Neowin.net - Man Arrested Over Valentine's Net Suicide Pact

Man Arrested Over Valentine's Net Suicide Pact

Posted by dbfriends on 12 February 2005 - 12:35 · 65 comments & 9216 views

An American man has been arrested after allegedly trying to arrange a mass online suicide pact for Valentine's Day on Monday. Gerald Krien, 26, was caught after one woman alerted authorities after hearing one of those planning to take part talking about killing her children.

Krien, of Klamath Falls in Oregon, had apparently recruited more than 30 people to take part in the pact, which had been arranged through chatrooms. Police are now trying to trace some of those involved in an attempt to make sure they are safe.

The man has been charged with solicitation to commit attempted murder and could face up to 30 years in jail if he is found guilty. He is being held on $100,000 bail. Klamath County Sheriff, Captain Chris Montenaro, said: "There is no evidence of a religious or cult following with this group."

View: Reuters coverage

"So i happened to look over my finances this past weekend and i realized something: i'm broke. which is odd, because i had a bunch of liquid capital in my checking account last time i checked, and now all of a sudden i have nothing.

i realized the root problem was that google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later. that means you have to cover an apartment hunting trip, your final relocation, lease termination fees and temporary housing expenses all in advance. not to mention that they don't pay out your signing bonus and relocation money until your first paycheck (which i haven't received yet). finally, add in the fact that i had to put down two months rent as a deposit for my new lease, and i'm flat broke.

on the plus side, this first paycheck is going to be huge... (which unfortunately means i'll probably end up getting taxed huge on it. doh!)

which led me to thinking about the "benefits" package at google. as i thought about it, i realized that most of the "benefits" actually seem to be thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work. take for example: free lunch and dinner. now this one is an awesome value proposition for google; i'm not exactly sure why other companies don't also recognize the value and join in. consider this: it probably costs google a maximum of $3 per employee for lunch and $5 per employee for dinner. so that's only $8 per day, but if you think about the fact that the employee now probably only takes a half hour lunch break and also stays late working, the company actually realizes far more than an $8 gain in employee output. not to mention that most people think this is a great "benefit" and google gets a ton of positive press on it. in short, this "benefit" is designed benefit the company, not the employee.

then look at all these other fringe "benefits": on-site doctor, on-site dentist, on-site car washes... the list goes on and on with one similarity: every "benefit" is on-site so you never leave work. i'm not going to say this isn't convenient for us employees, but between all these devices designed to make us stay at work, they might as well just have dorms on campus that all employees are required to live in.

next, let's look at the health care benefit provided. arguably, this is the biggest benefit companies pay out for their employees. google definitely has a program that is on par with other companies in the industry; but since when does a company like google settle for being on par? microsoft's health care benefits shame google's relatively meager offering. for those of you who don't know, microsoft pays 100% of employees' premiums for a world-class PPO. everything you can possibly imagine is covered. the program has no co-pays on anything (including prescription drugs); you can self-refer to any doctor in the blue cross blue shield network, which pretty much means any licensed professional; and you can even get up to 24 hour-long massage sessions per year.

lastly, google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? the packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear. even microsoft adjusted their base salaries to 66th percentile years ago when it was clear that their stock options weren't as much a part of the total compensation package as it used to be. for a post-IPO company like google, it only seems fair that they adjust things accordingly.

all in all, despite these rants, i still chose to come to google. the work environment, projects and risk/reward equation were all more enticing than up in redmond. but just like when you look for apartments in SF, no option is ever perfect. " (from here, mirrored at Bloglines)

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(5 replies) #1 Posted by greg098 on 12 Feb 2005 - 12:40: that is sick. i hope he is sentenced for MORE then 30 years because that is just wrong.

(3 replies) #2 Posted by Octol on 12 Feb 2005 - 12:41: I don't know about anyone else, but if I wanted to hear about stupid crap like this I'd buy some tabloids in the super market check out line instead of coming here.

#3 Posted by scoobydoobie on 12 Feb 2005 - 12:45: agreed

Is there anyone on Neowin that monitors daily news anymore? Or has it just become a cesspool of useless garbage

#4 Posted by camsoft on 12 Feb 2005 - 12:59: Good Grief.

#5 Posted by cork1958 on 12 Feb 2005 - 13:11: What's is going on in the world today? What's wrong with people? My gosh!!

(2 replies) #6 Posted by M2Ys4U on 12 Feb 2005 - 13:21: @ #2 & #3:

This is tech news because this guy did it over the internet via chatrooms

#7 Posted by b3nx on 12 Feb 2005 - 13:23: scoobydoobie

Octol

Lighten the hell up!

