What Will You Do?
Monday, October 18, 2013
It had been a long day for Craig MacDonald. First the full eight hour day of teaching Honors Geography at Sawgrass River High School, followed by another two hours of off-season basketball practice in order to get his school varsity team ready to play in the upcoming Winter season. Once Craig got home, all he wanted to do was relax. His first order of business, after turning on the television, was to turn on the computer and check his email.
Among the usual list of spam, newsletters, alerts, advertisements, and forwarded junk was an item that piqued his interest. Its subject line was left blank but it was from someone that called themselves Future@end.of.the.world.net. Wondering if this was just another scam or attempt to elicit money or personal information from him, he clicked on it anyway, interested in the creative return address. Once the message loaded all he got was a single line with a numbered URL: 2013.139.159.6. By this time his curiosity was fully aroused and got the better of him. He clicked on it and when his browser opened and loaded the page, he was presented with a parody of a future newspaper site. In an unfamiliar but bold, ultramodern, blue script, it was titled Dallas Morning News, and the date was listed as November 12, 2042.
That was interesting enough but the screaming headline at the top of the page that demanded immediate attention read, “Number of Murders Claimed by Full Moon Killer Rises Above 200.” The text was hyperlinked and Craig clicked on it. It took him to a well-done but obviously fake future news article also dated November 12, 2042, credited to the AP with a Seattle byline.
‘SEATTLE (AP) - After a nine month investigation, Seattle police and FBI agents have been able to confirm more than 100 killings attributed to the so-called Full Moon Killer, as having been committed by confessed killer Kenneth Daniels, who has claimed to have killed more than 200 in total over the years.’
That first line stopped Craig dead in his tracks. He knew a Kenny Daniels, the boy was a student in his 4th Period AP Geography class. A chill involuntarily went up and down Craig’s spine and he shook himself to be rid of it. But intrigued, he read on.
‘Already by far the most prolific serial killer in history, if a total of 200 killings can be attributed to Daniels, he would no doubt establish a record that would most likely never be surpassed. Based on the confessions of the admitted psychopath, authorities have been able to clear cold cases all over the country dating back up to three decades.
‘Daniels’ 29 year killing spree spanned 28 states from one corner of the nation to the other, beginning in South Florida on October 22, 2013 when he killed his first victim, high school classmate Jenny Meadows, on a night with a full moon.’
“No,” Craig said to himself as he stopped reading again. He knew a girl at the school named Jenny Meadows. She was a popular cheerleader and member of the student congress. “That ain’t right,” he said out loud. He began to wonder if the email, this contrived website, and the obviously fictional story of the future were an elaborate hoax on someone’s part. And what could they gain by his reading of
it?
He thought of Kenny Daniels and pictured the boy’s face in his mind. He was a very smart but quiet boy who never caused any trouble and for all intents and purposes he acted and looked like a model student. Craig could hardly see the boy playing the role of the most prolific serial killer in history. He laughed and shook his head. Then he read on.
The fictional news story continued, summarizing the career of the Full Moon Killer, who criss-crossed the country for 29 years, always killing on a night with a full moon, which became his calling card. He was never caught until he slipped up once in Washington State in early
2042. Once in police custody, the 45 year old killer began to confess to FBI agents of more than 200 slayings committed over the years. At once police all over the US began to clear cold cases that had sat unsolved in various locales throughout the country and had been attributed to a
near-mythical Full Moon Killer.
At the bottom of the page was a Seattle PD mug shot of the killer. Craig sat stunned into silence for a moment. On the screen he saw the face of the boy he knew, obviously somehow computer-altered to appear some 30 years older, staring back at the police camera, showing no emotion.
The placard on a chain around his neck read, ‘Seattle PD, Kenneth Wayne Daniels.’ It was dated 2-13-42 and contained a booking number.
“What a crock,” Craig said again to himself, but clicked on the picture. It brought up a full-screen, high definition picture for him. Craig was sure it was a fake, but a very, very good one. He couldn’t
tell how it had been altered to age the boy so much, but he knew there were programs that could do the job well enough.
