The Tragic Grooming & Murder Of Breck Bednar

essex place emergency hi there um i need police and a forensics team to my address please what's happened my friend and i got into an altercation and i'm the only one who came out alive are you telling me you've killed somebody yes hey everyone arya here and as someone who grew up in the very thick of the digital age i am fascinated with the internet and how it's changed the way we live in particular i'm very interested in the dark side of the internet and how it's evolved crime into far more horrific and nefarious places than we had probably ever thought possible so with you all i would love to explore some crimes that involved the internet and pose the question are the worst monsters no longer hiding in the dark but out here in the light today's case is a particularly heartbreaking one as it deals with the murder of breck bedner a case that made international headlines when he was murdered by an online friend let's begin caterham surrey a small town about an hour's drive from london this is the town where fourteen-year-old breck bedner lived with his mother lauren lafave and his three younger siblings a set of triplets as a kid brick had always loved tinkering around and fixing things with his friends he was in the lego gang a small group that would run around with toy rockets and guns embarking on those childhood adventures many of us had experienced ourselves breck also excelled in school being an a student and according to his mother he never even swore yelled or slammed the door it was at age 14 that brick began actively gaming after being invited into an online gaming group described as a virtual clubhouse by a friend from school breck's mother lauren reported that while online with the group his bedroom door was always open so she could hear everything the kids would say online and she never heard anything sinister but one thing struck lauren as being particularly odd the thing that was really odd was that the ringmaster of the server breck and his friends played on was someone unknown to the rest of the group a young man by the name of louis danes this was striking because brick knew all of the other players in real life but nobody knew louis danes i want to pause here because i want to make it clear that my intent isn't to say that online gaming is bad or that having online friends is bad i mean me myself i love online gaming and honestly some of my oldest and closest friends are friends i've made online and i've actually honestly met some of them and honestly they all turned out great well except for one he got like a drunken meltdown in public it was very embarrassing but apart from that the point of a story like this is that it's a cautionary tale but let's continue lewis daines claimed to be a 17 year old computer engineer who ran a multi-million pound company he claimed to sometimes be located in new york and working for the us government at other times he claimed to be in dubai or syria in lauren's own words to breck who still had his baby teeth and saw no evil in the world dane seemed very cool very exciting slowly breck began communicating a lot more with danes on both social media and the popular gaming conference call software teamspeak around this time lauren began to notice that whenever she walked into breck's room while he was gaming he'd say my mom's come in and luis would start chatting her up lauren would often ask louis why he wasn't off doing something with his friends on a friday night but lewis would claim he was just too tired these excuses did little to dissuade lauren's growing worries although even lauren wouldn't realize just how justified she was in her concern until it was too late lewis's influence on breck began to become very apparent to lauren who said that she would get a lot of lewis says such as lewis says i don't need to finish school as he can get me a microsoft apprenticeship when i turn 16. or lewis says i don't drink or smoke and do well in school i should be allowed to game as long as i want after a while the once studious brex stopped doing homework or chores and it was increasingly difficult to get him offline lauren said that she would be telling breck to get offline and he'd literally have dane's voice in his earphones telling him not to listen both of breck's parents even offered to take him to meet lewis in real life but lewis continually claimed to be too busy with quote important work frustrated lauren would start asking around for help about her situation but she be met with responses like oh that's that's what boys do or my son was a gamer he grew out of it lauren rightfully wouldn't accept any of these answers and in december of 2013 she called the police when looking into lewis danes the information the police found on him validated every fear lauren had the police learned that lewis danes was the troubled child of divorced parents who was taken in by his grandmother and local authorities after they had abandoned him they also discovered that at the time lewis was 18 years old unemployed and living by himself in an essex flat where he bought server space and used it to game with teenage boys the police would also discover that although never charged in 2011 lewis was accused of possessing indecent images and raping a 15 year old boy but the truth the sad truth is that the police didn't actually find any of this information back then because the police actually ignored lauren and did not in fact look into lewis dain's background according to lauren when calling the police to share her fears the woman on the phone simply asked if brett could just play on another website or if lauren herself could just ask louis not to contact brick again this is what makes the story very frustrating for me because while this is a cautionary tale lauren didn't even need a cautionary tale to recognize you know warning signs and she tried actively to do things about it but nobody around her seemed equipped to deal with a situation like this frustrated by the lack of help lauren took matters into her own hands to protect her son lauren confiscated brex computer and organized a group meeting with breck's father another boy from the gaming group and that boy's parents breck's parents shared their suspicions with the group however lewis was already one step ahead having learned about this meeting lewis tried to convince breck to record everything that was being said and breck did just that from that moment on lewis knew that the parents were onto him and so everything went underground as he decided to lay the foundation for the horrifying sequence of events that would soon unfold lewis would begin to tell brick that he was ill and dying and too weak to run his company not wanting