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The Washington Post reports that an internet escort in Charleston, W.Va., may have saved her own life and the lives of many other women, when she shot and killed an alleged attacker who showed up at the woman's home on July 18 after answering an escort ad she had placed on Backpage.com. Neal Falls showed up with multiple pairs of handcuffs and a Subaru full of weapons and tools, including a shovel, knives, a bulletproof vest, a machete, bleach, trash bags, sledgehammers and axes. In Falls's pocket, police said, was a list of names of potential future victims, all of whom are sex workers who advertised on Backpage. Investigators are trying to determine whether Falls is responsible for a string of slayings targeting sex workers in Ohio and Nevada. "We are entering his DNA profile into CODIS, which is a national crime DNA database, to see if it matches any previous submissions from anywhere in the United States," says Steve Cooper, the Charleston Police Department's chief of detectives. "If his DNA has been located in any other crimes and his profile was entered into CODIS, there will be a match."
From the moment Falls showed up at the home of his latest alleged victim, he turned violent. "I knew he was there to kill me," says the victim who asked not to be identified. Falls pulled a gun on her and began strangling her. "When he strangled me he just wouldn't let me get any air. I grabbed my rake and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him. I just grabbed the gun and shot behind me." Local authorities are treating the shooting as an act of self-defense. According to Cooper, "when we find multiple sets of handcuffs, a machete, an axe, a bulletproof vest and container of bleach, the first thing that comes to an investigator's mind is, 'This is a serial killer kit.'"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Monday July 27 2015, @04:26AM
The morale crusaders will have their pitchforks out over Backpage for this. They do so in the misguided thinking that if Backpage didn't exist, neither would prostitution.
Just imagine if prostitution were legal, and there was an Uber-like system with mutual client and worker ratings. This guy couldn't have gotten far in that were available. So the very fact that prostitution is illegal is a key enabling factor for serial killers like this man supposedly was. After all, if operational secrecy wasn't required, the exchange could occur online in a traceable and even taxable way.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:32AM
Defensive much? Prostitution will likely always exist, at least until/if technology transforms our species into something radically different.
Backpage seems to be a successor of Craigslist, and neither site can wash their hands of responsibility of brutal murders perpetrated by predators who were *directly* enabled by their service (as opposed to enabled by whim, e.g. a killer happened to decide to choose a certain Louisiana movie theater as a place to commit mass murder).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @07:25AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @08:02AM
I hope not. I'm long on pitchfork futures!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2015, @04:36AM
Shhhhhh - let's go easy on the "if backpage didn't exist" bit. The next logical step would be conclude that without genitalia, prostitution wouldn't exist. I foresee a call for mass genitalia mutilation - both male and female. Let's just keep this thing quiet, and maybe the crazies won't get carried away.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:52AM
Just imagine if prostitution were legal, and there was an Uber-like system with mutual client and worker ratings. This guy couldn't have gotten far in that were available.
While I am pro-prostitution, I have to say you have not thought that through very well. Ever heard of the long con? Build up a good reputation and then screw people over once you've gained their confidence. A rating system like Uber's is no protection against that. The guy is suspected of having killed 4 women over 8 years in vegas. 2 years is plenty of time to establish a 'trusted' identity on a ratings system. And that's assuming he doesn't run multiple fake identities in parallel.
The only way a ratings system like that works is with an unforgeable & unique identity system. Something that carries with it tons of external costs so as to make it impractical at best. Even if prostitution is legalized and some perfect identity system were created just for sex work, it is still going to carry with it a social stigma. Very few people are going to be OK with a non-deniable public record of their prostitutional activities.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2015, @05:28AM
You, Sir, or Ma'am, certainly get points for THINKING. All the same, I think that a ratings system would help to weed out the less - uhhh - disciplined? Not sure that's the word I want, but I'll let it ride. That is, the crazy, impulsive nutjob with no self discipline would give himself away quickly if there were a ratings system.
As for the social stigma - better that, than to have John Law harassing you constantly. Currently, prostitutes are at the mercy of EVERYONE. They basically have no rights - anyone at all can come along, and victimize them in whatever preferred fashion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @05:45AM
> As for the social stigma - better that, than to have John Law harassing you constantly. Currently, prostitutes are at the mercy of EVERYONE.