Craig stared at the picture for a minute longer and then went back to the original page, the front page of the Dallas Morning News, supposedly from November 12, 2042. He tried all of the links to the other headlines listed but the only one that worked was the one that took him to the story of the Full Moon Killer.
He shook his head in denial again and went back to the email. He hit reply and wrote, ‘What is this, a joke?’ Then he hit send, and continued to check the rest of his messages.
Tuesday, October 19,
2013 In fourth period class, Craig studied the boy, Kenny Daniels, while the students worked on a map-making project. He certainly didn’t look like the killer type. He just quietly did his work and occasionally joked around with his friends sitting nearby, but did not draw any undue attention to himself. He did not act withdrawn or disturbed like Craig thought a serial killer was supposed to
act.
When the class was over, Craig took his place in the hall outside his classroom as he was supposed to do to monitor the hallway traffic. As he watched, a group of cheerleaders passed by.
A voice down the hall shouted, “Hey Jenny! You going to the party after the game?”
A pretty blonde girl turned around and shouted back, “Yeah! You?”
“All night long,” her friend replied.
Craig stared at the girl. So this was her. He wondered could it be true, that the boy he knew would kill this girl on Friday night after the football game? And what could he do about it if it was? He shook his head and smiled at his own foolishness, for even thinking that the hoax email and website were true. The next class filed in and soon the tardy bell rang. He went back inside the classroom and introduced the project to them. But thoughts of the email and the story kept surfacing in his mind, despite his wishes to dispel them.
At basketball practice after school his mind was a million miles away. He just had the team go
through a three-on-two drill called Stampede, while he watched and thought.
Once he was home again, he apprehensively turned on the computer and let his email messages download. As he both hoped and feared at the same time, Future had replied to him. Again, there was no message, just a single, numbered URL like the previous night. Knowing he shouldn’t but also just as much knowing he couldn’t resist, Craig clicked on it and let the page load.
It was another futuristic representation of a newspaper website, this time the Miami Herald from January 26, 2014. The top headline read, “Missing Girl Found in Everglades.” Beside the headline and the first few lines of the story was a small picture of Jenny Meadows, which looked as if it had been taken yesterday. Craig knew that was why he had been directed to the site and clicked on the headline. It brought him to another fake parody of a future news story, although this one wasn’t so far into the future.
“WESTON – Yesterday while fishing in the Everglades, two men found the body of a
teenage girl floating in a canal off of an isolated hammock deep within the swamp. The body has been identified as that of high school sophomore Jenny Meadows of Weston, Florida. Jenny had been missing since October 22, when she didn’t return home from a Friday night high school football game. Her parents reported her missing the next morning but police had reported no clues in her disappearance until the body was found.
The body was found unclothed and with a belt wrapped tightly around her throat,
preliminarily pointing to strangulation as the cause of death.
Thus far, the Broward County Sherriff’s Office has no suspects in mind, although
the investigation continues, according to spokesmen.”
Craig sat for a moment and thought. He hit backspace to go back to the original front page of the newspaper site. As the night before the only link that worked from it was the one to the Jenny Meadows story. He did study the other headlines and recognized many of the names and situations and concluded that the stories might very well come true in three months. So, whoever had created this hoax had done their homework and done a very good job. Somehow, that didn’t make him feel any better.
He minimized the browser and went back to the email message. He tried to do a reverse search of the email address but was met with no success. He did a trace on its host domain name, end.of.the.world.net, and that came back with a message stating, “Address Unknown-No Such Network.”
Wednesday,
October 20, 2013
During fourth period Craig studied Kenny. He still appeared to be a typical, fun-loving high school sophomore. After school before he went to basketball practice, Craig took a short side trip to the classroom of his friend, Les Ward, the school’s yearbook advisor and broadcasting teacher. He told Les about the strange emails from a supposedly non-existent email account and the even stranger fake newspaper web pages. Les was of the pinion that the whole thing was a hoax masterminded by some technologically savvy but very disturbed student and told Craig he needed to report everything to the school resource officer since it involved serial killers and threatened the murder of a school student. But Craig was not prepared to go that far just yet. First, he was embarrassed that he had even been picked out for this farce. And, second, he was worried about what people would think if word got out of his involvement in such a scheme, even if he was the victim.
