Over the summer, I spent months investigating a triple-homicide in Tacoma, Washington. The results are in this month's Wired magazine; it's my first article as a contributing editor there.
The story centers around Daniel Varo, one of three friends shot in the head by a buddy from the MySpace online social network. When Varo died, his far-flung collection of relatives and friends gathered on MySpace, to console each other, to plan his memorial, and to vent their rage over his murder. People who had never met face-to-face suddenly became the most trusted of confidants. Along the way, they discovered that Varo didn't completely disappear when he died. Varo had had spent so much time online that scraps of his life lingered on the Web -- a ghost in the networked machines.
I'm really proud of the piece. I hope you'll give it a read.
And if you want to dive further into Varo's story, you can check out court documents, the killer's now-deleted MySpace pages, and a reporter's notebook.
Lastly, think about giving some money to Varo's memorial fund. You can make donations through PayPal to danielvaromemorialaccount@yahoo.com. Finish the story, and you'll see why this matters.
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