U R NEXT | 6. Remember Me?

Sergeant Finley’s case comes to a climax. More than a decade on, host Leigh Alexander investigates whether Vicious is still a danger to women. What she finds is unnerving. Want the full story? Binge every episode of U R NEXT ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. U R NEXT is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Haunted Library.

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• 0:49Speaker 01

  The Binge.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  I'd like to talk about the arrest which took place in December 2014. Could you talk me through some of the events that led up to that arrest?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a big question.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Gary Young is a staff sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. You first heard from him back in episode three. It's the 5th of December 2014. Gary and a small group of investigators are hovering outside a rundown apartment block about 40 minutes' drive from Vancouver.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Through our assessment sweep at the time, there were only a few people that were still living in there.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Including Vicious and his family. The cops have been tracking Vicious for weeks, and now they're here to arrest him.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  A lot of work was done beforehand in trying to have surveillance in place. He was the type of person, just from our surveillance, that he barely ever left his residence.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  They know that Vicious isn't just in the house. He's also online, right now.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  We did have somebody in the office monitoring all his online chats, so we knew that he was active.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Gary and his team are busy getting into position.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  We needed his laptop. We needed that computer to be turned on. We're always afraid they will always be quicker to erase or destroy evidence.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  We entered the residence. We were looking for any type of electronics, laptops.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  As the police fan out into the apartment, searching for evidence, they're floored by the state that Vicious's home is in.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  It's kind of sad to see how unkept he was and how unkept the immediate state he was living in. Probably has not been cleaned or touched for a whole long period of time.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  The search partner and I, we were in charge of one room, searching, and we found another laptop. We quickly moved it aside to see what was underneath it. And as soon as we moved it, because there was heat underneath, the herd of insects, maggots, crocodiles, came running out so quick. We thought that it was gonna crawl up our shoes.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Creatures, insects, that's crawling out of the sink. Liquids from overstacked dishes seeping onto the floor. Garbage, that is essentially the sad part of it. But make no mistake, let's not excuse the behavior of the individual responsible for what he's done to the many, many victims out there as well.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Making his way through to Vicious's bedroom, Gary finally comes face to face with the teenager he's been investigating.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  He was sitting in his bed, under the blanket. Laptop was actually on top of his thighs. His physical appearance, I would say, would almost be the opposite of how he was portrayed online. He had long, unkept hair. He's not necessarily what I call an in-shape person. His shoulders were hunched. His demeanor was, I'm gonna say subdued. He wasn't sad or anything. He didn't seem surprised. He was just like, yeah, okay.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Vicious is arrested in his home and then taken to his local police station. He's given an attorney and then Gary and his colleagues start conducting the interviews.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  His demeanor was again subdued.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  As the interrogators dig in, Vicious starts to reveal more of the character we've come to expect.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  It slowly came out. You can sense then the arrogance behind it, saying like, he thinks it's funny. He doesn't know if he can stop. My opinion is he lived in a world where he get to exert a great degree of power and control over someone. The online community is where he can exert that. He wanted his online community to know just how good he is.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  When the RCMP was first contacted by Sergeant Ben Finley around spring of 2014, they couldn't share any information about Vicious because he was a minor, but also because the threshold to build and then try a case in Canada is just not the same as it is in the US. At the time, Ben and his colleagues just didn't have enough of the right evidence.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  They scratched their head. They were like, man, you Canadians, how do you even put anybody in jail?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  But that didn't mean Gary and his colleagues didn't know exactly who Ben was talking about.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  He was arrested a couple of times before we made the big arrest.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Vicious was arrested in both March and October of 2014.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  On the first arrest, he was released on certain conditions.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Which included staying off the internet. He wasn't supposed to have access to any computers either. Obviously, he did not abide by those conditions. At the time of those earlier arrests, the RCMP didn't understand the scale of what was happening.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  So at the beginning, when he was first identified, it was very localized. Swatting in general was a very new phenomenon. I think it was just looked at as a nuisance.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Once the FBI were involved, they were able to work with Ben to gather the right kind of evidence for the RCMP so that together, they could finally put a stop to Vicious's reign of terror. But for all his victims, it felt too little, too late.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  So many of the women my team and I spoke to in the making of this podcast said they felt their local police did not take their reports seriously, that they were ignored at best, and at worst, essentially belittled by officers who told them to just "log off" or to be more careful online.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Even when the justice system did take action, in the eyes of the women who were targeted by Vicious, the consequences were pretty toothless. Like his, in my mind at least, completely unenforceable ban from being online. It left them completely vulnerable to another of his attacks.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  It's something Sergeant Ben Finley can empathize with.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  I think a lot of it comes down to different cops that they don't know exactly what they're dealing with here. They don't know the depth and scope of what's going on. And they just think it's some kids doing things on the internet. And I think sometimes that's exactly what happens, is the victim gets blamed. And I could see how that would be very frustrating to them.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Ben's been a cop for decades, so he has a lot of respect for the justice system. But he struggles to understand some of the decisions made around Vicious's previous arrests and releases.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  It's like they tell you the first time, and you violate it, and you come back again. It's like, okay, you're gonna have to super, super promise us this time you're not gonna do it. There's no punishment for this. I mean, what type of incentive does he have to do the right thing?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  This latest, and hopefully final, arrest might feel long overdue, but at least it's finally here. Ben takes comfort in that.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  I was happy, you know? Good culmination of a whole heck of a lot of work and investigation. I mean, I've never spent that long on a case in my life.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Natasha, one of Vicious's earliest victims, who you met in episode four, had tried to seek help from her own local police department, but she didn't get anywhere. She'd kept in touch with other victims who had similar stories and spread the news about Vicious's previous arrests.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  They kept just giving him slaps on the wrist.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  But now, with the mountain of evidence and the collective weight of both the FBI and the Mounties going against Vicious, she feels something she hasn't felt in a long time.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  I felt relieved. I felt like I don't have to be small anymore if I don't want to.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Finally, at long last, Vicious is gonna face some real justice. It's time for his day in court.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is You Are Next. I'm Leigh Alexander.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  This is episode six, Remember Me?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  It's about seven months on from the arrest. We're in a provincial court in B.C., Canada, in July 2015. Given how often Vicious bragged online about the crimes he was committing, how much pride he took in the damage he was causing to his countless victims, it's maybe not surprising that when his judgment day came calling, it seemed like he wore his culpability like a badge of honor. He's already pled guilty to 23 charges, including nine counts of criminal harassment, eight counts of public mischief, and four counts of extortion.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  And now, after years terrorizing streamers across the USA and beyond, Vicious will be sentenced.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  In his previous hearings, he'd reportedly been expressionless, save for the odd smirk now and then. And fidgety, he was seen flipping his long brown hair out of his face and tapping his fingers on his knees, which were constantly bouncing up and down. His defense attorney tried to get Vicious credit for the fact that he pled guilty, saving taxpayers a costly trial and sparing the victims from having to travel for the court case. According to media reports, he also told the judge that, at the time most of the offenses were committed, Vicious was just 16, what he refers to as "the stupidest age group in society." His attorney went on to say that he didn't think Vicious understood the consequences of his actions.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  But in the sentencing hearing, the judge doesn't seem to be buying it. What you'll hear next is taken from the judge's sentencing report, read by an actor. It describes Vicious as "a deeply troubled young person who is at very high risk to reoffend, who takes significant sadistic delight in the discomfort he causes his victims."

