When murder hits the blogosphere

While the news may not have a long shelf life, these online profiles do. New messages from friends still appear on Maria's MySpace page every so often. So do spam ads from the clubs she used to frequent.

On Taylor's profile, friends relayed condolence letters strangers had sent them. Several MySpace tributes to Taylor's memory have been created. Since returning from Camp Refuge, Zach erased his old blog and the comments from strangers, but still updates readers of his situation. "I miss my old life," he wrote in a recent entry.

Sometimes a MySpace profile is created after a news story takes place. Hoax profiles are often created for celebrities. The Olsen twins, for example, have numerous entries pretending to be them on several different networking sites.

Kara and David's profiles were not hoaxes, however, and have in fact drawn the interest of the authorities investigating the case.

What does a MySpace profile reveal? And what, if anything, could parents do if they knew about them earlier? If the parents had been aware of the numerous drug references present in Mellie and Maria's profiles, could they have provided them counseling before it was too late?

Would Kara's parents have talked to their daughter earlier if they'd known she was representing herself online as a 17-year-old who likes to party? Would they have been more aware of David's capacity for violence if they had seen the pictures on his blog?

Hindsight is 20/20. What might look obvious to someone looking back on a profile now may have seemed innocuous before. But clearly, what MySpace and other social networking sites like it do provide are windows into the private and complex mind of a teenager. The pages are not always frivolous fun — they may also be a cry for help.

On MySpace, users choose their own web page title which attracts people to their profiles, often showing off who they are and how they feel. Kara's headline is eerily ironic and utterly familiar, to anyone who knows the frustrations of feeling like an overprotected teenager.

Kara Borden's headline was "meant to live."

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Adam Hunter is a freelance writer living in New York. This article was first published on his blog, http://sokpuppet.blogspot.com.

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