For another, John, writing under his own name in a more adolescent style, sent Mark careful confirmation of his supposedly fatal condition: "I got a letter today, from my doc, when i went in a few weeks ago cos i was depressed and shit i got a brain thingy tumour but its big.". Police are investigating after a boy who admitted killing his friend took a video of himself in a toilet during his murder trial making stabbing actions. He was the only child of working-class parents, well mannered and respectful, bound, he thought, for a local business college. John would later claim that Mark had declared him to be "like a brother"but, as it turned out, he was a lot more than that. "He would become withdrawn. Sign up to our newsletter to receive email updates on new series, features, and more from your favourite Crime+Investigation shows: This time the order came from Tony Blair himself, via Janet. The prosecutor thinks otherwise. "But these could not be described as any normal circumstances," the judge added. In her line of work, after all, she was expert at assuming all sorts of identities. Both sets of parents decided there would be no more sleepovers. "He says he is unhappy at home, but there is nothing we are aware of.". For instance, both liked Catch Me if You Can, a movie in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays an adolescent con man who effortlessly assumes multiple identities. Police Identify Driver Killed in Crash. "I just thought, It could have been my son," she says. wondered Mark. 2023 Cond Nast. After months of analysis, detectives were able to establish that it was John who sent the final messages from his home computer on the night of 28 June 2003 and had planned his own murder. "My life was on the Internet. Mark was told by her that he must commit various tasks and that John was dying from a brain tumour. It will not allow anyone else.". Even when John passed his exams (much to his surprise) and gained entrance to a prestigious grammar school, the names continued unabated. John saw his friend surrounded by admiring girls. Perhaps it was "warped" to spend so much time in chat rooms, he reflected, sleepless and typing ceaselessly. The character Rachel is writing to Mark: This passage incensed Manchester authorities. That, however, was not how it seemed at the time. "Yes, I'm not aware of any other case where somebody's incited somebody to murder themselves," Nicholas Clarke, the prosecutor, declares in his Manchester office, each syllable clipped with derision. Rachel was then apparently released by Kevin, although she would mysteriously disappear from the chat room shortly after. These documents sketch a different, complex picture of John, victim and criminal. And they shared his mission: to keep Mark perpetually in contact with their creator, John. There was Rachel, the 16-year-old whom Mark had grown close to; John (the victim) was her stepbrother; Kevin the decidedly creepy self-proclaimed stalker and finally Janet the spy mistress. Mr Ross added: "We have not come across any underlying things that would turn a child to do The 14-year-old boy, dubbed Boy B in court, created a series of fictional characters in chatrooms, one of which ordered Boy A to murder him. She liked to issue instructions. ", "Erm I duno. Uwant me 2 kill him ?? Over the coming weeks, Janet spun her web of deceit, convincing Mark to carry out tests to prove his worthiness before hed be given his first official mission. Freezing cold. Despite his mother's pleas, the teenager was put on a waiting list. Suddenly the "postman, ice cream man, teachers, drivers" were all revealed to be secret agents, checking to see if he, Mark, might be smart enough to join their ranks. When the sentence came down, Mark winked at his mother, and Sally Hogg, whose work had uncovered the degree of his manipulation by John, wept for the duller, more susceptible boy. The only way it could end in his head was suicide. By February 2003 he was contacting 20 to 30 people a night in chat rooms; within a week he had found Mark. It was from this injury that the teenager almost died on the operating tabletwice, police tell me. One in the chestthat was the light woundand another in the abdomen, six inches deep, which pierced his kidney and liver and necessitated the removal of his gallbladder. A ring of pedophiles? //-->