• 12:20Speaker 05

  Almost all of your primary victims were young women. Despite your attempts to explain this away, there appeared to be a misogynistic attitude underlying your selection of victims. The motivation for these crimes appeared to be, primarily, pleasure taken from the distress of others. You demonstrated no remorse and no empathy for your victims. Your reason for entering guilty pleas was the belief that you would receive a shorter jail sentence, not concern for your victims or acknowledgement of your wrongdoing.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  The report also dives into his early life, offering a keyhole view into the home Vicious grew up in. It says that until grade four, when he was around nine or 10, he was a pretty bright, accomplished kid. But, once his father returned home, that all changed.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  Your father has multiple addictions, engaged in a life of crime, and physically abused your mother. Your mother has struggled with depression since before your birth. It is clear that due to her own struggles with mental health issues, she was unable, and continues to be unable, to be an effective parent for you.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Court psychologists theorize that this experience with his mother is possibly why Vicious focuses his attacks on women, which makes my eye twitch a little. Even though their own report states that a lot of his issues began when his violent father returned home. Is it really so impossible that a son might continue a cycle of abuse that his own father taught him, with new and improved weapons forged in the digital age? Vicious' mother speaks about him to reporters outside the court, saying that she and his brother miss having him home. He's been locked up in juvenile detention since his arrest back in December of 2014.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  She says, "This is not how I raised him to be, to take revenge out on women." She also says she doesn't recognize the sadistic qualities outlined in the report, and that he was more inward and depressed, and otherwise is a wonderful boy. I'm not sure if his mother really believes this, or just wants to. Maybe so that she and his father don't have to face their failings in recognizing or influencing what their son has become. Or maybe she's speaking from a place of fear. Either way, she's still a target of her own son's humiliation, as I've seen by digging

