By Steve Huff
(Continued)
In 1969, San Francisco-area math teacher Donald Harden, along with his wife, labored over a weekend to decrypt a supposedly impenetrable cipher sent to San Francisco media by the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who remains a mystery to this day. Harden did what codebreakers working for the federal government couldn't do and broke the code of Zodiac's 3-part cipher. He and his wife's accomplishment was a triumph for armchair sleuth in everyone. Harden's spirit lives on to this day in the blogosphere, in people who find themselves drawn to study the words left online by the likes of Joseph Edward Duncan III, of Fifth Nail infamy, or now, Kevin Ray Underwood. The issues raised when someone is arrested for crimes like those Underwood is accused of committing are far more important than questioning the way one uses their time on the internet. The story of the murder of Jamie Rose Bolin brings up questions about the nature of insanity, and to the spiritually-inclined, the nature of evil. Where does human depravity, possibly born in some sort of illness end and evil begin?
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| Joseph Edward Duncan III |
The internet has undoubtedly changed the way the public learns about high-profile crimes. The change began with websites popping up a decade ago to discuss the (still) unsolved murder of JonBenét Ramsey. Weblogging has sped up the spread of news about some crimes and criminals. It may have also changed the way the mainstream media chooses to focus on certain stories. A blogger can have details about a crime posted online hours in advance of the "mainstream" news media. A story about the same event by a reporter must pass muster with an editor in a newsroom, be edited and inspected for libelous language, and finally sent to the web editor. Many media outlets have even begun to acknowledge bloggers who get the story first, and embrace them as part of the news-gathering process. The downside is that working alone and with only their wits, sometimes bloggers get it wrong, and innocent people could be harassed right off the web. Or, as with former friends of Kevin Underwood and crimebloggers documenting online details about Jamie Rose Bolin's alleged killer, somehow made to feel guilty by association.
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