Brent Kopacka’s death was hard enough on his loved ones before strangers on the internet started branding him a murderer.
The 36-year-old Purple Heart recipient was shot dead by a SWAT officer in December after an overnight standoff at his Washington state apartment. His longtime best friend, Darin Dunkin, was haunted by the belief that things might have gone differently if Kopacka had gotten the care he needed after suffering a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan.
Then, online sleuths spread baseless claims that Kopacka was somehow involved in the November stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students. Scores of posts on TikTok, Facebook and YouTube tied his name to the crime. The accusations were as improbable as they were devastating: By the time they gained traction online, police had already arrested a suspect who they said acted alone and whose DNA was allegedly on a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
“Now, not only is he dead and I’m never going to see him again, but it’s like all these other people are ruining his legacy,” said Dunkin, 36, of Illinois. “Not only do I have to mourn my friend, but I got to defend him, too.”
Across the internet, true-crime aficionados have become obsessed with all sorts of unsolved mysteries and crimes, poring over victims’ social media pages and analyzing news reports to try to crack cases. The amateur sleuths post their theories in YouTube videos, podcasts and online chats, where some gain large followings who then...
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