• 15:00Speaker 01

  into some of Vicious' posts online. One of his tweets is portrayed as an imaginary back and forth between them both.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  Mom, clean your room. Me. Are you going to send me news? Mom. No. Me. Then you just answered your own question.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  There's another post I found, this time by a Reddit user. They allege that they watched Vicious on stream often, and would overhear multiple interactions between Vicious and his mother. The most memorable being when his mother came in to offer Vicious a Pepsi. He allegedly screamed at her.

• 15:37Speaker 06

  Do you want to get raped? Go to the store and get me some fucking ginger ale.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  The post said that she did go to the store in the end. In her sentencing report, the judge lists what 25 different victims went through at the hands of Vicious. Although, from our reporting, we know that the total number of people he targeted is much higher than that. For page after page, it goes on, listing in detail all the ways he terrorized them and their families. The images he extorted, the threats he made, the information he doxed, and the swattings he called in.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  At the end, the judge has a message, just for Vicious.

• 16:19Speaker 05

  While you may think that you enjoyed greater success in the online world, that success was an illusion. Your computer skills have been focused on antisocial applications that will lead you only to a lifetime in prison. Only being detained in custody has stopped you. You have indicated that your aspirations are limited to living alone in a small apartment, working in some kind of computer-based job, and ordering in pizza. That is the life of a loser.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  On the 9th of July, 2015, Vicious is sentenced to 16 months in a juvenile detention center.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  16 months for that? I mean, that's actually pretty good for something like that, being a juvenile. You would hope that that would be a learning experience for him.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Sergeant Ben Finley is kind of a changed man after this case. He's just taken the ultimate online crash course. He's unrecognizable from the cop who once said, "What the hell is a Google?"

• 17:32Speaker 01

  In 2016, Ben leaves Johns Creek Police Department and starts working for Forsyth County Sheriff's Office. With all of his experience in dealing with such a prolific digital criminal, he ends up taking a role as high-tech Crime Unit Commander.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  But the new job takes Ben into some dark places.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  I was responsible for our computer forensic units, and I had our Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which basically deals with all types of child sex abuse material.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Ben and his team have to review all the evidence they find.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Oh, it's terrible. It's absolutely freaking one of the most horrific things I've ever done in my job. I tell people all the time, I said, I don't even know how to tell you about it. I don't want to cloud your mind with it because I wish to God I'd never had to see it or dealt with it because I don't want it in my mind, but unfortunately it's there.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Ben's been a cop for over 20 years at this point. The work he's doing as high-tech crime commander is vital, but it's grinding him down.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  It's like anything else. You try to compartmentalize it and you stick it somewhere and you just don't think about it. The unfortunate part is the longer you do this job, you can only put so much stuff in that bucket before that bucket gets full.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  It's September 2018. Ben's still working for the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, but his bucket is getting dangerously full and something is about to make it spill over.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  That day was just a normal work day. This particular incident happened at like 11 something PM that night. I'd got an alert on my phone that, hey, we'd had a shooting at this location. Multiple shots had been fired. Guys barricaded themselves.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Ben arrives at the scene. Cops are stationed all around the suspect's house who's standing in his front yard.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  He's holding two guns. I think he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs, which he wasn't thinking in his right mind. Basically, he was walking all over the place. He'd be over on the left side, be over on the right side of the yard, come down to the front side by the road. I mean, he was just roaming all over the place. Our guys were doing everything we could to try to talk him out of any of this stuff. He figures out he can hear our negotiator talking to him.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  You can see him like looking and trying to figure out where he's at, kind of like vectoring in on his location. And he starts walking closer and closer. And as he gets like what we deemed way too close, one of our guys lit him up with a flashlight just so everybody could see him. And as soon as he did that, he raised his shotgun up.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  With a gun aimed at them and seemingly no way of de-escalating the situation, the cops are forced to take action.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  He just happened to be right in front of me and several of us shot him all at the same time.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  I was just like standing, I'm like, I was in a frickin' bed not an hour ago and now I'm standing out here over the top of a dude in his yard, dead. I think a lot of that just kind of got to the point where it just, I don't know. All of it kind of rolled up on me at one time and I said, you know, I'm done.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  After serving more than two decades in the police, Ben decides to retire. He recently got married. Now he focuses on being there for his family, including of course, his new wife. That and taking as many long road trips on his motorcycle as he can. He's happy and he's moved on, but he suspects that Vicious hasn't.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  I doubt very seriously if there's been any improvement in him. He's a psychopath and he loved to see the pain and agony of other people and he thrived off of it. He lived daily for it.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it looks like Ben was right. It's around March 2016. Vicious has been released from prison. Esther, who was swatted by Vicious, is nearly 18. She's spent these past months trying to put Vicious out of her mind and trying to continue building up her streaming career.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  She's at home on her computer

