{"id":28476,"date":"2024-10-26T08:27:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-26T12:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=28476"},"modified":"2024-10-26T08:27:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-26T12:27:15","slug":"catfish-killer-alexander-mccartney-jailed-for-minimum-of-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2024\/10\/26\/catfish-killer-alexander-mccartney-jailed-for-minimum-of-20-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Catfish killer Alexander McCartney jailed for minimum of 20 years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was a phone call from a 13-year-old girl in Scotland in 2019 that eventually led to the capture of a social media predator described as one of the world’s most prolific child sex abusers.<\/b><\/p>\n

Alexander McCartney from Northern Ireland pretended to be a teenage girl to befriend, then abuse and blackmail children around the world, often sharing images with other paedophiles.<\/p>\n

Some of the children were as young as four. Some had never told anyone what they had been through – until police knocked on their door.<\/p>\n

McCartney gradually admitted 185 charges including manslaughter\u00a0after a 12-year-old girl he was abusing took her own life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He has been jailed for a minimum of 20 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What did police do?<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Following contact from police in Scotland, an urgent investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) swung into operation in March 2019.<\/p>\n

Detectives identified the home address of Alexander McCartney, arrested and interviewed him.<\/p>\n

Sixty-four of McCartney\u2019s devices were seized at his home in the rural Lissummon Road area outside Newry in four separate raids.<\/p>\n

Those devices held hundreds of thousands of indecent photos and videos of underage girls performing sexual acts while being blackmailed.<\/p>\n

McCartney made and used many fake accounts on online platforms, mainly Snapchat, to entrap and manipulate them.<\/p>\n

PSNI Det Ch Supt Eamonn Corrigan said McCartney had been “offending on an industrial scale”.<\/p>\n

He groomed victims into thinking they were talking online to a girl of a similar age, before encouraging them to send indecent images or engage in sexual activity via webcam or a mobile phone.<\/p>\n

McCartney used the same pattern every time, the detective said, adding: “He threatened to share these images online for the pleasure of other paedophiles and use them to further abuse and harass the already terrified and exploited children.”<\/p>\n

In one incident, it took McCartney just nine minutes to groom, sexually abuse and blackmail a girl of only 12 years of age.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Cimarron<\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n
Cimarron Thomas was found by her nine-year-old sister after she had shot herself while online with McCartney (Image:\u00a0 <\/span>Dale Thomas)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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As time went on, it became clear that McCartney’s depravity spanned not just across the UK, but across the world. The abuse included involving other people, family pets and objects.<\/p>\n

The PSNI worked with colleagues in the United States Department of Homeland Security, the Public Prosecution Service and National Crime Agency, and victims were located in America, New Zealand and at least 28 other countries.<\/p>\n

Many of these children were only identified through the evidence detectives located on McCartney\u2019s devices.<\/p>\n

According to the police, he “built a paedophile enterprise” and had “stolen childhoods” of his victims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Prosecutors hear about a catfisher<\/span><\/h2>\n
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In the spring of 2019, police called Catherine Kierans, acting head of the Public Prosecution Service\u2019s serious crime unit.<\/p>\n

They said something “big was unfolding… it involved catfishing”.<\/p>\n

Catfishing is where a person creates a false identity to gain the trust of people and exploit them.<\/p>\n

Ms Kierans said little girls “an average age of 10-12 years old [were] being threatened in the most depraved way.”<\/p>\n

She said some of the children who had been exploited had previously opened up about their abuse, others had remained silent.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the children had raised the alarm, which helped police to actually identify him in the first place.<\/p>\n

“But some of the children, until police knocked the door, they had never told anyone what they’d been through.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Ms Kierans, McCartney offended “around the clock”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Manslaughter – a precedent<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Cimarron<\/picture><\/span><\/div>
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Cimarron Thomas was just 12-years-old when she died (Image: Family handout)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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 <\/p>\n

As the investigation spread across the globe, Ms Kierans said prosecutors realised McCartney had been “very assiduous about saving the images”.<\/p>\n

“He would also save the map on Snapchat of where the child was in some cases, and that then enabled police to locate the children.\u201d<\/p>\n

His arraignment in 2021 was delayed as police discovered the suicide of a little girl in West Virginia, USA.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning, the level of abuse was so horrific that we were fearful that when these children were identified, would they be okay?\u201d Ms Kierans said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, our worst fears were realised when we discovered, some way in, that one of the little girls had taken her own life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking closely with the American authorities, we were able to prove that this child took her own life during the abuse, when she was still online with McCartney.<\/p>\n

“At that point, the death of the child was so intrinsically linked to the abuse that we felt we had a strong case to say that he killed her.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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