Kimveer Gill is shown in this undated photo taken from his profile on a website.
Updated Thu. Sep. 14 2006 8:19 PM ET
Canadian Press
The online community VampireFreaks.com fought back Thursday as media reports revealed a connection between a murder case and their goth-centric website for the second time this year.
Kimveer Gill, the 25-year-old man who killed one student and wounded 20 other people at Montreal's Dawson College, had a posting on the site that showed him posing with guns and included such eerie statements as "Anger and hatred simmers within me.''
His catchphrase, often posted when he commented on others' journals, was: "Life is like a video game, you gotta die sometime.''
Site owner Jethro Berelson, who goes by Jet online, insisted Thursday that Gill's actions and comments had nothing to do with the site or goth culture.
"You know, I think people on the site are generally very friendly and nice, and don't really do any crimes,'' he said in a telephone interview from Brooklyn, N.Y.
"But just because there's so many users on there -- we have 600,000 users -- it's only a matter of statistics that there's going to be a couple of users that are going to commit crimes, in any population of 600,000.''
VampireFreaks.com is an online networking site where users sign up and get their own pages, complete with a place to put pictures and a journal. They can then talk to other users by posting comments on their sites and by getting comments back.
The site also has a rating element -- at the bottom of each person's profile lies a 10-point scale, ranging from Reject to Hot.
A posting on the site's main page by Berelson says "the goth scene is a very friendly, nurturing, non-violent community and we are very supportive of our users and do not condone any illegal activities.''
By Thursday afternoon, the posting had attracted more than 400 comments.
"This is a terrible incident that happened,'' wrote XxBeautyNDecayxX. "Columbine was bad enough -- now this. It's going to give VampireFreaks somewhat of a bad rep ... I can't believe that one of our own would commit this type of act.''
Bloodi_faery added: "Anyone who has ever been through the alternative phase knows we aren't like that. It's just narrow-minded idiots who still think like that.''
The Dawson College shooting rampage isn't the first high-profile killing to be associated with the site.
VampireFreaks.com came under the media spotlight in April after a triple murder in Medicine Hat, Alta. A 12-year-old girl and 23-year-old man accused of the killings were alleged to have profiles on the site.
In 2003, the body of a 12-year-old Toronto boy was found bludgeoned and stabbed in a crawl space in the basement of his family's east Toronto home.
A former girlfriend of the boy's brother -- who was convicted in the murder -- admitted at trial that she posted an Internet profile and semi-nude photos of herself on VampireFreaks.com, where she expressed an interest in blood and pain.
But the site has many rules to try to keep things civil. Users have to be 13 to join -- although that apparently didn't deter the 12-year-old Medicine Hat girl.
The rules also command people to "not start any trouble or drama with other users on the site,'' and prohibit any gory, offensive pictures and racist or sexist imagery or text.
Stephen Kent, a University of Alberta sociologist who has studied cults, said people with violent tendencies are often attracted to small subcultures within the larger goth and vampire communities, which are not innately violent.
"One of the elements about Internet websites, especially ones that are interactive, is that people can create their own personalities, and announce to the world how they want the world to see them,'' he said.
"In this particular case, Mr. Gill gave himself names, tried to ensure that he would have a high status on that group by announcing that he was going to commit acts of violence and so on.''
Berelson said he and other administrators of the website do their best to police illegal activities, banning users and occasionally reporting to police.
Since Wednesday's shooting in Montreal, he has asked users to become more aware of the activities of other users and to report anything suspicious.
"But because there are so many users on there, it's not like we can moderate everything,'' he said.
"And even if he is holding a gun in a picture, that's not necessarily a crime.''
Kent agreed that it's difficult to police these sites, as much of the content is just "blustering in front of an Internet camera.''
"Mere exposure to the website is not going to cause violence. Thousands of people will look at these and other websites, and they're never going to get involved in violent activities,'' he said.
"It's people who are at risk, who implode into the subculture, who lose the ability to separate reality from fantasy, that are really at risk.''