• 22:35Speaker 01

  when she gets a message.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  Hey, remember me?

• 23:00Speaker 07

  At first, it's just like, cut reaction, terrified.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Staring at the screen, Esther feels like she's traveled back in time, that she's right back there with Vicious hovering over her.

• 23:16Speaker 07

  Like, taunting. Your heart drops, horrified. I didn't know he could get in trouble for contacting me afterwards.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Vicious was given a no-contact order for his victims, including Esther. Though, here he is, fresh out of juvie and seemingly right back to his old tricks. Esther can't face going through this again.

• 23:38Speaker 07

  I was just down at that point, so shut down and just trying to keep my head above water. I'm just gonna click block. That's how I dealt with it.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Last time Esther blocked Vicious, it only made him angrier, made him ramp up the harassment and abuse he was hurling her way.

• 23:58Speaker 07

  Everything was very much like I was a pawn in his game. He might be psychopathic, which I don't mean to use that term lightly, because I don't wanna, you know, run around calling everyone a psychopath. But he doesn't seem to have any regard for anybody else. Everybody's just here for entertainment.

• 24:22Speaker 07

  It's very unsettling that people like that in this world exist.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Esther braces herself for the floodgates to open again, but they don't.

• 24:36Speaker 07

  Never heard from him again. That's the only time.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Esther must spend the next few months looking back over her shoulder, just in case. But she's determined to build up her streaming career. She doesn't want to let Vicious win by pushing her away from gaming. It's still her lifeline. Esther eventually tells her mom Grace that she wants to quit school and focus on streaming full-time, which Grace is not exactly thrilled about.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I was so stunned by that because she was almost through her junior year. All she had to do was get through senior year. We could do this. We could do this.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  But Esther just doesn't have any more to give. She's been struggling with anxiety for months, and school is only making it worse.

• 25:22Speaker 07

  I can't go there. I can't focus. I'm just crying all the time. Just please, don't make me go to school. I can't do it.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  It really took me some time to wrap my head around that because I had to let go of this idea that school equals success. Like, how are you going to make money? How are you going to support yourself? How is this going to be a thing?

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Esther agrees to get a job at a clothing store to make ends meet while she works on her streaming channel.

• 25:51Speaker 07

  My channel starts doing really well, and then a few months later, it gets to the point where my streaming is making more money than my job is.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Esther starts dating someone and moves across the country to live with him. But her boyfriend soon becomes controlling and physically abusive.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Esther is thousands of miles away from her family at this point and disconnected from the support system of her mom Grace.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  That relationship, I think, very much inhibited and changed her ambitions for herself or her trajectory.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  All this time, Esther has been trying to shake off the memory of vicious. But a reminder of how accessible streaming makes her is just around the corner.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  One day, Esther is recording near her house.