It had been a long day for Craig MacDonald. First the full eight hour day of teaching Honors Geography at Sawgrass River High School, followed by another two hours of off-season basketball practice in order to get his school varsity team ready to play in the upcoming Winter season. Once Craig got home, all he wanted to do was relax. His first order of business, after turning on the television, was to turn on the computer and check his email.
Among the usual list of spam, newsletters, alerts, advertisements, and forwarded junk was an item that piqued his interest. Its subject line was left blank but it was from someone that called themselves Future@end.of.the.world.net. Wondering if this was just another scam or attempt to elicit money or personal information from him, he clicked on it anyway, interested in the creative return address. Once the message loaded all he got was a single line with a numbered URL: 2013.139.159.6. By this time his curiosity was fully aroused and got the better of him. He clicked on it and when his browser opened and loaded the page, he was presented with a parody of a future newspaper site. In an unfamiliar but bold, ultramodern, blue script, it was titled Dallas Morning News, and the date was listed as November 12, 2042.
That was interesting enough but the screaming headline at the top of the page that demanded immediate attention read, “Number of Murders Claimed by Full Moon Killer Rises Above 200.” The text was hyperlinked and Craig clicked on it. It took him to a well-done but obviously fake future news article also dated November 12, 2042, credited to the AP with a Seattle byline.
‘SEATTLE (AP) - After a nine month investigation, Seattle police and FBI agents have been able to confirm more than 100 killings attributed to the so-called Full Moon Killer, as having been committed by confessed killer Kenneth Daniels, who has claimed to have killed more than 200 in total over the years.’
That first line stopped Craig dead in his tracks. He knew a Kenny Daniels, the boy was a student in his 4th Period AP Geography class. A chill involuntarily went up and down Craig’s spine and he shook himself to be rid of it. But intrigued, he read on.
‘Already by far the most prolific serial killer in history, if a total of 200 killings can be attributed to Daniels, he would no doubt establish a record that would most likely never be surpassed. Based on the confessions of the admitted psychopath, authorities have been able to clear cold cases all over the country dating back up to three decades.
‘Daniels’ 29 year killing spree spanned 28 states from one corner of the nation to the other, beginning in South Florida on October 22, 2013 when he killed his first victim, high school classmate Jenny Meadows, on a night with a full moon.’
“No,” Craig said to himself as he stopped reading again. He knew a girl at the school named Jenny Meadows. She was a popular cheerleader and member of the student congress. “That ain’t right,” he said out loud. He began to wonder if the email, this contrived website, and the obviously fictional story of the future were an elaborate hoax on someone’s part. And what could they gain by his reading of
it?
He thought of Kenny Daniels and pictured the boy’s face in his mind. He was a very smart but quiet boy who never caused any trouble and for all intents and purposes he acted and looked like a model student. Craig could hardly see the boy playing the role of the most prolific serial killer in history. He laughed and shook his head. Then he read on.
The fictional news story continued, summarizing the career of the Full Moon Killer, who criss-crossed the country for 29 years, always killing on a night with a full moon, which became his calling card. He was never caught until he slipped up once in Washington State in early
2042. Once in police custody, the 45 year old killer began to confess to FBI agents of more than 200 slayings committed over the years. At once police all over the US began to clear cold cases that had sat unsolved in various locales throughout the country and had been attributed to a
near-mythical Full Moon Killer.
At the bottom of the page was a Seattle PD mug shot of the killer. Craig sat stunned into silence for a moment. On the screen he saw the face of the boy he knew, obviously somehow computer-altered to appear some 30 years older, staring back at the police camera, showing no emotion.
The placard on a chain around his neck read, ‘Seattle PD, Kenneth Wayne Daniels.’ It was dated 2-13-42 and contained a booking number.
