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Millions of people had been viewing the murder live, cheering the killer on, encouraging him to move to cutting the body into pieces, writing in with ghastly suggestions that filled up social media screens in seconds.
Some viewers had probably stumbled onto it at an early stage, but others had clearly watched the entire livestream from its commencement, which was prior to any action at all, from the time the victim and murderer were walking on the road to the house.
There was never going to be any doubt that those who had seen the entire murder would have recorded it all, and they had. There could also be no doubt that they would later upload it for the world to see, and they did.
Blood and gore do not affect me, and, as commotion in the Internet had alerted me to something extremely unusual going on, I had got in early enough to view almost the entire murder episode as it unfolded. Human violence disturbs me at a humane/inhumane level, and the right and wrong thing to do stuff, but I do not feel any nausea when watching.
Readers might need to have a strong stomach to go through the next bit, as what follows is my description of the recorded murder, as released later, by those who compiled it from different sources. Of course, because it is all available on YouTube and numerous websites, I expect most readers to have already seen it all.
The final version, as edited and kept online on numerous streaming sites, commences with a view from a camera, showing both victim and murderer walking at about a hundred feet distance from each other, the unaware victim in front, the killer behind. This is, in fact, the view from a mobile phone in the killer’s hand, with which, in a clip that lasts about a minute, he shows his victim walking to the house where he will be killed.
A CCTV view is interpolated in the compilation versions, revealing that the soon-to-be murderer is holding the broadcasting mobile phone in his right hand, with the camera unerringly focused on the victim, although the hand with the camera is dangling by his side, and he is not looking at the picture on the screen. Some people will later remark on this.
It is a quiet residential side street in Washington DC, although the location and the city itself are not known at the start of the murder episode. The unaware victim, viewed from behind, appears to be an absolutely regular middle-aged man, slightly overweight, and a couple of inches under 6-feet.
Police will later confirm the age of the victim to be exactly 50. The murderer, walking behind, will turn out to be a much younger man, not much past his teens. It is midday, and the purely residential street is absolutely deserted.
The victim walks in through the gate of the private property in which the action is to take place. This typical little residential unit is later confirmed to be the victim’s permanent residence, owned by him.
CCTV shows him going in through the gate, follows him as he takes a dozen steps on a red brick pathway through a little garden, and cuts out when he enters the house. There is no more coverage of him for a while, with the compilation switching to CCTV view of the rather unimpressive young murderer continuing to walk to the house.
To the human eye, it passes as just a normal walk, but I notice that he has a recurring oddity in the walk, more like a nervous tic really, in which he tends to hesitate his left leg in mid step, like stopping its forward swing in the air, prior to moving it on and completing the remainder of the step.
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Each such mid-air hesitation leads to a marginal inward drift of the left foot, making him wander fractionally off the straight-and-narrow, which is something he corrects every other step.
Barring the phone, he is empty-handed, but stops at the unlocked gate to pick up a loose paving stone, a reddish brick in the interlock pathway leading to the wide-open front door of the house.
Not bothering to knock, call out, or ring the doorbell, he walks in, going out of view of the CCTV camera on the road.
His phone camera is still broadcasting, and it shows him heading straight to a laptop on a side table, to flip it open and switch it on, and soon another visual perspective becomes available through the camera in it.
To ensure that this is a very well documented killing, the intruder walks to a sideboard opposite the laptop, and stands his phone with great care on it, adjusting the positioning to ensure that the camera view, when combined with the view from the inbuilt camera on the laptop, gives pretty much total coverage of the murder setting.
Satisfied with all the viewing angles, he again picks up the paving stone he has temporarily placed on a tabletop, and from that point on, the live show of the actual killing commences.
Next, almost without a pause in events, the victim is seen coming out of the kitchen, sipping at an open can of Budweiser. “Who the heck are you?” he aggressively demands, and waves a hand to order the intruder out.
But the intruding man makes no reply, instead showing, without any doubt, that he has entered expressly to kill the resident. He rushes immediately at him and attempts to hit him on the head with the paving brick.
The startled resident reacts well, instinctively blocking the arm, and a brief fight ensues, in which he drops the Budweiser can, and the intruder loses his grip on the brick. Thereafter, as the two of them grapple silently, it becomes a wrestling match for a while. This part is a contest of strength and endurance, as they both fall to the floor and struggle, each one trying to get on top. For a brief period, the resident has the upper hand, but the relentless effort causes his muscles to fail him, and the intruder now succeeds in rolling him over, to get on top and sit on his chest.
At this point, the intruder nods his head, seemingly remembering an instruction, and stretches an arm out to pick up the paving brick, which the squirming movements of their desperate struggle has brought back into reach.
The fight ends immediately thereafter, as he smashes the brick down on the resident man’s forehead, breaking skin and bone, starting the blood leaking, and rendering him almost completely unconscious.
Next, the aggressor raises his hand to bring the stone down a second time on the head, obviously to finish the victim off, but aborts halfway, again seeming to remember an instruction. Forensic experts, who have studied the clip and later released the consensus analysis, are agreed that the murder has not yet been committed, and that the victim, though extremely severely injured, is still alive.
The murderer now gets up and walks into the kitchen, disappearing from view for about half a minute. He reappears with a carving knife in his hand, and reseats himself on the chest of the motionless victim.
Placing the blade on the unconscious man’s throat, he initiates beheading him, by first making a light cut and then proceeding to slice through the throat, the victim’s blood spurting onto his hands, as he carves until blade meets bone.
He now thinks of pressing down and working at severing the head, but suddenly abandons the continuation of the murder as a carving project. Placing the knife on the floor, he stands and manipulates the body, to turn it over and get it face down.
Thereafter, sitting on the victim’s back, the murderer lifts the head up to show the victim’s gaping throat to the phone camera, and takes hold of the carving knife again. Carefully placing the blade in line with the part of the throat he has cut through, he adjusts it to get the alignment right, and then, picking up the brick, whacks it down onto the back of the blade, sending the carving knife clean through the bone, and separating the head from the body.
Next, taking the dripping head by the hair, he gets to his feet to step out of the open door, where he first stands leaning against its frame, holding his mobile phone in one hand, its camera now delivering an irrelevant view, and the head in his other hand, lifting it up, face forward, for the CCTV camera on the street pole.