• 26:50Speaker 07

  I was recording this surrounding area, like, kind of the main roads. And that was enough for people who watched. They recognized my car. They'd seen me driving around. They saw it in the video. So they rode their bikes around the neighborhood, found my car, and came up to our house. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Thankfully, they were just nice kids that wanted to say hi.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  But this scare, plus what she's experiencing in her relationship, is enough to make Esther start pulling back from streaming and the world. It all just gets too much.

• 27:25Speaker 07

  And I just kind of disappeared for a while.

• 27:31Speaker 07

  My life up until 23, I was just shut down because event after event kept speeding me to where I was like, I can't deal with this. I can't be here. I can't focus. I can't function.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Esther finds the strength to leave her boyfriend. She moves back home with her mom, Grace, and they rediscover the closeness they lost through all the distance and the trauma.

• 28:07Speaker 07

  She's literally the most amazing woman you'll ever meet. She's really a light in the world that I aspire to be like.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  I just truly love who she is as a human being. And I wouldn't trade that for anything, nothing, not even for a millisecond of a millisecond.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Esther's 27 now. She's in a new, very happy and supportive relationship. These days, she's a lot more careful about what she puts online.

• 28:40Speaker 07

  I've pulled back the intensity of it and how public I am. Now I have my job to pay my bills. And then on my days off, I get to do my streaming. I'm content with that. I'm happy with that. Keeping my community small and not going for numbers and not making it about growing number-wise has made it way more intimate and way more special. And that's what I value about streaming. There's no pressure in it, and it's just love.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  When my team and I first reached out to Esther, she was really hesitant to talk to us.

• 29:18Speaker 07

  I think I've been scared to talk about it for a long time and still kind of have that fear. Like, I don't want this guy to come after me again. But I also care way more about other people knowing that this kind of stuff happens and how it happens.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  I'm extremely grateful to Esther, her mother Grace, and every person that was brave enough to share what they've been through.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  But Esther is not the only person who claims Vicious contacted them after coming out of prison. At least two other victims also claim he tried to contact them again, too.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  It looks to me like his time in prison hasn't made him change his ways. So I need to find out exactly what Vicious has been up to since his release and how much of a danger he still might be.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  Observe: The North American Dad. 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, "Dang, that's a good offer." The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him "boss." He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  One day last year, police entered a mansion in LA County and discovered the couple that live there had almost two dozen children. Nearly every one of them born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  I'm Eva Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  I want to find out exactly what Vicious has been doing since getting out of juvenile detention about a decade ago. So I've asked my producer, who, in a weird coincidence, is also called Lee, to help me comb through court records and social media. The first thing that he basically does around about 18 to 19 years old is he commits a large-scale spam bot attack on a website. He sends 150,000 spam messages. All these different users of this website were getting all these horrible messages, and they were sexist, they were racist, they were anti-Semitic, they were Islamophobic, they were homophobic, they were kind of just every variation of offensive that you could do. And how long since the time he was released did that occur?

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Like, how much time had he been out before he was back to these tricks again? It seems like less than a year. Wow. Yeah. And so then we thought the best thing to look at would be to just continue looking at his court appearances, and he's had a few over the years. He's got a lot of traffic violations. In 2023, kind of, I guess, kicks up a gear, and he seems to be involved in this fraud case, where he seems to have defrauded this supermarket using some sort of gift card scheme, which feels like a step down from his time like reigning terror on the internet, and now he's scamming a local supermarket for gift card points. Yeah, I mean, this points, to me, like, someone that's not really able to function in the productive world and is looking to cut corners

• 32:58Speaker 04

  because they have no other way of making money or maybe even feeding themselves.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Obviously, the main thing we want to discover is, could he still be a danger to women?

• 33:14Speaker 04

  A warning that in this next part...

• 33:16Speaker 07

  We discuss allegations of sexual assault.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  This all took place in 2025. It's an assault case. Basically, it appears his ex-girlfriend has accused him of assault. He denies this, but he takes to talking about it on Twitter. He actually posted transcripts from the court case himself.

• 33:35Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  He basically is posting these as a way to try and discredit the girlfriend who's accusing him of assault. But it's interesting to me that what he focuses on is the fact that she was on drugs and she was on alcohol. And that's a reason for her not to be taken seriously.

