He was the same dirty rat he’d always been. He got what he had coming. Sorry to burst everyone’s bubble, but you’ll never find him.”
Sitting with her laptop at a Starbucks in Anchorage, Alaska, Peggy Giles reads the ominous message on her Facebook page. “Whoever wrote it was probably drunk,” she says. Giles, a heavyset, middle-aged mum in glasses, wears a loud blue T-shirt and has long, frizzy hair. “You know what they say,” she laughs. “Friends don’t let friends Facebook drunk!”
But the guy online isn’t just spouting off. He’s angry at Giles for investigating the disappearance of Shanon Lovell, a young man from nearby Wasilla who has been missing for nine months. With a few taps on her keyboard, Giles passes along this guy’s threatening message to the cops. “Whatever makes the hair on my neck stand up,” she says, “I forward on to the police.” Here in Alaska, Giles is known as the Ice Cream Lady of Valdez, famous for selling Fudgsicles from a pink mail truck. But online she leads a stealthy second life: hunting for killers and their victims, like Lovell.
Giles is a cybersleuth, an amateur snoop who harnesses the power of the Net to crack cold cases. It marks a new twist in the modern age of tracking down bad guys: Ordinary people with a laptop and the will can play digital detective – and occasionally piss off the professional investigators along the way. Sites such as Websleuths, the Doe Network, and Perverted Justice are hubs for DIY dicks and have led to numerous arrests. A group of amateur sleuths on Reddit (the Reddit Bureau of Investigation) has investigated the Boston Marathon bombers, as well as missing-persons cases.
Now, with the help of James Koenig, a long-haired biker in a Harley-Davidson shirt sitting with us at Starbucks, Giles is trying to find victims of America’s most notorious serial killer in decades, Israel Keyes, an Alaskan who is thought to have killed at least 11 people around the country – including Koenig’s own daughter, Samantha. It’s the case that started these cybersleuths on their way and the one that haunts them to this day.
“I don’t want other families to have to go through this,” Koenig says, lowering his eyes. “There’s no manual on what you do when your child is missing or your family member is missing. I had to learn that the hard way.”
For the full feature and images grab the December 2013 issue of MAXIM, in stores November 21 – December 18, 2013.
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