Little is known about the relationship between Hammond and Vogel but it is clear that the two men met at UC–Irvine, where they were roommates. Students from that era say the two men may have crossed paths in an informal and unsanctioned group at the school that was involved in digital bullying of female students.
“It was a forerunner of these incel groups you are seeing today,” said a school official who requested anonymity. “They did all kinds of things to female students: hacked their social media, spread lies and rumors. Some girls left school because of what they did to them. But they always hid their trail. No one could prove anything.”
Incels are primarily men who identify themselves as involuntarily celibate and on Internet forums blame and disparage women for their romantic problems. In recent years there has been an uptick of crimes against women attributed to incels. The FBI has listed the groups as a growing concern.
The Dirty4 website appeared to be fueled by similar attitudes and sentiments, Metz said.
“These guys were women-haters and took it to an extreme limit,” he said. “And now seven or eight women are dead and another will never walk again. It’s horrible.”
Meanwhile, authorities fear that the hit-and-run killing of Vogel yesterday may indicate that the Shrike is changing his methods, which could make him more difficult to track.
“He knows we are on to him and the best way to avoid the net closing in on him is to either stop the killing or change his routine,” Metz said. “Unfortunately, this guy has a taste for killing and I don’t see him stopping. We are doing our very best to identify him and take him down.”
Jack
41
One hundred days after our first story was posted, the Shrike had still not been identified or captured. In the course of that time Emily Atwater and I wrote thirty-two more stories, staying with the investigation and running out in front of the rest of the media that descended like locusts after our first dispatch. Myron Levin negotiated an exclusive partnership with the Los Angeles Times and most of our stories were carried on the front page above the fold. We covered the expanding investigation and the confirmation of two other victims. We posted a full take on William Orton and the rape case he beat. We wrote a piece about Gwyneth Rice and later covered a fundraiser to help meet her medical expenses. We even wrote stories that captured the sickening online deification of the Shrike by incel groups who celebrated what he had done to his female victims.
Myron Levin’s concern about losing half his staff came true, but for unexpected reasons. With the Shrike still out there somewhere, Emily grew too fearful that we would become his next targets. As the story started to lose oxygen because of the lack of developments, she decided to leave FairWarning. We had gotten offers for a book and a podcast. We decided she would take the book deal and I would record the podcast. She moved back to England to an obscure location that even I wasn’t privy to. She maintained that it was better that way because the secrecy meant that I could not be forced to reveal her location to anyone. We communicated almost every day and I emailed her the raw reporting for the final stories she would write under our names.
The one-hundred-day mark of the story was also the end point for me at FairWarning. I had given notice and determined that whatever updates came about I could report on the podcast. It was a new form of journalism and I enjoyed going into a sound booth and telling, rather than writing, the story.
I called it Murder Beat.
Myron was not too upset about having to replace us. He now had a whole drawer full of résumés from journalists who wanted to work for him. The Shrike had put FairWarning into the public eye big-time. Newspapers, websites, and TV news programs across the world had to give us credit for breaking the story. I made guest appearances on CNN, Good Morning America, and The View. 60 Minutes followed our reporting, and the Washington Post profiled Emily and me and even likened our occasionally combative partnership to that of the greatest journalism tag team in history: Woodward and Bernstein.
Readership was also up at FairWarning and not just on the days we posted a Shrike story. One hundred days out, we were starting to see an uptick in donations, too. Myron wasn’t on the phone so much cajoling potential supporters. All was well at FairWarning.
The last story Emily and I wrote was one of the more fulfilling of the thirty-two. It was about the arrest of William Orton for sexual assault. Our stories on Marshall Hammond and Roger Vogel had spurred authorities in Orange County to reopen the investigation of the allegations that Orton had drugged and raped his one-time student. They determined that Hammond had taken the DNA sample submitted by Orton to the sheriff’s lab and replaced it with an unknown sample, thereby creating the finding of No match to the swabs in the rape kit. Under the new investigation, another sample was taken from Orton and compared to the material in the rape kit. It was a match and Orton was arrested and charged.
Most of the time, journalism is simply an exercise in reporting on situations and occurrences of public interest. It is rare that it leads to the toppling of a corrupt politician, a change in the law, or the arrest of a rapist. When that does happen, the satisfaction is beyond measure. Our stories on the Shrike got a warning out to the public and may have saved lives. They also put a rapist in jail. I was proud of what we had accomplished and proud to call myself a journalist in a time when the profession was constantly under attack.
After shaking Myron’s hand and leaving the office for the last time, I went to the bar at Mistral to meet Rachel and celebrate the end of one chapter in my life and the start of another. That was the plan but it didn’t work out that way. For one-hundred days I had carried a question inside that I could no longer contain.
Rachel was already at the bar, sitting at the far left end where it curved to the back wall and there were two seats we always tried to occupy. The spot gave us privacy and a view of the bar and the restaurant at the same time. There was a couple sitting in the center of the long side and a man by himself at the end opposite Rachel. As with most nights, business started slow and then picked up later on.
The French Impressionist was working this night. That was what Rachel had started privately calling Elle, the bartender with the phony French accent. I signaled her over, ordered a martini, and was soon clinking glasses with Rachel.
“To new things,” Rachel said.
“Sláinte,” I said.
“Oh, so now we have an Irish poet to go with the French Impressionist?”
“Aye, a deadline poet. Formerly, I guess. Now a podcast poet.”
My Irish accent wasn’t cutting it, so I dropped it and drank half the martini. Liquid courage for the big question I had to ask.
“I think Myron might have had a tear in his eye when I said goodbye today,” I said.
“Ah, I’ll miss Myron,” Rachel said.
“We’ll see him again, and he agreed to come on the podcast to give updates on the Shrike stuff. It’ll plug the website.”
“That’s good.”
I finished my martini and Elle was quick with another. Rachel and I small-talked while I worked the level down on it. I noticed she had not re-upped her own drink and had even ordered a glass of water. She kept looking down the bar at the man sitting alone at the other end.