#8 Posted by krono6 on 12 Feb 2005 - 14:17: Eh, if loads of people Want to Die so badly, I think it'll be a choice they should make on their own. Then again, I'd say thats suitable for people over the age of, lets say, 20 or something, as most people (Such as those Children) haven't experienced Life to its Fullest (Working at Macdonalds). There are also complete Loons who are probally High on Drugs/Alcohol to make their Anger towards Life even worse. Out of all those people, I would only agree for a Small, Very Small, Number of people to have the Choice they want to make..As they might be making the right one, if they're not Crackpots waiting for a Depression Attack to happen.

#9 Posted by xpgeek on 12 Feb 2005 - 14:33: I wasn't gonna say anything about this, this is sick and the person responcible for attempting to arrange this should face some serious jailtime, I just wanted to say, as someone who has had clinical depression and bipolar for most of my life, not everyone with depression is a "crackpot waiting for a depression attack to happen".

#10 Posted by smart001 on 12 Feb 2005 - 14:39: that is crazy

(3 replies) #11 Posted by Richardo on 12 Feb 2005 - 15:29: I really don't get it...

**Welcome to suicide chatrooom**
1337Mod: Hey anyone wanna die Feb14
kido1982: Err, ok then.
1337Mod: Kewl thats one more LOL
Fran: Hey can i die too?
1337: Ok 7pm GMT Feb 14, bring a knife.
Fran: Ok count me in

**Feb 14th IRL**
Fran: Err, that was a silly idea, this knife is sharp and would hurt me
kido1982: Dude i entered a chatroom the other day and said i was gonna die, haha, stupid mo????????rs
1337:No officer i wasn't actually going to do anything. I was being an attention whore I don't want to die!

Sorry thats my spin on the whole thing. I just cannot see how a mass suicide via the internet is going to work. People say one thing but forget or change their minds.

Just because they say something online doesn't mean they will go through with it "by themselves". I may of course be completely tactless and wrong, in which case feel free to delete this insensitive post and ban me

(1 reply) #12 Posted by SkaterAustin on 12 Feb 2005 - 15:59: LoL i Live in near the portland, or area and Ive seen this on the news... that guy looks like a doper seriously so i wouldn't leave it up to the idiot... just like the others in oregon bunch of raping, psychotic sickos

(2 replies) #13 Posted by laz45 on 12 Feb 2005 - 18:35: If they want to die then let them die

(5 replies) #14 Posted by imtoomuch on 12 Feb 2005 - 18:38: Let these and all of the other whack jobs commit suicide. I could care less. Get these effed up people off the planet. It will be good for all of us. The only thing I have a problem with is these psychos were also talking about killing their kids. If they are caught they should be put to death and the kids should be placed into better homes.

#15 Posted by Erich on 12 Feb 2005 - 18:53: That would be hilarious. They all put webcam on - then the guy who arranged it goes, "ok I'll start" *slice* *dead*. The other people "um, this is stupid, I got too much of life I haven't experienced yet."

#16 Posted by ssvegeta384 on 12 Feb 2005 - 18:59: Ah, good ol' Oregon.

#17 Posted by [hxc] on 12 Feb 2005 - 20:53: suicide only belongs to the individual, no one else owns their body and their life. if they all really want to kill themselves, i say let them. it's their choice and nobody elses.

(3 replies) #18 Posted by SoulEata on 12 Feb 2005 - 21:36: I'd like to know what crime he committed. Telling someone to kill themselves is not a crime.

#19 Posted by wired57 on 12 Feb 2005 - 21:40: Well, I see ****hollioe ville made it to neowin finally. I hate klamth Falls. I've lived here to long

#20 Posted by SquareSoft0 on 13 Feb 2005 - 01:48: What a lolacaust.

#21 Posted by metro on 13 Feb 2005 - 03:47: The sad thing, is that this does not suprise me. I was born and half-raised in Klamath Falls, and the town is utter trash. There is a bad vibe that I get whenever I go there to visit family, and I am glad that I no longer live there. Some people are really disturbed, and I am ashamed that something like this was rooted in my home town. I am glad that the person was stopped, but the people who say that no crime was commited are completely wrong. Actively recruiting people to do harm to themselves or others can be classified as involuntary manslaughter or conspiracy to commit murder. Look at Charles Manson, and use that as an example...

