The Amy Boyer Case
The Amy Boyer Case refers to the murder of Amy Boyer committed by Liam Youens in October 1999. This case was one of first cyberstalking cases to attract extensive media attention. Youens was able to obtain Amy's personal information and determine her whereabouts through stalking on the Internet. This murder case has initiated many discussions regarding ethical implications between the real and the online world. It also has been acknowledged to be the case that encouraged efforts to introduce new legislation to help fight and protect victims against cyberstalking and the invasion of personal privacy online.
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Amy Boyer
Amy Boyer was a young woman from Nashua, New Hampshire. She attended and graduated from Nashua High School and was in her final year in a dental hygiene institution at the time of her death. Boyer was in a relationship and had two part-time jobs in order to pay her way through college [1]. She briefly worked in a dentist office before she was murdered at the age of 20 [2].
Liam Youens
Liam Youens is the youngest of six children and also attended Nashua High School in Nashua, New Hampshire. He graduated in 1997, and subsequently enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology. From an early age, Youens was described as antisocial and a loner who hardly spoke to his own family. Clarissa London, Youen's mother, told police that the door to his room was always locked and he survived solely on frozen pizzas and soda, which he ate alone in his room. He was teased excessively throughout high school and immersed himself in violent video games, pornographic video clips, and even photographs of Boyer. He thought of himself as very unattractive that he hardly ever allowed anyone to take a picture of him. [3]. Miserable from living in the college dorms, Youens dropped out of Rochester Institute of Technology after his first year.
Pre-Murder Events
Evidence of Psychological Disorder
Youens was constantly teased throughout high school because of his antisocial behavior and he believed that he was innately unattractive. At home, he spent most of his time on his computer, playing violent video games and watching pornographic videos. He collected guns and personally owned 5 rifles and a hand gun. He rarely spoke to or ate with his family. In November 1996, Youens' threw a cabinet of chinaware down a flight of stairs solely because he was angry at his mother for not letting him have plastic surgery to fix his sunken chest. Despite his poor attitude and peculiar habits, this was the only known violent occurrence before he murdered Amy Boyer. [3].
Obsession with Amy Boyer
In eighth grade, Youens met Boyer through a church youth group. He instantly developed a love obsession with her, but was never confident enough to tell her. When he saw Boyer interacting with another boy on the school bus, Youens ultimately made his decision to eventually murder her. Boyer and her family never knew of Youen’s obsession [3].
Youen’s Website Documenting Murder
Youen started a website, documenting his process and plans to murder Amy Boyer. His website ran for almost two and a half years. He would write on his website about committing suicide and other very detailed personal information about himself and his obsession with Amy Boyer. Youen’s website was taken off from the web after the murder and is currently not available. However, a reproduction of his site still remains online. His desires, thoughts, and actions are all still documented online [4].
The Internet’s Aid in Boyer’s Murder
In this case specifically, Liam Youen used Docusearch, an internet based organization to conduct his online investigation using third party information searcher sites that obtain and sell individuals’ personal information. It costed him forty-five dollars to obtain documents that included Boyer's date of birth and social security number. Later, Liam contacted Docusearch’s contractor, Gambino, impersonating an insurance company representative to acquire more information on Boyer and her family. By manipulating people to acquire information and using illegal methods, Youens was able to obtain Boyer's work information from Gambino who called Boyer’s mother to obtain her work location. [4].
Day of Murder
On October 15, 1999, Liam Youens parked outside of Amy Boyer’s work office and waited for her to leave. As Boyer walked out to her car, Youens yelled out Boyer’s name and shot her, killing her instantaneously. After the murder of Amy Boyer, Youens killed himself as well.
Ethical Implications
The Amy Boyer case illustrates how ethical models are complex in the online world. Youens was able to access and obtain Boyer’s personal information without difficulty due to the internet's apparent lack of moral barriers that would restrict such behavior in real life.
Moral Barriers
In real life, there are moral barriers that prevent people from doing harm to others. For example, Youens would have had more difficulty searching and finding Boyer’s information outside internet. The difficulty and investigative nature of a search act as barriers that would trigger a moral realization of wrongness in real life. At the time of the murder, there were no online barriers that that could have resulted in moral realization. The ease of the search for personal information online helped to facilitate Boyer's murder.
“Different” Crimes Exist Online
Tavani describes stalking online as “a different kind of crime from stalking in the ‘offline world’” [5]. The nature of the “same” crime changes because the online environment offers many more opportunities for stalking. These can occur in the following forms: instant messaging (to get in contact with the victim), searching for personal information, posting comments about the victim (to further the degree of stalking), and more. Any stalker online “can now stalk a targeted victim without having to leave the comfort of his or her home” [5].
Need for New Ethical Model
It can be argued that real world ethics cannot apply and transfer easily to the online environment due to the fact that there is a lack of moral barriers in place in the Internet that would allow for appropriate moral judgments and decisions to occur, such as in real life. Such a conflict results in “policy vacuums”, described as:
“Because of logical malleability, computing technology enables human beings to do an enormous number of new things that they never were able to do before. Since no one did them before, the question arises whether one ought to do them...one may discover that no laws or standards of good practice or ethical rules have been created to govern them…”policy vacuums”, some of which generate ‘conceptual muddles’” [6]
A lack of morals to guide future actions limits ethical judgments online, resulting in conceptual muddles. Therefore, there is a need for a new ethical model that directly deals with dilemmas encountered in the online environment.
See Also
References
- ↑ [Bocij, P. Cyberstalking, harassment in the internet age and how to protect your family. Praeger Publishers, 2006. Print.]
- ↑ Killer stalks victim through Internet firms. Lubbock Online. 30 November 1999. Retrieved 06 October 2011.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Hirsch, J.M. Chilling Web Site Reveals a Killer's Obsessive Plans. Los Angeles Times. 05 December 1999. Retrieved 06 October 2011.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Douglas, Robert. The Murder of Amy Boyer. Davick Services. 13 April 2005. Retrieved 06 October 2011.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Tavani, Herman T. The uniqueness debate in computer ethics: What exactly is at issue, and why does it matter? Ethics and information Technology, 4.1, 01 Mar 2002: 37-54. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- ↑ Bynum, Terrell W. "Milestones in the History of Information and Computer Ethics." The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. Ed. Kenneth E. Himma and Herman T. Tavani. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008. 27-48.
