My heart goes out to all families involved with this, for lack of better words, heinous act. Matthew Pyke and girlfriend, Joanna Witton, established their own gaming website [dedicated to Advanced Wars] only to then be harassed by a user, David Heiss. After several harassing messages [most of which directed at Pyke’s Girlfriend Joanna] and two of three plane trips, David Heiss is currently on trial for the murder of Matthew Pyke. Matthew Pyke died from 86 stab wounds. To alert the police, Pyke spelled out the first three letters of the accused last name.
CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk reports:
Heiss now stands accused of murdering Pyke, a computer science student at Nottingham Trent University, after making several surprise trips from Germany to visit Pyke and his girlfriend and allegedly becoming obsessed with Witton.
As it stands now, online bullying is an almost accepted evil. However,online stalking can be the ugliest cousin ofbullying. In the case of Matthew Pyke, he decided to settle a dispute with David Heiss after Heiss had made two surprise visits to the couple’s Nottingham home. Prior to this falling out,the couple accommodated Heiss. Allowing Heiss to sleep attheir home because he did not want to stay at a hotel.
Making matters slightly stranger, several messages were exchanged between David Heiss and Joanna Witton. Within these messages were all the trappings of a man, a deranged man, becoming obsessed after being repeatedly shot down.
TimesOnline.com’s Hannah Fletcher reports:
Mr Smith told the jury that Mr Heiss had contacted Miss Witton in March last year telling her that he had a crush on her. Mr Heiss had been looking at photographs of her on Facebook, the social networking website. Despite Miss Witton’s insistence that she was in a relationship, the messages from Mr Heiss became increasingly bizarre and intimate, the court heard. On May 3 Mr Heiss professed his love for her and on June 21 he flew over to make the first of two surprise visits to her and Mr Pyke.
Miss Witton tried to book him into a hotel but he insisted on sleeping at the end of the couple’s bed. When he returned to Germany Mr Pyke contacted him, writing: “I hate you for ever laying eyes on the girl I have dedicated my life to. I hate you for your desperation.
It should be noted, that with all of these encounters [both physical and online] David Heiss never actually met Joanna Witton. He harrassed her for months and spoke violently about Pyke to other users before the murder took place. If anything should be taken from this ,it should be that no matter how comfortable you feel with someone on the internet, you must always put in perspective that you met them on the internet. Be safe. Although this is an extreme case of what could go wrong [and I am sure our local media has already had a small field day with this] if an argument escalates online. This can be prevented!
A significant amount of time passed [six months] from when David Heiss was showing obsessive and troubling behavior online, even to the point of him flying 16 hours from Limburg, Germany to Brighton in the United Kingdom twice! Maybe, it is because of this current technological age, where bullying a person and harassment of women is so commonplace; witnesses as well as the victims were slow to react and alert the proper authorities.
To be fair this is not as cut and dry as it may seem. There is question if the knife was David Heiss’ or Matthew Pyke’s. If the knife was Pyke’s there is a question of self-defense [but with someone being stabbed 86 times, how much question could their be?], if it was not Pyke’s then this case is very cut and dry and Heiss will more than likely be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Source: CNET
Source: TimesOnline.com
Source: DailyMail UK
Story Compliments from Me and The Start Screen