• 33:51Speaker 07

  As opposed to it being a reason why she can't have a giving consent.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Exactly, yeah. Now, I think the most telling thing that he posted, and he has since deleted this, but it really struck me. He said, "We'd had sex countless times by then, so why would it even matter?" To me, that's such a giveaway because if you were so disgusted by the idea that you were being accused of this kind of assault, why would you say that?

• 34:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 04

  Like, those two thoughts surely can't coexist in the same person, but yet they do.

• 34:24Speaker 07

  We also looked into Vicious's social media accounts. It probably won't surprise you to learn that a lot of his posts repeatedly talk about how much he still hates women. But he also uses these accounts to broadcast, apparently, his every thought. His Twitter account is like a diary.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  He's talking about being depressed, how sad he is, you know, he hates his life, he hates existing. So it does appear that the actions and the path that he has taken again and again and again has left him extremely lonely. And then one of the final posts I thought would be good to look at, and I just thought this was kind of poetic, honestly, in a way. He said it was going to be his birthday and that no one is going to notice, basically, and that no one will care. And nobody liked, responded to, or interacted with the post. You know, I thought if there is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that's it right there.

• 35:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, he seems dangerous to women and also to himself. I've seen people like this.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  On the internet before, just shouting into the void, whatever rage he wants to expunge into the environment and then following it up with cries for help. When I see someone, like, obviously suffering in public, wailing about his loneliness and his past, I think I do see a person that is in a lot of pain and that is probably longing to be loved. And, you know, maybe I'm naive, but I hope that, you know, he'll grow and change in time, maybe find a purpose in society.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  Throughout this story, there's been so much wasted potential of the streamers like Esther, who had budding lucrative streaming careers robbed from them by Vicious,

• 36:15Speaker 04

  but also of Vicious himself. The judge commented on it in his 2016 sentencing hearing.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  It is clear that you have reasonably sophisticated computer skills that you could use for your own betterment through employment and to provide useful services to others. Instead, you applied those skills to inflict very serious harm on a large number of people.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  I don't believe that someone should be forever judged for the things they did as a teenager. All of us deserve at least one chance to make amends and to make ourselves better.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  But the problem is, I don't think Vicious has changed. I don't think he's exorcised whatever demons from his admittedly very rough childhood that might have set him down the path he took at 16. I don't think he's safe to be around women. And I still don't think he's remorseful for all the streamers he targeted back in 2013 and 2014. I can tell that because, looking at his Twitter feed, there's multiple occasions where he's gleefully referenced his crimes as a teenager. He reposted a graphic listing a bunch of female streamers and added, "This is just a list of girls I've swatted and hacked." In another post, he laughs about a time a woman made a police report on him after he secretly recorded her.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Every now and again, he tweets at one of his old targets, offering an insincere apology, but it's always with a wry smile. Looks to me like someone reliving his glory days.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Ava, the undercover super spy from our last episode, agrees. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe he's still thinking about me 10 years later. Like, why am I living rent-free in this man's mind? I obviously still have anxiety thinking about it and have this fear that he's gonna do something for revenge. It is just so crazy to me that even after all these years, he still has this impact on me. And I think I got off pretty easy in terms of the whole experience. I don't think anything Ava went through at the hands of Vicious was easy, but I get what she means. She wasn't swatted like some of the others. He didn't go in as hard. Though Ava doesn't think it's because Vicious had some pang of conscience with her.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  I think he realized that, like, for me, streaming wasn't as important as he thought it was. Ava was never really that interested in making streaming her career. I think that almost took some power away from him. And then he didn't find it as entertaining or interesting anymore. Ava still streams every now and then, although, like Esther, she's also changed her online habits. I try to be more careful online, be more private, not being in the spotlight, because being in the spotlight comes with a lot of downsides. Downsides like attracting the attention of a depraved misogynist like Vicious. What are you doing with your life, honestly? The people that you tried to ruin, they're all living full, happy, productive lives.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Despite everything he's done and, like, all the horrible things and like, what a terrible person. Than he was back then and probably now. Like, I still believe in the hope of redemption. Why not apply your skills for good? Do it for the betterment of society. Do something better with your life. You need to move on.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  For Natasha, one of Vicious's earliest victims, moving on has been a complicated journey.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  I had gone through a lot. I had faced adversity at every single turn in my career.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Natasha says she's dealt with multiple men harassing her online. A heads up that in the next section, we reference suicide.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  I had just had a lot thrown at me in my life. I felt almost suicidal. I was so depressed. And him coming back into it, I guess was just like a straw that broke the camel's back.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Natasha was one of the victims who claims she was contacted by Vicious after he was released.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  He reached out and he wanted to talk.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Natasha quickly finds herself falling back into the old patterns, trying to appease Vicious right away.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  Like before, I would ask him questions because I was stuck talking to him anyway. I asked him about his time in juvenile. He told me he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and what he went through. And I would try to ask him interesting questions like, that must have been hard on you and your family. I was just trying to like, see if he had any humanity, I guess.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  In 2021, Natasha posted about her experience within the gaming world. She spoke about the impact of dealing with Vicious and others like him.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  I had really prominent streamers and YouTubers that were women as well that reached out to me in my DMs about it.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  While the cops caught up to Vicious, there's an army of trolls like him still targeting women online. Since 2014, countless female streamers have continued to be harassed, some even swatted. Compilation videos of SWAT teams swarming into innocent people's homes reached millions of views. Natasha's post clearly struck a chord.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  It seemed to really resonate and people would link to it to be like, "We're not complaining about we can't take the heat or a couple of jokes here and there." It's like, we are getting targeted harassment that goes beyond the game, that extends into our family being harassed, that extends to our entire life.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Natasha is really touched by the reaction to her post, but it's not enough to erase the memory of the trauma she's been through and all of the opportunities, the streaming career that she's lost.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  I feel resentful that I put so much work and blood, sweat and tears into something and,

