social media, these cases captivated and horrified us online. Join us as we count down the true crime moments that sent shockwaves through the internet! Our disturbing roundup includes the Casey Anthony trial, Zodiac cipher solution, Jeffrey Epstein's death and more. Did you follow these cases?
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00:00This Facebook group, they decided to actually find who this person was.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 true crime moments that caused enormous shockwaves throughout social media and the internet at large.
00:09The process of journalism, the process of investigation, happening before our eyes.
00:16The shooting of Brian Thompson.
00:18We have some breaking news. CNN has obtained new surveillance video from the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.
00:25We do want to warn you that the video is, of course, disturbing.
00:28On the morning of December 4th, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and murdered by a hooded figure on the streets of New York City.
00:36The brazen crime was like something out of a movie, and it understandably set the internet alight.
00:40The story was captivating enough on its own, but online communities immediately rallied behind the shooter,
00:45casting him as a folk hero striking back against unchecked corporate greed.
00:48I certainly don't think that these people are glorifying murder or agree with murder,
00:53but I think what this is is that it really kind of speaks to how frustrated people are.
00:57The subsequent manhunt only amplified the frenzy, with live tracking threads and fun speculative theories about his dramatic day of the jackal-esque escape.
01:05And when he was caught just a few days later, there was actually a palpable sense of disappointment.
01:09Sometimes the real world is even more exciting than fiction.
01:11The second of the first contact, he had asked the suspect if he had been in New York City recently,
01:19and that really invoked a physical reaction from the suspect.
01:23He became visibly nervous, kind of shaking.
01:26Casey Anthony.
01:27It's not a smell that you'll forget. It's a very unique smell.
01:30There was not a question in any of our minds that there'd been a dead body in the car.
01:34Back in 2008, the death of two-year-old Kaylee Anthony captivated the nation,
01:38and her mother Casey quickly became the prime suspect.
01:40The case exploded online, with people following every little detail like devoted detectives,
01:45from frantic 911 calls to evidence like duct tape and internet searches.
01:49When the trial began in 2011, it dominated social media and live streams,
01:53even drawing comparisons to the O.J. Simpson trial.
01:55The duct tape is probably the most important piece of evidence in the case.
02:00Would the single piece of tape have been sufficient to have covered the nose and mouth
02:04and made breathing impossible?
02:06Yes.
02:07The public was absolutely convinced of Casey's guilt,
02:09and outrage built daily as shocking testimony unfolded.
02:12But when the jury acquitted her of murder, the internet erupted with fury.
02:16Memes, hashtags, and angry posts flooded forums and Facebook pages,
02:20branding her the most hated mom in America.
02:22Even now, years later, the reputation remains.
02:25More than 16 years after she was accused of murdering her own daughter.
02:29This is my first of probably many recordings.
02:34Casey Anthony is reintroducing herself to the public on TikTok.
02:38A Zodiac cipher is finally solved.
02:40Ciphers broken into three sections, each with eight lines, 17 symbols.
02:45No breaks between the symbols, denoting different words,
02:48no numbers or clues to substitution keys.
02:50And you've got symbols from at least seven different sources.
02:52Greek, Morse code, maybe semaphore, weather symbols, astrological signs.
02:58During his infamous crime spree of the late 1960s,
03:01the Zodiac killer sent a number of ciphers to the press,
03:04begging people to partake in his twisted game.
03:06And that's just what they did.
03:07One of the ciphers was quickly cracked by a couple in California,
03:10but the others remained elusive for more than 50 years.
03:13You were right, by the way.
03:14You didn't give his name.
03:15Who cracked it?
03:16A history teacher and his wife, Salinas.
03:18Fast forward to 2020 when a small team of amateurs finally cracked the cipher known as Z340.
03:23As this was the first major break in the Zodiac case in about a half a century,
03:27it understandably set the internet on fire,
03:29reigniting interest in the case and giving hope that maybe one day he will be identified,
03:33or at least that his other ciphers will also be solved.
03:36The chances of solving this after 50 years was next to zero.
03:40And so being able to play a role in this is fantastic.
03:44The murder of Bianca Devins.
03:46In the aftermath of Bianca's murder, her social media accounts became a spectacle.
03:52And to this day, people are still on her accounts leaving comments.
03:56On July 14, 2019, 17-year-old Bianca Devins was murdered,
04:00and her case quickly exposed the flaws in social media.
04:02The Utica teen was brutally killed by a man named Brandon Clark,
04:06but the horror deepened when graphic photos of her body
04:08were posted to platforms like Instagram and Discord.