I wasn't talking about the stigma for the workers, I was talking about stigma for the people paying them. They've got the money, they aren't going to be happy with a public record of spending it on commercial sex. That sort of thing tends to ruin relationships and even the potential for new relationships.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @06:25AM
If it was legal, there would probably be wider acceptance. Sure, you'd have some moralists, but they'll frown on beer too so fuck 'em.
There's a thing out there called marriage, which is kind of like the lottery. You could end up with someone great, or you could end up with a total leach. I ended up with a leach. It would be cheaper, and more enjoyable, to have had the opportunity to skip that whole scene, get laid when I felt like, and lived my life happy. The flip side of that is what I have, pay through the nose for nothing but grief.
From an old fart to you young ones: marriage is not about love. It is about property. Marriage is exactly like inverse-prostitution. Pick wrong, and you'll spend half of _everything_ you ever worked for just to get free of the person, to get back to nothing. Instead of paying half of my blood sweat and tears to get nothing, I'd way rather pay a much smaller percentage for sex with hotties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @06:37AM
> If it was legal, there would probably be wider acceptance. Sure, you'd have some moralists, but they'll frown on beer too so fuck 'em.
Lol, shows how much you know about women. It isn't about morality, its about it being gross.
> From an old fart to you young ones: marriage is not about love. It is about property.
Once upon a time that was true. Not anymore. Love marriages are the norm, especially since women are no longer chattel and are nearing earning parity to men. Nowadays they have just as much to lose in a divorce as a man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @07:43AM
"love marriages" are a misnomer. You'll see exactly how much marriage is about property when you go to get divorced. Let's just say you worked for years building a business while at home, you're spouse just refused to work. You just paid half of all your life efforts to get absolutely nothing. Marriage is fine if both parties contribute because you get your half back. But when one is a lazy slob, you get fucked, and totally not in a good way.
Anyway, you just keep on thinking marriage is about love. My advice stands for anyone who works. If you're a lazy bum, marriage is great deal.
(Score: 3, Touché) by TheRaven on Monday July 27 2015, @09:42AM
Let's just say you worked for years building a business while at home, you're spouse just refused to work. You just paid half of all your life efforts to get absolutely nothing. Marriage is fine if both parties contribute because you get your half back. But when one is a lazy slob, you get fucked, and totally not in a good way.
Indeed. And it's a big problem that you basically have to marry someone as soon as you meet them. If only there were some way by which you could get to know a potential partner a bit and discover if they are a complete leach before marrying them. I know! We should legalise premarital cohabitation!
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Monday July 27 2015, @02:16PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @03:30PM
Your problem is equating exceptional cases to the common case. There will always be bad actors. But anyone who thinks that the normal motivation for marriage is property has completely missed social progress over the last century. Divorce is about property because there are shared assets that have been accrued during the partnership, but marriage is not any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @05:32AM
The goal is not to prevent every possible situation that could cause harm, the goal is to significantly improve the health and safety of the workers. "Somebody could pull a long con and still kill them, so its pointless to legalize it!" is just another way of using the nirvana fallacy [logicallyfallacious.com] (the typical way its used around here is, "Criminals would still do X, so there's no point in making X illegal").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @05:42AM
>> This guy couldn't have gotten far in that were available. So the very fact that prostitution is illegal is a key enabling factor for serial killers like this man
>
> "Somebody could pull a long con and still kill them, so its pointless to legalize it!" is just another way of using the nirvana fallacy
That might be true in the general case, but in this case serial killers are exactly what we are talking about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @02:43PM
The advantage for a system like this is the paper trail. The more time it takes to develop a good "reputation", the more information is available for law enforcement to track the criminal down. Off the top of my head there is the potential for people (i.e. those who rated him) to come forward with descriptions of the suspect, they know the general area he's been in, and for how long, etc.
Compare that to a suspect using the classified ads, where the total information available will be almost nil, and you can see the difference.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday July 27 2015, @06:07AM
The morale crusaders will have their pitchforks out over Backpage for this.
i agree! i hate people and their high morale which is why the beating will continue until morals improve! ;)