• 42:44Speaker 04

  I don't know, it's just, it's mixed feeling for sure.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  One of the biggest challenges I found in telling this story is that we didn't want to play into the attention-seeking behavior that drove Vicious to try and destroy the lives of so many young women. It's the reason we decided not to tell you his real username. It was an attempt by us to try and take back some of the power he tried to steal from Esther, from Ava and from Natasha.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  I was hesitant to talk about it because this isn't the first time people have reached out to try to make this a story. And there were a lot of concerns about, one, redirecting his attention to us, and two, giving him any kind of notoriety. But I decided that it is something that a lot of women experience and I feel like the good could outweigh the bad in this case because bringing light to what we went through and what type of people exist and what you can do to protect yourself, I think is really important.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so what's been happening in your life as you sort of try to move on from this?

• 43:56Speaker 04

  I got married. And I started focusing more on, you know, skills like coding, other ways to support myself. I'm really looking forward to finally setting up my life, starting a family. And now that I have taken a couple of years to heal and completely find myself, I decided to come back to streaming because it is something I really love and I really enjoy. I have a lot of people who are excited for me to come back. They count the days to my return. Right now, they're at 191.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  I'm really happy for Natasha. I want her to recapture the joy that was taken from her, to stream again on her own terms. Because she and all the women like her deserve to claim their rightful spaces in the online community without constantly having to look over their shoulders, always fearful of what or who is lurking beyond.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  But I also know that what should happen and what will happen aren't always the same thing.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  When she does return to streaming, Natasha has to be careful. Because not only is Vicious still out there, with each new generation striding further and deeper into the online shadows, there could be a new, even worse version of him.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  So if you're a parent, ask yourself this.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  What are your children doing online? Who are they actually talking to?

• 45:45Speaker 01

  And if you're in the dark, can you really keep them safe?

• 46:03Speaker 01

  In this episode, we referenced suicide. If you're worried about yourself or a loved one, know that you're not alone. You can reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can call or text and you'll be connected with trained counselors within the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline network. You can also visit 988lifeline.org.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  This is You Are Next, an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. Hosted by me, Lee Alexander. Lee Meyer is our senior producer. Verdi De Cala is our assistant producer. Sandra Schmuelli is our editor. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolfe. For Novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Story development by Nell Gray Andrews, Willard Foxton, and Selena Metta, who is director of development for Novel. Special thanks to Carolyn Shirleven at Miller Korzenick Raymond LLP, and to Ford Collier,

• 47:12Speaker 01

  who performed the woodwind for our theme music. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.