“What a crock,” Craig said again to himself, but clicked on the picture. It brought up a full-screen, high definition picture for him. Craig was sure it was a fake, but a very, very good one. He couldn’t
tell how it had been altered to age the boy so much, but he knew there were programs that could do the job well enough.
Craig stared at the picture for a minute longer and then went back to the original page, the front page of the Dallas Morning News, supposedly from November 12, 2042. He tried all of the links to the other headlines listed but the only one that worked was the one that took him to the story of the Full Moon Killer.
He shook his head in denial again and went back to the email. He hit reply and wrote, ‘What is this, a joke?’ Then he hit send, and continued to check the rest of his messages.
Tuesday, October 19,
2013 In fourth period class, Craig studied the boy, Kenny Daniels, while the students worked on a map-making project. He certainly didn’t look like the killer type. He just quietly did his work and occasionally joked around with his friends sitting nearby, but did not draw any undue attention to himself. He did not act withdrawn or disturbed like Craig thought a serial killer was supposed to
act.
When the class was over, Craig took his place in the hall outside his classroom as he was supposed to do to monitor the hallway traffic. As he watched, a group of cheerleaders passed by.
A voice down the hall shouted, “Hey Jenny! You going to the party after the game?”
A pretty blonde girl turned around and shouted back, “Yeah! You?”
“All night long,” her friend replied.
Craig stared at the girl. So this was her. He wondered could it be true, that the boy he knew would kill this girl on Friday night after the football game? And what could he do about it if it was? He shook his head and smiled at his own foolishness, for even thinking that the hoax email and website were true. The next class filed in and soon the tardy bell rang. He went back inside the classroom and introduced the project to them. But thoughts of the email and the story kept surfacing in his mind, despite his wishes to dispel them.
At basketball practice after school his mind was a million miles away. He just had the team go
through a three-on-two drill called Stampede, while he watched and thought.
Once he was home again, he apprehensively turned on the computer and let his email messages download. As he both hoped and feared at the same time, Future had replied to him. Again, there was no message, just a single, numbered URL like the previous night. Knowing he shouldn’t but also just as much knowing he couldn’t resist, Craig clicked on it and let the page load.
It was another futuristic representation of a newspaper website, this time the Miami Herald from January 26, 2014. The top headline read, “Missing Girl Found in Everglades.” Beside the headline and the first few lines of the story was a small picture of Jenny Meadows, which looked as if it had been taken yesterday. Craig knew that was why he had been directed to the site and clicked on the headline. It brought him to another fake parody of a future news story, although this one wasn’t so far into the future.
“WESTON – Yesterday while fishing in the Everglades, two men found the body of a
teenage girl floating in a canal off of an isolated hammock deep within the swamp. The body has been identified as that of high school sophomore Jenny Meadows of Weston, Florida. Jenny had been missing since October 22, when she didn’t return home from a Friday night high school football game. Her parents reported her missing the next morning but police had reported no clues in her disappearance until the body was found.
The body was found unclothed and with a belt wrapped tightly around her throat,
preliminarily pointing to strangulation as the cause of death.
Thus far, the Broward County Sherriff’s Office has no suspects in mind, although
the investigation continues, according to spokesmen.”
Craig sat for a moment and thought. He hit backspace to go back to the original front page of the newspaper site. As the night before the only link that worked from it was the one to the Jenny Meadows story. He did study the other headlines and recognized many of the names and situations and concluded that the stories might very well come true in three months. So, whoever had created this hoax had done their homework and done a very good job. Somehow, that didn’t make him feel any better.
He minimized the browser and went back to the email message. He tried to do a reverse search of the email address but was met with no success. He did a trace on its host domain name, end.of.the.world.net, and that came back with a message stating, “Address Unknown-No Such Network.”
Wednesday,
October 20, 2013
During fourth period Craig studied Kenny. He still appeared to be a typical, fun-loving high school sophomore. After school before he went to basketball practice, Craig took a short side trip to the classroom of his friend, Les Ward, the school’s yearbook advisor and broadcasting teacher. He told Les about the strange emails from a supposedly non-existent email account and the even stranger fake newspaper web pages. Les was of the pinion that the whole thing was a hoax masterminded by some technologically savvy but very disturbed student and told Craig he needed to report everything to the school resource officer since it involved serial killers and threatened the murder of a school student. But Craig was not prepared to go that far just yet. First, he was embarrassed that he had even been picked out for this farce. And, second, he was worried about what people would think if word got out of his involvement in such a scheme, even if he was the victim.
