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A SCHOOLBOY OF 14 PLOTTED HIS OWN DEATH IN AN INTERNET CHATROOM IN A DIZZYING CASE DESCRIBED AT THE TIME AS ONE OF THE MOST BIZARRE MURDER PLOTS IN BRITISH LEGAL HISTORY 17:11, 19 Jan 2025
It was a landmark case - the first time in the UK that someone had been convicted of inciting their own murder. Even the judge presiding over it was staggered, telling Manchester Crown Court
that ‘skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as that which arises here’. Twenty years ago, before Facebook and Twitter, in an MSN internet chatroom, a schoolboy
of 14 posed as a female British secret service spy to plot his own murder - persuading a friend to try to stab him to death in an Altrincham alleyway. The boy, John, had groomed his older,
16-year old pal Mark - both pseudonyms to protect their identities - with an ‘elaborate matrix of deceit’ that involved six fictional characters and correspondence totalling 58,000 lines of
text. The web of lies culminated in John convincing Mark to murder him to pass a fictitious initiation test for the British secret services. Mark, described at the time as being from a
'middle-class family in Greater Manchester', attempted to carry out the plot on a Sunday evening in the summer of 2003 - stabbing John twice, once in the chest and once in the
stomach, with a knife they had bought together earlier that day at the Trafford Centre. The attack left John, also from Greater Manchester, fighting for his life - with one knife wound
piercing his kidney and lacerating his liver. His gall bladder also had to be removed and he remained critically ill in hospital for a week - but he survived. At first, the police treated
the knife attack as a ‘robbery gone wrong’ - thanks to a precise, but fabricated, description of such an incident given by Mark. When officers examined CCTV footage, they soon realised
Mark’s story was implausible. Then John, from his hospital bed, said he had been stabbed by Mark but ‘didn't know why’ and the older boy was charged with attempted murder. But the case
took its bizarre turn when detectives learned the pair had been communicating in an internet chatroom. It led to police and computer experts poring over the chatroom communications and in
doing so they found messages to Mark from a Rachel - a 16-year-old in search of an online relationship - along with her stalker Kevin. There were messages too from a Lyndsey and a Dave, from
a secret-service agent called Janet, and also from John himself. The messages baffled police for months until a criminal intelligence analyst noticed all of these seemingly different people
who had been messaging Mark had common features in their typing style - including misspelling "maybe" as "mybye". Police eventually were able to prove that they were all
John. It was John's character Janet - a 42-year-old British secret agent trapped in a loveless marriage - who was central to his deceitful murder plot. She told Mark that John was
dying from a brain tumour and needed to be killed. Mark was told that, if he carried out the job, he would be rewarded money, a job as a British secret service agent and sex with the spy. He
was also told he would get to meet the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. In messages revealed in court, Mark wrote: "U want me 2 take him 2 trafford centre and kill him in the middle of
trafford centre??” John, pretending to be 'Janet', replied: “Yes.” Mark: “And just leave him 2 die in the trafford centre?” John: “No stay with him.” Mark: “And wot do I do then?
Get help?” John: “Yes I'll get help for you.” The boys met the following day, when Mark stabbed John in Altrincham. John’s mind-spinning plot was only uncovered after detectives were
able to establish it was him who sent the final messages from his home computer as Janet the night before the attack. When the case came to court in May 2004, Mark pleaded guilty to
attempted murder while John admitted perverting the course of justice and incitement to murder - but both were spared jail sentences. Judge David Maddison said: "Offences of this kind
in any normal circumstances would result in an extremely lengthy custodial sentence. But these could not be described as any normal circumstances." The judge added: "It's
staggering to be dealing with a case that arises out of a 14-year-old boy's invention of false personalities, false relationships and events arranged for his own killing." He told
Mark: "So convincingly were the characters presented to you that you really did believe you had been recruited by the secret service to kill your co-accused and face the consequences if
you did not do so." The court was told how the younger boy, John, was depressed, confused and suffering from a psychological disorder. He had retreated into the virtual world of the
internet and lived a fantasy existence - with the source of his fertile imagination said to be movies including Men in Black and Catch Me If You Can, which told the story of a young conman
who survived by taking on the mantle of imaginary personalities. The court also heard that John had felt an "emotional intimacy" for Mark that he had never felt before - and this,
it was said, was the key to the whole extraordinary affair. Mark was given a two-year supervision order. John, meanwhile, was given a three-year supervision order, told he must only access
the internet under adult supervision and must not enter chatrooms. Article continues below The pair were also banned from contacting each other again.