04:11These grotesque images spread rapidly,
04:13shared and re-shared many times before they could be taken down.
04:16Bianca's murder has sparked change to social media account user safety
04:20after pictures of her body were posted to various online accounts after her death.
04:25The response of social media companies was heavily criticized.
04:27While some acted quickly,
04:29others were accused of being slow or indifferent in removing the content.
04:32For many, this tragedy highlighted how poorly platforms were equipped
04:35to handle violent imagery.
04:36And it sparked ongoing debate about content moderation, user safety,
04:40and the responsibility of tech companies in preventing such exploitation.
04:43The Cicero man who admitted killing 17-year-old Bianca Devins
04:47and posting photos of her body on social media back in the summer of 2019.
04:52It's not going to spend at least the next 25 years in prison.
04:54The disappearance of Madeline McCann.
04:56The world hasn't stopped looking for Madeline McCann.
05:02The sweet three-year-old snatched from a Portuguese seaside resort
05:06in Praia de Luzes in 2007.
05:10The Daily Telegraph has called this the most heavily reported missing person case
05:13in modern history.
05:15And that's no hyperbole.
05:16The three-year-old disappeared from her family's resort room
05:18on the night of May 3rd, 2007,
05:20while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.
05:22Forums and early social networks exploded with speculation about what happened.
05:26But more importantly, relentless scrutiny of her parents, Kate and Jerry.
05:29Please do not hurt her.
05:30Please don't scare her.
05:33Please tell us where to find her.
05:36Instead of sympathy, the couple faced unprecedented waves of public outrage,
05:39with many accusing them of negligence for leaving their children unattended.
05:43Others went further, spinning elaborate theories that painted the parents as suspects.
05:47The viral spread of such claims created one of the first true trial-by-internet moments.
05:51The first of many.
05:52Madeline's parents, Kate and Jerry McCann,
05:54said she was initially snatched from her bed
05:57while they were having dinner at the resort where they were staying.
06:00At first, suspicion fell on the mom and dad.
06:03But they were later cleared.
06:05The Golden State killer is finally caught.
06:07They have been searching for more than four decades.
06:09And tonight, the major clue that unlocked this just days ago.
06:12They say this is their man, Joseph D'Angelo, now 72, arrested outside his home.
06:17They surprised him.
06:18He spent years as a California police officer.
06:20He'd been married.
06:21After decades of frustrating silence, one of America's most infamous serial killers was finally
06:26caught in 2018.
06:27Joseph James D'Angelo, a former police officer, was identified through genetic genealogy when
06:32investigators uploaded DNA from his crime scenes to a public genealogy website, effectively
06:37linking him to distant relatives.
06:38Detectives working the case for decades, but D'Angelo not a suspect until days ago when
06:43they got a break.
06:44They say cutting-edge DNA testing allowed them to make a match.
06:49This groundbreaking technique finally unmasked the man behind at least 13 murders, dozens
06:53of sexual assaults, and over 120 burglaries throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
06:58The revelation spread like fire throughout the internet, with true crime enthusiasts left utterly
07:02flabbergasted that such an old cold case had finally been solved.
07:06For many, the arrest symbolized hope that even the most elusive criminals could no longer
07:10hide in the modern age of technology.
07:12As I sat back, just almost feeling defeated about, all these years, haven't found this
07:19guy, how am I going to get this case to progress?
07:24And that's when I learned about this technique using genealogy in DNA.
07:32The Luca Magnata videos.
07:33That was a message he was sending.
07:35I'm throwing down a gauntlet.
07:37I dare you, I challenge you to try and find out who I am.
07:41I was like, okay, this person wants to play a game of cat and mouse, and I'm up for that.
07:46In the early 2010s, Canadian man Luca Magnata horrified the internet by releasing graphic
07:51videos of animal cruelty.
07:53And then in May 2012, he uploaded the infamous One Lunatic, One Ice Pick, which showed him
07:57murdering university student Jun Lin.
07:59These disturbing clips disgusted even the most hardened LiveLeak user, sparking international
08:04outrage.
08:05So, we start doing what we normally do.
08:08We start analyzing this murder video and we're trying to look for information that we
08:13could say that, yes, this is Luca.
08:15Viewers were not only shocked by the brutality, but enraged by the apparent pleasure that Magnata
08:20took in documenting his acts.
08:21They even galvanized a dedicated group of online sleuths who meticulously analyzed every frame
08:26of the sick videos for clues in hopes of identifying the perp.