his company to go under lewis told breck that he wanted to hand the company over to him as long as breck would come over to his flat and learn the job and in february 2014 as brick was staying at his father's he would inform him that he was headed to his friend toms to build a new server instead however breck would go on to meet with lewis daines at his essex flat where the tables were turned completely on the 14 year old since lewis was now aware that breck's family were suspicious of him lewis had emailed breck a set of instructions for how he could convince his father to let him get out for the night of their meeting including lying about going to stay over at a friend's house for the night on the night of february 16th after convincing his father that he was headed to a friend's place brick took a 30-mile taxi from his home in caterham surrey to meet danes in person at his flat in grey's essex this is the last point in time in which breck bedner was seen alive after meeting face to face for the first time on that february evening sometimes during the span of their encounter brick was murdered from evidence that was later collected it was also found that shortly before breck was killed some sexual activity occurred recorded evidence would later also show that shortly before their meeting lewis had bought duct tape condoms and syringes online that same duct tape would be used to bind brick by the wrists and angles before breck's throat was slit by a knife causing him to die within seconds but the horror didn't end there shortly after murdering brick lewis danes would take pictures of breck's mutilated body and send them to two of his other online friends from their gaming group photos which were ultimately leaked and circulated as news of his death broke in fact just as police were informing brex father of his son's murder in the other room breck's 12 year old sibling sebastian would receive a text from her friend reading is it true about your brother if it's true it's so sad you're telling me he is definitely dead yes i'm telling you he's definitely dead i woke up he was just standing up he was in a mess hands on his face i got up i put my arms around him and i said it was okay he just shrugged me off and said no some i can't remember exactly what he said he he was going on about how he didn't want to go home he was fed up with his life and he he didn't want to go after calling 999 on his own crime there was a chilling calm to lose his voice as he tried to present a story to the police that breck had tried to take his own life and lewis had accidentally stabbed him in the struggle to save him when officers arrived at the scene of the crime breck's body was lying in lewis's bedroom all of lewis's computer equipment had been submerged in water in an attempt to destroy the evidence while brick's clothes were later found in the trash outside of lewis's flat in the ensuing investigation the police would come to learn that lewis had been living alone since he was 16 and had developed disturbing interests online he was obsessive and was fascinated by syria particularly a video of a beheading in syria police say that danes had been aiming to meet up with someone within the community between september 2013 and february 2014. tragically breck became the one he decided on despite all of this lewis continued to maintain his innocence in breck's death all the way up until his trial however just moments before in chelmsford crown court in essex lewis decided to plead guilty for the murder of breck bedner and on january 12 2015 lewis danes was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 25 years for murder with sexual and sadistic intent lewis will be 44 before he is eligible for release justice perhaps but perhaps there truly can never be proper justice for brex parents who had their son horrifically murdered despite their best attempts to intervene after the trial lauren lafave sued both the essex and surrey police departments for mishandling the situation that ultimately led to the death of her son an investigation by the independent police complaints commission into the police handling of the case found that the surrey police mishandled lafave's first call eventually lafave and breck's father reached a settlement with the surrey police i am heartbroken and lost without my break and i will never be the same so much of me died as well my board triplets lost not only their adored big brother but also their mother i want brex tragedy to help open the eyes of everyone to recognize the dangers of online predators it is a very real danger today after breck's death lauren would go on to set up the bric foundation to bring awareness to internet safety and the dangers of grooming breck's father would go on to say every day i challenged myself as to what could i have done to protect brick better i let him go to his death it will haunt us forever any way you look at it this is just a horrible case in so many ways from not only the crime itself but just the frustration the how frustrating it is that both parents did everything they thought they could to prevent this from happening yet they couldn't now their son's death can hopefully be a lesson for others but the fact that they have to lose their son for that to even be a possibility is just it's it's it's horrible but hopefully for anyone out there that wasn't familiar with this case before there are some lessons that can be taken away the question i posed at the start of this was whether or not the worst monsters are no longer in the dark but out here in the light and i think especially in the case of lewis danes the point is proven that the internet has become a bastion a haven for some of the worst people in the world and we need to be much more vigilant in our actions online and hopefully we can prevent crimes like this from happening again if there is another internet crime that you want me to explore with all of you that we can hopefully take more lessons from be sure to leave us a comment down below or message me directly and we'll continue it next time until then take care and stay safe online [Music] you

Channel: BuzzFeed Unsolved Network

Views: 1,774,930

Rating: 4.9237828 out of 5

Keywords: aria inthavong, breck bednar, breck foundating, breck's last game, bun, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, buzzfeed unsolved network, buzzfeedunsolvednetwork, catfish, catfishing, child safety, crime patrol, gaming, grooming, kids online safety, lewis daynes, lorin lafave, online communities, online crime, online friend, online gaming, online grooming, online safety, safety for kids online, safety online, teamspeak, true crime

Id: 3p18PdpnivQ

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020