Reply to SarafromCarmel, posted by Anonymous.

Sara U R a lame [deleted]. if he was driving the car then he DID something that made those girls die. How can you say he didn't? Jesus its people like you who let hitler gas the jews and bush go into Iraq. why dont you call [the driver] up and have him take you for a nice ride? i'll come put a cross at your [deleted]ing grave, you [deleted].

Reply to Chilton, posted by Legend666.

[The driver]'s brother is retarded and it might look bad for the police to arrest [the driver], cause of all this political correct stuff which makes me sick. Also they should check out the girls purses, I mean the girls in the crash, because I heard he ripped them off before the ambulances got there. His families so poor that they can't even afford a washer and drier. I've seen him and his mom and his [deleted]-up little brother at the laundromat on Billings all the time. Who goes to laundromats? Lusers that's who.

Reply to Chilton, posted by SexyGurl362.

My best friend is a junior at [deleted] with [the driver] and she was talking to somebody who was at the party where the girls who died were. [The driver] was sitting in a corner with his sweats hood up staring at everybody and talking to himself and somebody found him in the kitchen just looking at the knives. Everybody was like, what the hells he doing here? Why did he come?

Reply to Chilton, posted by Jake42.

U totally OWN it, Chilton!! Yeah [the driver] [deleted]ed up. Look at the luser, his life is epic FAIL!!! He's always faking he's sick in PE class to get out of working out. He only goes to the gym to hang around in the locker room and stare at everybody's [deleted]. He is totally gay, somebody told me that.

Reply to Chilton, posted by CurlyJen.

Me and my friends were talking and last week somebody saw [the driver] on Lighthouse doing donuts in a car he stole from his grandmother without permission. He was trying to get [deleted] to show her thong. (like she'd care, LOL!!!). And when she ignored him he started wacking off right in front of her, right there on Lighthouse at the same time he was driving. he definitely was doing the same thing that night he crashed.

Reply to Chilton, posted by Anonymous.

I go to [deleted], I'm a sophomore, and I know him and everybody knows about him. IMHO, I mean, he's all right. He games a lot, but so what? I play soccer a lot, that doesn't make me a killer.

Reply to Anonymous, posted by BillVan.

[Deleted] you, [deleted]. if you know so much whats your sauce oh genius? You don't even have the balls to post under your real name. Afraid he'd come and [deleted] you up the [deleted]?

Reply to Chilton, posted by BellaKelley.

u r so right!!! Me and my friend were at that party on the 9^th where it happened and [the driver] was coming on to [deleted] and they were like, just go away. But he didn't, he followed them out the door when they were leaving. But we have ourselves to blame too for not doing anything, all of us who were there. We all knew [the driver] is a luser and perv and we should have called the police or somebody when they left. I had this bad feeling like in Ghost Whisperer. And look what happened.

Reply to Chilton, posted by Anonymous.

Somebody goes into Columbine or Virginia Tech with a gun and they're criminals but when [the driver] kills somebody with a car nobody does anything about it. Something is very messed up here.

Reply to Chilton, posted by WizardOne.

I think we need a time out. Some poster dissed [the driver] because he didn't like sports and he played games. What's the BFD? There are millions of people who don't play sports but like games. I don't know [the driver] real good but we're in the same class at [deleted]. He isn't a bad dude at all. Everybody's dissing him but does anybody here actually KNOW him? Whatever happened, he didn't hurt anybody on purpose and we all know people who do, everyday. IMHO, he feels bad about what happened. The police didn't arrest him because, duh, he didn't do anything illegal.

Reply to WizardOne, posted by Halfpipe22.

Another gamer-lamer. Look at the name. L00ZR!!! FOAD wizard!

Reply to Chilton, posted by Archenemy.

[The driver] is a total phr33k. In his locker at school, he has pictures of the d00ds from Columbine and Virginia Tech, and those dead bodies from the concentration camps. He walks around in some ch33p ass hoodie trying to look kewl but hes a luser on roids, thats all he'll ever be.

[The driver] if your reading this, d00d, and not hanging with the elves and fairies, remember: we OWN U. Why don't you U just do us all a favor and blow you're [deleted]ing brains out. Your death = EPIC WIN!

Kathryn Dance sat back, shaking her head. "A lot of hormones there," she said to Jon Boling.

She was troubled by the viciousness of the blog posts-and most of them written by young people.

Boling scrolled back to the original post. "Look what happened. Chilton makes a simple observation about a fatal accident. All he does is question whether the road was safely maintained. But look at how the responding posts arc. They go from discussing what Chilton brought up-highway safety-then move on to government finances and then to the kid who was driving, even though he apparently didn't do anything wrong. The posters get more and more agitated as they attack him and finally the blog turns into a barroom brawl among the posters themselves."

"Like the game of Telephone. By the time the message moves along, it's distorted. 'I heard…' 'Somebody knows somebody who…' 'A friend of mine told me…' " She scanned the pages again. "One thing I noticed, Chilton doesn't fight back. Look at the post about Reverend Fisk and the right-to-life group."

Reply to Chilton, posted by CrimsoninChrist.

You are a sinner who cannot comprehend the goodness within the heart of Rev. R. Samuel Fisk. He has devoted his life to Christ and all of His works, while you do nothing but pander to the masses for your own pleasure and profit. Your misreading of the great Reverend's views is pathetic and libelous. You should be nailed up on a cross yourself.

Boling told her, "No, the serious bloggers don't argue back. Chilton will give a reasoned response, but flame wars-attacks among posters-get out of control and become personal. The postings become about the attack, not the substance of the topic. That's one of the problems with blogs. In person, people would never feud like this. The anonymity of the blogs mean the fights go on for days or weeks."

Dance looked through the text. "So the boy is a student." She recalled her deduction from the interview with Tammy Foster. "Chilton deleted his name and the name of the school but it's got to be Robert Louis Stevenson. Where Tammy goes."

Boling tapped the screen. "And there's her post. She was one of the first to say something about the boy. And everyone else jumped on board after that."

Maybe the post was the source of the guilt Dance had picked up on during the interview. If this boy was behind the attack, then Tammy, as Dance and O'Neil had speculated, would feel partly responsible for the assault on her; she'd brought it on herself. And perhaps guilty too if he went on to hurt someone else. This explained why Tammy wouldn't like the suggestion that her abductor had a bike in the car: that would lead Dance to consider a younger suspect-a student whose identity the girl didn't want to reveal because she still considered him a threat.

"It's all so vicious," Dance said, nodding at the screen.

"Did you hear about the Litter Boy?"

"Who?"

"Happened in Kyoto a few years ago. Japan. A teenage boy tossed a fast food wrapper and soda cup on the ground in a park. Somebody shot a picture of the kid doing it on their cell phone and uploaded it to his friends. Next thing, it started appearing on blogs and social networking sites all over the country. Cybervigilantes tracked him down. They got his name and address and posted the info online. It spread to thousands of blogs. The whole thing became a witch hunt. People began showing up at his house-throwing trash in the yard. He nearly killed himself-that kind of dishonor is significant in Japan." Boling's tonal quality and body language revealed anger. "Critics say, oh, it's just words or pictures. But they can be weapons too. They can cause just as much damage as fists. And, frankly, I think the scars last longer."