08:29The case marked one of the earliest, and to date, one of the most famous examples of collective
08:34internet justice.
08:34So, the only contact that we had was with our detective at the Toronto Police Department.
08:41So, we contacted him.
08:44We've just come across this new video.
08:47It shows a dead body.
08:49We are pretty sure it's Luca in the video who's committed the crime.
08:52I need you to look at this.
08:54The misidentification of the Boston Marathon bomber.
08:56With social media, we can have the illusion of instantly finding a solution, instantly going
09:01after that perpetrator, and unfortunately, you know, there's a pretty heavy cost to taking
09:06the law into our own hands.
09:07Online sleuthing certainly sounds cool, but there's a reason it's not encouraged by law
09:11enforcement agencies.
09:12We need look no further than the Boston Marathon bombing.
09:15In the aftermath, social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit became hubs for real-time
09:18updates and sleuthing, with people scouring footage from the marathon to try and identify
09:23the suspects.
09:23One year since the Marathon bombing, and tonight we're remembering the mysterious man on the roof,
09:28the guy in the blue robe, all individuals once considered possible suspects in the bombings.
09:33Yeah, remember them?
09:34But if you remember, it wasn't actually law enforcement who was pointing the finger, rather
09:39average citizens playing detective on social media.
09:42This led to a surge of misinformation with users wrongly naming innocent people as the
09:46perpetrators.
09:47One notable case involved Sunil Tripathi, a missing college student who was incorrectly identified
09:52as the bomber and widely circulated as a suspect.
09:54The false accusations spread rapidly, amplified by passionate voices highlighting both the
09:59internet's power for collective action and its potential for serious harm.
10:02The FBI issued these photos of the actual suspects.
10:05Now, here's what happened next.
10:06Within minutes, users on Reddit...
10:07All got together and decided that the best thing to do was to step back and let the professionals
10:12do their jobs.
10:13They began comparing the FBI photo of one of the suspects to Sunil Tripathi.
10:17By 10pm, it had become a leading theory on Reddit that Tripathi was suspect number two.
10:21The Slender Man Stabbing.
10:23I want to do this.
10:25Why did you do it then?
10:27Because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't.
10:32The line between reality and internet fun was unsettlingly crossed on May 31, 2014,
10:37when Anissa Wire and Morgan Geyser stabbed their classmate, Peyton Lautner, to appease
10:42the Slender Man.
10:43The monster originated on the Something Awful forums and quickly found immense fame through
10:46creepypastas, fan art, YouTube shows, and video games.
10:49Because Slender Man was a creation unique to the internet, the news that two girls had
11:10stabbed a classmate to appease him was especially disturbing.
11:14For many, it was hard to grapple with the idea that something they had created, proliferated,
11:17and even had fun with, suddenly had real-world repercussions.
11:21The attack dominated social media and highlighted the potential danger of online myths on susceptible
11:25young users.
11:26Anissa explained to me that to prove yourself worthy to Slender, you would have to kill
11:31somebody.
11:31The audience said we have to kill Bella.
11:35Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified
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11:48The arrest and death of Jeffrey Epstein
11:52Some breaking news right now.
11:54Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has taken his own life while he was behind bars here
11:59in New York City.
12:00The sex offender's 2019 arrest instantly captivated global attention, but it was his sudden death
12:05in a Manhattan jail cell that truly broke the internet.
12:08His passing sparked immediate skepticism due to alleged security lapses like sleeping guards
12:12and mysteriously malfunctioning cameras.
12:15It was certainly about the way he died.
12:17It would be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation
12:20and the cameras didn't happen to be working, etc, etc.
12:23Memes proliferated every corner of the internet with a particular slogan gaining significant
12:27traction.
12:28Theories flourished, suggesting that he was silenced to protect the elites who were implicated
12:32in his crimes.
12:33The case continues to fascinate with the release of the Epstein files, reigniting debate, raising
12:38new questions, and even roping in the President of the United States.
12:41What a timeline.
12:42Epstein's case remains a cultural flashpoint, blending scandal, conspiracy, and mistrust,
12:47proof of how just one man's downfall reshaped online discourse.
12:50Do you fear the President is not releasing these files in order to protect certain people?
13:00I hope not.
13:01Did you partake in these discussions, or were you more of an observer?
13:04Let us know in the comments below.
13:05At first, people who saw the post were incredibly disturbed.
13:09Let us know in the comments below.
13:10Let us know in the comments below.
13:12Let us know in the comments below.
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