News: Another Batch Of Craigslist Crimes
(Long Island, N.Y.)Since the discovery that the four female remains from Gilgo Beach were murdered at the hands of a Craigslist killer, many Long Islanders have been waiting for news about progress in the case. In the past weeks more crimes have been committed after exchanges between persons on the website. Though Craigslist has taken down its controversial adult services section, the recent incidents prove that the website is still an avenue for crime.
Last Tuesday night a nineteen-year-old man from Hazel Park, Michigan was shot to death in the upper torso. The man had scheduled a meeting with a fraudulent seller of the popular Android phone after advertising that he wanted to purchase it on Craigslist. He had been contacting his killer through text messages and agreed to pay $80 for the phone and $15 to have it delivered to his home.
The victim’s aunt, who provided him with a residence since September, claims to have heard two shots around 7:30pm on Tuesday night. He was taken to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak where he was pronounced dead. The original meeting place for the exchange was intended for a gas station near a major highway. It’s unclear why the teen was shot and killed for such a miniscule robbery.
Last week, a twenty-seven-year old woman from Wisconsin met a forty-five-year old man from East Williamsburg, Brooklyn at John F. Kennedy Airport. He paid for her airfare and taxi to his apartment. The pair had shared information through Craigslist, and he allegedly arranged to have her stay in his home for the exchange of cooking/cleaning services.
The woman got a job at a restaurant in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She claims that the man kept her as a sex slave for eight days by chaining her to his bedroom. He only allowed her to leave to go to work, giving her the opportunity to call her mother who later contacted Brooklyn authorities.
She was found by police in the fetal position shaking on the bed. The man was charged with assault, rape, and unlawful imprisonment, and was kept on $350,000 bail. In 2004 the man had been involved in a misdemeanor assault charge for domestic violence which was eventually dropped.
Weeks after twenty-two-year old Megan Waterman, one of the four Gilgo Beach victims, went missing twenty-four-year old Elena Jasmir Lozada disappeared from Portland, Maine. Like Waterman and the other victims, Lozada had also posted services on Craigslist. She lived less than ten miles from Waterman.
Lozada is five-foot-two and approximately 110lbs. She has short, wavy brown hair and brown eyes and a distinguishable scar near her left ear. She is Hispanic and was last seen in Portland while staying with friends on July 23rd, 2010. Her mother last heard from her on July 6th, 2010, and claimed that Lozada spoke of moving out of her apartment and planning a trip to Boston, Massachusetts. Police believe she may have ended up in Dorchester, Massachusetts and are urging anyone with information to contact Detective Christopher Giesecke from the Portland Police Department.
On Sunday, January 30th, 2011 Waterman was the first of the Gilgo Beach victims to be buried. She rests in Portland, Maine. The night before her funeral friends and family gathered in a Portland-area roller-skating rink, a favorite of Waterman’s, to honor her. On Monday, January 31st, 2011 a memorial service was held for Gilgo Beach victim Melissa Barthelemy fifteen miles southeast of Buffalo, New York in Elma. Services for Amber Lynn Costello, a third victim, were held in Lindenhurst, New York. Her ashes were buried next to her mother in North Carolina.
Craigslist was created in San Francisco and has been established since 1995. It receives approximately thirty million postings per month, making it the seventh most popular website to be designed in English. Lawsuits have caused the website to change its “erotic services” section to “adult services” before it was removed altogether following the Gilgo Beach slayings. It’s estimated that a third of the website’s revenue came from adult advertisements. As of 2007, an estimated 260,000 people per city were on the site for adult services, making that aspect of the site the most popular section (and almost twice as popular as the second most popular section).
In addition to robberies and sex crimes, the website has been known to be the backdrop for crimes of revenge. One case involved a man who posed as his ex-girlfriend and invited aggressive men to take advantage of her after soliciting for it on Craigslist. The woman was later raped at knifepoint while at her home. Another case involved the mother of a nine-year-old girl who solicited sex while posing as the mother of her daughter’s enemy.
