stranger than fiction

“Skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as that which arises here.” – Judge David Maddison

A 15 year old boy in the UK has been found guilty of plotting his own murder via internet chat rooms. This, reported by the the Guardian Unlimited, is something straight out of one of the many CSI detective shows on TV. If it wasn’t a true event, I’d be jealous of the person who thought it up.

As the Guardian reports, the murder plot went down like this:

“The boy – who is now 15 and can be referred to only as John for legal reasons – persuaded his friend, known as Mark, now 17, to stab him to death in order to pass a fictitious initiation test for the British secret services in a meticulously planned attack one Sunday evening last summer.”

John did this pursuading by impersonating five other fictitious characters via IM, including a 42 year old British secret service agent called Janet. Mark, the boy duped into the stabbing, thought he was talking to four or five different people during the chat sessions but it was only just John, plotting his own murder.

Go and read the rest of the article. It’s fascinating stuff, but extremely usettling because it’s true.