(1 reply) #22 Posted by Arcticflare on 13 Feb 2005 - 04:38: People have a right to die if they so chose. I'm not saying you should go out and actively try to convince people that they should kill themselves, but what I am saying is that if you want to die, it's your right. There should be a viable legal way to go and end your life. Free from the utter disaster of your friends and/or family having to find you dead in whatever messy way you've chosen to kill yourself, and having to deal with the authorities and the cleanup that is to follow.

It's your life, and if you want to check out then that's your choice. Your life does not belong to other people and they have no right to tell you can't end it. That is unless of course there are people that physically and emotionally depend on you. I'm talking about you, parents and gaurdians of children and others.

Our societies have to wake up to the fact that a person's life belongs to them and them alone. I'm suprised that there is no outrage to state the contrary to the laws that we have concerning this, and that there is no federally allowed sanctioned controlled way to give people their freedom to do what should be their choice. Without it, you're just creating a societal problem.

Suicide should be legal under supervision and accepted conditions. Flame me if you like, christians and other moral DICTATORS, but it's the truth.

I also wanna add that IN NO WAY am I encouraging people to kill themselves. It's a choice that I think very, very few people can make without simply being a total dumbass.

Last edited by 43403 on 13 Feb 2005 - 04:45

(1 reply) #23 Posted by dannymp3 on 13 Feb 2005 - 08:31: Now, it would be really weird if the person accused of the crime gets the death sentence.

And yes, I am trying to lighten up the mood.

#24 Posted by jivemastert on 13 Feb 2005 - 14:05: ohh boo hoo. someone doesnt have a valentine for valentines day. welcome to my past 18 years, bitches!!! maybe instead of killing yourself you should go find yourself a valentine. losers.

#25 Posted by werejag on 13 Feb 2005 - 19:31: lets sentence this guy to death for wanting to kill himself and every member of his valentine day cult.

sheesh let them kill themselfs its there right to do so.

why are we enforceing laws that prevent people from themselfs. what about freedom?

#26 Posted by xbiox on 13 Feb 2005 - 20:21: goddamnit. there goes my fun on vday.

#27 Posted by Magallanes on 14 Feb 2005 - 01:56: Idiots must practice suicide or must be killed.

Sadly they are a lot of they and the awful truth is that many of they rise for highest position in the society (for example Bush Jr.).

#28 Posted by WinMacLin on 14 Feb 2005 - 03:04: One of my friends was contacted by this guy over Yahoo on Christmas day he was willing to pay her money to get her to come up to Ontario Canada to film it.

Needless to say she did not take him up on that offer.

(2 replies) #29 Posted by BlazingTech on 14 Feb 2005 - 11:03

The hell? Its now illegal to commit suicide? What's wrong with people - suicide is a person's option to choose, not for other to dictate if they can kill themselves or not. Comments like:

QUOTE

that is sick. i hope he is sentenced for MORE then 30 years because that is just wrong.

really, really get me annoyed.

#29.1 Posted by Jugalator on 14 Feb 2005 - 12:33: I think it's not that they don't have the freedom to commit suicide, but what people react against with the 30 years thing is probably that they don't like people trying to convince people into commiting suicide. It has nothing to do with their freedom.

Put in another way -- I doubt there'd be an outrage if someone would commit suicide just like that without other people intentionally trying to influence that person that way.

#29.2 Posted by YaddaMe on 14 Feb 2005 - 22:15: Re-read the article BT. In addition to the mass suicide plans, there were plans to murder children. To date, he has not been charged with anything suicide-related... but solicitation to commit murder.

(1 reply) #30 Posted by jardragon901 on 14 Feb 2005 - 11:55: Ok, you people don't get it. I don't care about the suicides but he was talking the mothers into killing thier children! Now tell me again how that aint wrong, lets see thats conspiracy to comit murder.

#31 Posted by dhitb on 14 Feb 2005 - 14:28: Don't get me wrong, loss of life is always a serious matter, but the first thought that came to mind when I heard about this was contemplation -- if anyone were to be incarcerated and put on suicide watch, would they still attempt to go through with it? If VD were to pass, would they then stop attempting to snuff it and go back to their daily lives? What a mess...

(1 reply) #32 Posted by CAH on 14 Feb 2005 - 16:02: I posted this story first:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=283760&hl=

#33 Posted by Shiranui on 15 Feb 2005 - 00:50: In Japan we already have message boards specifically for suicidal people to chat, and find someone to die with. Hey, people wanting to die is a good thing - the world is overpopulated- just as long as they don't try to take someone with them, who doesn't want to go.

(1 reply) #34 Posted by Randall_Lind on 15 Feb 2005 - 15:45: Last night on Foxnews it was reported that he plan to have some of the women come to his house so to have sex before they killed themself. What a sick person.

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