As soon as he got home, he checked and sure enough there was a new message from Future, whoever that was. As before the subject line was empty and the message itself was yet another numbered URL. Unlike the previous nights, this one did not take him to the front page of a faked future newspaper website but directly to a very scary, haunting, yet very realistic parody of a future news story. Craig felt a sudden dread tighten his whole chest as he read the headline and despite the heat, a cold chill rolled over his body. The headline read, ‘Former High School Teacher Executed.’ He read.
‘RAIFORD, FL - Former high school geography teacher and basketball coach Craig MacDonald was executed today after an eleven year wait on Florida’s Death Row for the murder of one of his students fifteen years ago. MacDonald killed 16-year-old Kenneth Daniels on October 22, 2013 in front of a stunned classroom full of students in Sawgrass River High School in suburban Weston.
MacDonald claimed at the time and continued to claim until the day of his execution that he had killed Daniels in order to prevent the high school sophomore from committing 200 murders in the future. He asserted that he had been alerted to the fact that the student would become a serial killer in the future by mysterious emails from unknown sources, a defense that was rejected by a jury after no evidence could be produced by defense attorneys to back up that claim. Thorough searches and forensics were done on MacDonald’s home, school, and laptop computers but nothing was found to corroborate his assertions. The jury disregarded his defense and he was sentenced to death after his trial in 2017.
Daniels’ parents were outraged at MacDonald’s allusions to their son, who at the time was an honors student and had no police record or disciplinary record at the school.’
At the bottom of the page was a picture of a man in the orange t-shirt issued to Florida Death Row inmates. The man’s face was Craig’s own, somehow aged fifteen years by computer trickery. Craig stared at the picture. Yes, that was him how he might look some fifteen years later.
'No. This is too much,’ Craig thought, literally shaking with a mixture of surprise, apprehension, and anger. He quickly closed the browser and returned to the email. He hit reply and pounded on the keys as he typed the message.
‘Who are you? Why are you doing this? Stop, or I will report you to the police.’
Thursday, October 21, 2013
Craig’s first stop once he arrived on campus was Les Ward’s classroom. He had to tell someone and Les was the only one he trusted enough to tell just yet. As Les was preparing for his first period broadcasting class, Craig filled him in on the latest development.
Les stopped and stood still listening when Craig got to the part about the execution. When Craig had finished, Les thought for a moment and then said, “Man, you’ve got to go to the police now. They’ve not only threatened the lives of two students but yourself as well.”
The warning bell for first period rang and Les’s students began to enter the room “If there’s anything else on there tonight, I’ll go first thing in the morning,” Craig assured him as Les’s first period students continued to trickle in.
“Let me know what happens,” Les called out to Craig as he headed out of Les’s classroom to his own.
“I will,” he said over his shoulder.
Craig looked at everyone in the school with suspicion, wondering which of them was responsible for the hoax. As always, during fourth period Kenny was his innocent self, causing no trouble and no harm to anyone. Out in the hallway between classes, Craig again saw Jenny Meadows, spry and happy, enjoying life with her cheerleader friends.
Since it was volleyball season, off-season basketball had to practice on the outdoor courts that afternoon. Craig had his team stretch and run through their warm-up drills. He stared across the basketball court to the football field where the football team was also going through light drills the day before a game. He thought of the game the following night, and what might or might not happen afterwards, and the three lives that hung in the balance.
“Coach. Coach.”
He was startled out of his reverie and turned to find his basketball team standing on the court behind him. He looked as if he was wondering why they were there.
“You all right, coach?” one of the players said.
He looked at the player blankly.
In the uncomfortable silence another player asked, “We finished our layup drills, what do you want us to do next?”
