Jonny McCambridge: Reporting on the catfish killer – the story which I can’t forget no matter how much I want to
The news agenda has always moved swiftly, but in a digital age it has become terrifyingly rapid. On a very busy day it is not unknown that I could be working on upwards of 10 variant articles.
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Hide AdThe ground you cover can be immense. I may write about politics, crime and justice, health, education, business, the environment, arts and entertainment, science, even sport occasionally. Each of these broad subjects can be sub-divided into countless tributaries to create a dizzyingly substantial array of potential story areas. Often, I will interview experts, people who have spent much of their career working in one field. I have to attempt to pass myself off as having a professional understanding, but the truth is, like the magpie, I know I will very soon have my beak pointed in an entirely different direction.
I have no idea of the number of stories I have written over the past 30 years, but it is reasonable to estimate there are many thousands. A person can only be spread so thin, there is only so much of it you can bring along with you on the journey. It is not uncommon for me to find old articles bearing my name which I have not the slightest recollection of ever having worked on.
But, very occasionally, something different comes along. There is a set of circumstances so tragic or disturbing, that it demands much more of your time is to be given as part of the journalistic process of trying to understand and explain.
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Hide AdDuring the past month I have spent more hours than I want to remember working on the case of Alexander McCartney, the 26-year-old who was given a life sentence after creating a sinister global web of catfishing, blackmail and online abuse. McCartney’s offending, which consisted of posing as a teenage girl to befriend young females through social media before coercing them into sending pictures and videos, led directly to the death of 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas in the US. It is believed he abused 3,500 children.
Everyone with even the vaguest sense of current affairs will know the horrendous details. Perhaps less well understood is the process which leads to such a substantial amount of background material being made available by journalists within moments of sentence being passed. The research involved multiple interviews and briefings. Families of victims from across the world were spoken to. Law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, both here and internationally, gave up their time to help construct a picture of what was a substantial global investigation. The dust was blown off old court reports and judicial judgments. Pre-sentence court hearings where the full, depraved nature of McCartney’s offending was laid out, were endured.
Once the information was gathered, then it has to be sorted and sifted, made logical and coherent. This is the most difficult part. I am not in the position of being able to leave all other duties aside – the daily news still has to be covered. Long hours late into the night and very early in the morning were passed in the torturous ritual of reading, writing and rewriting. Family engagements were postponed as I struggled with the vast amount of material. Whatever time I spent working on this, it is only a fraction compared to the effort and endurance of those in the criminal justice and legal professions who had to investigate and present the case. I was told anecdotally of one experienced professional who was made ill by the ordeal of working on such horrific subject matter. As one detective said to me: "Nobody should ever have to do this.”
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Hide AdI have to assume that police and lawyers must, as journalists do, develop a sense of professional detachment. There is simply no other way the vital work could be done. With McCartney, that sense of detachment was tested as never before.
Night after night his face stared out at me from my computer screen. So too did the smiling features of little Cimarron. Over and over I went through the transcript of their final conversation in the moments before she took her own life. Her heartbroken father Ben’s world had fallen apart after her suicide, of how he too took his own life 18 months later, not knowing why his beloved daughter had died.
Late on the night before the sentencing, I was still working. One more time I forced myself to go through all the details, to ensure that I had prepared the material properly and well. Then, approaching midnight, as I sat alone at my kitchen table, I felt a surge of despair rise urgently from my stomach, a guttural moan escaped from my throat and my eyes watered.
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Hide AdThe professional lapse lasted for just a few seconds. I told myself off for the self-indulgence, the weakness. The work has to be done.
The news agenda moves on and the stories keep coming, but I find I cannot easily stop thinking about this one. The details keep swirling in my mind’s cauldron, disturbing my sleep. There are undoubtedly many more with much deeper involvement who are in a similar position.
I am unable to begin to offer any explanation for McCartney’s crimes. Some things perhaps just cannot be understood. I remind myself of how rare this level of wickedness is. We all have our own ways of understanding the world and I make no claim of having any insight or wisdom. The capacity is there within all of us to create harm and good, and most will likely at some stage contribute a degree of both. The most comforting state for me has always been to attempt to ensure that the scales are balanced as heavily as possible away from harm. I prefer to believe the vast majority of other people feel the same way. Now, I find I need to cling to that belief more tightly than ever.