Photos of Amber Coplin's body were posted before the murder was reported.
A man arrested Wednesday night for the alleged murder of 30-year-old Amber Coplin in Port Orchard, Washington may have documented the act on a 4chan thread. According to NBC, an affidavit written by deputies in the sheriff's department of Kitsap County states that the crime scene "matched the deceased female, trauma we observed, and the residence interior" visible in the photos posted to 4chan.
The initial 4chan post first appeared on Tuesday at 2:56pm EST. An image of a naked woman with bruised eyelids and bloody ligature marks around her neck was accompanied by the text, "Turns out its way harder to strangle someone to death than it looks on the movies." In a follow-up post with a fuller picture of the woman's body, the user wrote, "She fought so Damn hard." A few more posts down, the same user predicted his upcoming news coverage, as well as his exit strategy:
Check the news for port orchard Washington in a few hours. Her son will be home from school soon. He'll find her, then call the cops. I just wanted to share the pics before they find me. I bought a bb gun that looks realistic enough. When they come, I'll pull it and it will be suicide by cop. I understand the doubts. Just check the f**king news. I have to lose my phone now.
The images were posted to 4chan's /b/ board, a place, as Ars wrote in 2011, "known for child pornography, adult pornography, targeting young kids for harassment, anti-social behavior of all kinds, hate speech, and just about anything else one might imagine." The other posters' reactions ranged from disbelief ("u w0t m8?") to glib ("tell me about it. Pro tip: tie their hands and feet or you are gonna have a bad time").
Later that day, at 7pm EST, the Port Orchard Independentwrote of a "possible homicide" on the "4000 block of Madrona Street. A new 4chan user posted a screenshot of the article in a new thread, with the comment "OP DELIVERED???? F**K."
Inside the house, according to the affidavit, Coplin lay next to her own driver's license, which had "the word 'dead' scrawled over it." The words "she killed me first" had been written on the bedroom wall, and "bad news" was written on the room's window blinds. One of the suspects was David Kalac, the 33-year old live-in boyfriend of Coplin.
Kalac's car was spotted in Portland early Wednesday. After he resisted a traffic stop, officers chased him briefly, but he escaped. Kalac turned himself in around 9pm local time on Wednesday in Wilsonville, Oregon.
According to The Smoking Gun, Coplin's stepmother posted to Facebook, saying, "Please pray for my family. My step daughter died today. Fml." Coplin's sister also took to Facebook to accuse Kalac of being responsible for the murder: "He murdered my baby sister Amber yesterday and took her car...If you see him please call 911."
While officers have confirmed the likely link between the 4chan posts and the crime scene, Kalac has not yet either identified himself as the murderer or the poster. Now that he has been arrested, Kalac has been charged with second-degree murder and is being held in Portland on $2 million bail.
In the days since the photos surfaced, some /b/goers have taken the photo's of Coplin's body and face as a gift for making memes. Others on the board, including the original thread, took the events more seriously. Dozens of posts down from the original photos, an anonymous user wrote, "You guys think you are f**king funny? Posting your epic memes and so dupper funny jokes, A woman was just f**king murdered and the proof is right here and you f**kers only know to act like f**king baboons. Get a f**king life."
Police link 4chan murder photos to a crime scene, arrest a suspect | Ars Technica
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