Craig shook his head and remembered where he was and why he was there. Decisively he said, “Big men practice block out drills, guards practice outlet passes.”
Now that their coach had returned to normal, the players smiled and relaxed before they went to get balls from the rack to do as they were instructed.
Once back home Craig checked and found, just as he knew he would, another message from Future with no subject and only a numbered URL. Not knowing what to expect but prepared for the worst, he sat back and clicked on the number. Once the page loaded, he immediately sat forward to get a closer look at the monitor screen.
It was a very well-fashioned site entitled ‘Tribute to the Full Moon Killer’s Victims.’ Dominating the top of the first page was the same picture of Jenny Meadows he had seen on the earlier newspaper story parody about the discovery of her body, except it was high-definition and covered nearly the entire width of the page. It had to have been her school picture from this year. She was smiling and the braces on her teeth were clearly visible. Craig scrolled down the page and below Jenny’s picture was a scan of the same Miami Herald story he had already read two nights before. Below the story were three very prominent buttons, one labeled Previous, one labeled Next, and one labeled Home. He clicked on Next.
A color picture of another young woman took up the screen on that page. Below it was the story of another unsolved murder, this time in St. Lucie County, Florida, some three months later. Craig hit Next again and this time it was a much older woman, a grandmother in the small town of Dundee in Polk County.
Craig clicked through the pages and watched as 29 years of time seemed compressed into only a few minutes as the story progressed. He watched the dates, places, and victims change and the murderer slowly recognized as the Full Moon Killer by the media for only striking on nights when there was a full moon. His victims ranged from a 96 year old widow in Maine to a seven year old girl in Arizona.
Craig watched the killer move upward from Florida through Georgia into South Carolina, and on up to New York. Then he struck in the Midwest and worked his way back down to Alabama and then westward to Texas and Oklahoma. From there he went to California and preyed on women there for a long time before skipping back to the East Coast.
The killer seemed to be a ghost, he left no clues and no witnesses and the police seemed powerless to catch him much less stop him. People began to be afraid to go out at night when the moon was full and police all over the country increased patrols and doubled the number of officers on the streets on the nights around a full moon. None of the measures seemed to work, the killer appeared to be smarter than the police and able to outfox them at every turn. The killer didn’t kill during every full moon phase and sometimes went months at a time between killings before going on sprees where he took one life for several full moons in a row, all the time aggravating and frustrating the police and the FBI. At one point, under growing pressure, the US president even appointed a task force to find the Full Moon Killer and bring him to justice.
The last page was the story of how a single US Marshal alone had finally tracked down and caught up with the killer as he attempted to murder a nine year old girl in a Seattle suburb. The marshal had tracked him through a piece of jewelry he had stolen from one of his victims and had pawned to support his endeavors. DNA testing revealed the killer to be one Kenneth Wayne Daniels from Weston, Florida, who had disappeared from home as a 16 year old twenty nine years earlier, had never been seen or heard from again, and had been presumed dead.
‘RAIFORD, FL - Former high school geography teacher and basketball coach Craig MacDonald was executed today after an eleven year wait on Florida’s Death Row for the murder of one of his students fifteen years ago. MacDonald killed 16-year-old Kenneth Daniels on October 22, 2013 in front of a stunned classroom full of students in Sawgrass River High School in suburban Weston.
MacDonald claimed at the time and continued to claim until the day of his execution that he had killed Daniels in order to prevent the high school sophomore from committing 200 murders in the future. He asserted that he had been alerted to the fact that the student would become a serial killer in the future by mysterious emails from unknown sources, a defense that was rejected by a jury after no evidence could be produced by defense attorneys to back up that claim. Thorough searches and forensics were done on MacDonald’s home, school, and laptop computers but nothing was found to corroborate his assertions. The jury disregarded his defense and he was sentenced to death after his trial in 2017.
Daniels’ parents were outraged at MacDonald’s allusions to their son, who at the time was an honors student and had no police record or disciplinary record at the school.’
At the bottom of the page was a picture of a man in the orange t-shirt issued to Florida Death Row inmates. The man’s face was Craig’s own, somehow aged fifteen years by computer trickery. Craig stared at the picture. Yes, that was him how he might look some fifteen years later.
