If you’re a true crime fan, you’ve likely heard stories of ordinary people using their own research or social media skills to help crack real-life cases. Volunteer genealogists have used family trees to give names to previously unidentified victims. Facebook posts of crime videos have help to identify suspects. If you’ve watched the Netflix series Don’t F**k With Cats, you saw how Deanna Thompson and John Green spent 16 hours searching for certain types of doorknobs and walking down Google Earth streets to help hunt down a killer. The internet has given those of us passionate about justice the ability to use our own unique skills to pitch in.
But it’s also given birth to trolls. Trolls that threaten the very fiber of the criminal justice system and the notion that all people are “innocent until proven guilty.” The internet has shed a light on just how ugly some people can be when they hide behind their computer screen lobbing threats at people they have never met. This mentality is this generation’s form of getting out their pitchforks and chasing down the so-called monster.
Wednesday evening an Amber Alert popped up on my phone. Soon several of the true crime Facebook groups that I’m a part of were buzzing with questions about the adorable little girl that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations was asking people to be on the lookout for. Evelyn Boswell was last seen on December 26, 2019, but she wasn’t reported missing until February 18, 2020 - nearly two months later.
Evelyn Boswell - Source: TBI
Everyone wanted to know why there was a delay in reporting her missing. Some people offered their thoughts and prayers that she would be found safe. And then the comments took a turn. The mother was labeled “another Casey Anthony.” People suspected that the mother must be on drugs or did something sinister with her baby. Speculation and name calling turned in to a social media call to arms when group members tracked down the mother’s personal Facebook page.
Being curious, I followed the link. Hundreds of comments appeared on the mother’s Facebook profile accusing her of murdering her baby. People posted screenshots of text conversations with people that know this woman personally. Another posted a picture of the license plate on her car, insinuating that local people should hunt her down. Threats of harm were interspersed with theories on who else could be involved.
Now, I agree that the situation sounds very suspicious, and I’ve done my own personal digging to see what I could find in social media profiles, etc. But I know that I’m not law enforcement, and my gut feeling does not mean I know the true about what happened in this situation. I think about the possibility that this mother really had nothing to do with it, and is not only panicking about what may have happened to her daughter, but is now dealing with hate, anger, and threats from people she has never met.
If someone is arrested in the future, and that person ends up being someone the people of the internet suspected, that still doesn’t change the fact that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Everyone should get a fair trial. We are no longer mobs with pitchforks taking justice into our own hands. We have evolved as a society more than that.
As someone who considers themselves a citizen detective, these trolls give us a bad name. We have to be better than that. We cannot meet supposed evil with more evil and hate. Let us focus on finding answers for Evelyn Boswell and the others like her, and less on tearing one another down.
Source: TBI
If you have seen Evelyn, please call the Sullivan County Sheriff's Office at 423-279-7330 or the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND.
