Catfishing Cop Pretended To Be 17, ‘groomed’ California Girl Before Killing Her Family, Then Himself

The 28-year-old Virginia cop who killed three fam­i­ly mem­bers of a Riverside teenag­er had posed online as a teen to “groom” the 15-year-old girl, the Riverside Police Department said Wednesday.

Austin Lee Edwards por­trayed him­self as a 17-year-old while com­mu­ni­cat­ing online with the girl, using “groom­ing” meth­ods, which can include tac­tics such as ask­ing for or offer­ing sex­u­al­ly explic­it images, pro­vid­ing gifts and offer­ing com­pli­ments, Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez said at a news conference.

Gonzalez said it is still under inves­ti­ga­tion how long the dig­i­tal rela­tion­ship between Edwards and the teen girl tran­spired and what plat­form they used to meet or com­mu­ni­cate, but inves­ti­ga­tors believe many of those typ­i­cal exploita­tive strate­gies for “sex­tor­tion” were used in this case.

“This type of vic­tim­iza­tion takes place across every plat­form, social media, mes­sag­ing apps, gam­ing plat­forms, etc.,” Gonzalez said. Read more here: https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​c​a​t​f​i​s​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​p​-​p​r​e​t​e​n​d​e​d​-​1​7​-​g​r​o​o​m​e​d​-​1​8​5​2​5​2​4​8​1​.​h​tml