Death Trap

This is a story about a sports car. There, I slipped in something about sports. So now it can included in a sports column.

It’s a story that can happen on any street corner in America. In any town in America. Not to mention in any city in America. It’s a story that needs to be told, over and over again.

It’s the story about someone making decisions that turn out to be bad decisions. And it’s the story about the consequences you pay for making bad decisions.

This “bad decision” I am talking about can cause someone to go from being a normal person to becoming a victim of a crime. They may not know it, but their decision can cause them to be assaulted, robbed, beaten, kidnapped, raped, and even murdered.

The bad decision might not seem like a bad decision at the time, but if the person making that decision is wrong, then some really bad things can happen… from, of all things, buying and selling things on Craigslist.

(waits for laughter to subside)

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A 19-year-old student in Illinois wanted to sell his Nissan sports car. He decided to put the car on the advertising vehicle known as Craigslist. (bad decision #1) Somehow, Craigslist has become the place for what used to be handled by Classified Advertising sections of local newspapers. (By the way, who exactly IS this Craig? However he went from being some unknown person, at the time, to the guy who somehow stole most of the advertising market from newspapers is one of the mysteries of this lifetime).

The student exchanged texts and emails with a potential buyer of his car, never actually meeting him in person (mistake #2), before setting up a meeting for the “buyer” to maybe take a test drive.

The student decided to meet up with the buyer during a break from his school and the lunch break from the “buyer’s” work schedule. He was alone when he finally had the “meeting with the buyer.” (mistake #3, the fatal mistake) Instead of buying the car, the “alleged buyer” took the student’s car and murdered him, burying him in a shallow grave.

The student, who just happened to be a person who wanted to sell his car, ended up dead because of a bad person, a predator, who saw him as prey, but, make no mistake about it, he died due to the nature of Craigslist. He died BECAUSE that thing called Craigslist exists. He would not have otherwise met this person in real life. Let’s just call it like we see it. He died because of Craigslist.

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Besides its classified advertising function of providing a marketplace for the buying and selling of goods and services, Craigslist also dabbles in a form of online matchmaking, where they hook up men and women seeking relationships and other types of illicit encounters.

There is no accurate count as to how many people have been assaulted, robbed, beaten, kidnapped, raped, and murdered because they have utilized Craigslist. But the fact is, there have been hundreds, if not thousands, who have been adversely affected because they “did business” with Craigslist.

Craigslist is not an evil entity. They just happen to have an advertising buyer meets seller platform that can put together criminals with bad intentions with honest, law abiding citizens, and the results can often be catastrophic. There is no oversight of what happens between the buyers and the sellers. No vetting of whether the buyers and the sellers might have evil intentions.

But what they have is the complete anonymity of the Internet. There is the knowledge from the perpetrators of crime that the buyers of the merchandise have a lot of money and the sellers of the merchandise have some pretty good stuff worth stealing. And Craigslist has a buyer meets seller platform where there is always the OPPORTUNITY for a bad person to take advantage of a good person who just want to transact business.

The college student who just wanted to sell his car on Craigslist didn’t know that someone on the other side might have bad intentions. He trusted that the platform for Craigslist would deliver to him a good customer. It was a bad decision, a mistake that would cost him his life.

If this column has any value today, it is to state that the act of buying and or selling on Craigslist brings with it some risk. People play the lottery a lot, hoping to win, but the odds are greater that you will be killed, robbed or raped meeting up with a person on Craigslist than they are that you will win at lotto. And yet, people still do both.

The student trying to sell his sports car did not think that the simple act of meeting someone that answered an ad on Craigslist would result in his death, but it did. He didn’t realize one, important fact.

Craigslist ain’t safe.