'No. This is too much,’ Craig thought, literally shaking with a mixture of surprise, apprehension, and anger. He quickly closed the browser and returned to the email. He hit reply and pounded on the keys as he typed the message.
‘Who are you? Why are you doing this? Stop, or I will report you to the police.’
Thursday, October 21, 2013
Craig’s first stop once he arrived on campus was Les Ward’s classroom. He had to tell someone and Les was the only one he trusted enough to tell just yet. As Les was preparing for his first period broadcasting class, Craig filled him in on the latest development.
Les stopped and stood still listening when Craig got to the part about the execution. When Craig had finished, Les thought for a moment and then said, “Man, you’ve got to go to the police now. They’ve not only threatened the lives of two students but yourself as well.”
The warning bell for first period rang and Les’s students began to enter the room “If there’s anything else on there tonight, I’ll go first thing in the morning,” Craig assured him as Les’s first period students continued to trickle in.
“Let me know what happens,” Les called out to Craig as he headed out of Les’s classroom to his own.
“I will,” he said over his shoulder.
Craig looked at everyone in the school with suspicion, wondering which of them was responsible for the hoax. As always, during fourth period Kenny was his innocent self, causing no trouble and no harm to anyone. Out in the hallway between classes, Craig again saw Jenny Meadows, spry and happy, enjoying life with her cheerleader friends.
Since it was volleyball season, off-season basketball had to practice on the outdoor courts that afternoon. Craig had his team stretch and run through their warm-up drills. He stared across the basketball court to the football field where the football team was also going through light drills the day before a game. He thought of the game the following night, and what might or might not happen afterwards, and the three lives that hung in the balance.
“Coach. Coach.”
He was startled out of his reverie and turned to find his basketball team standing on the court behind him. He looked as if he was wondering why they were there.
“You all right, coach?” one of the players said.
He looked at the player blankly.
In the uncomfortable silence another player asked, “We finished our layup drills, what do you want us to do next?”
Craig shook his head and remembered where he was and why he was there. Decisively he said, “Big men practice block out drills, guards practice outlet passes.”
Now that their coach had returned to normal, the players smiled and relaxed before they went to get balls from the rack to do as they were instructed.
Once back home Craig checked and found, just as he knew he would, another message from Future with no subject and only a numbered URL. Not knowing what to expect but prepared for the worst, he sat back and clicked on the number. Once the page loaded, he immediately sat forward to get a closer look at the monitor screen.
It was a very well-fashioned site entitled ‘Tribute to the Full Moon Killer’s Victims.’ Dominating the top of the first page was the same picture of Jenny Meadows he had seen on the earlier newspaper story parody about the discovery of her body, except it was high-definition and covered nearly the entire width of the page. It had to have been her school picture from this year. She was smiling and the braces on her teeth were clearly visible. Craig scrolled down the page and below Jenny’s picture was a scan of the same Miami Herald story he had already read two nights before. Below the story were three very prominent buttons, one labeled Previous, one labeled Next, and one labeled Home. He clicked on Next.
A color picture of another young woman took up the screen on that page. Below it was the story of another unsolved murder, this time in St. Lucie County, Florida, some three months later. Craig hit Next again and this time it was a much older woman, a grandmother in the small town of Dundee in Polk County.
Craig clicked through the pages and watched as 29 years of time seemed compressed into only a few minutes as the story progressed. He watched the dates, places, and victims change and the murderer slowly recognized as the Full Moon Killer by the media for only striking on nights when there was a full moon. His victims ranged from a 96 year old widow in Maine to a seven year old girl in Arizona.
Craig watched the killer move upward from Florida through Georgia into South Carolina, and on up to New York. Then he struck in the Midwest and worked his way back down to Alabama and then westward to Texas and Oklahoma. From there he went to California and preyed on women there for a long time before skipping back to the East Coast.
The killer seemed to be a ghost, he left no clues and no witnesses and the police seemed powerless to catch him much less stop him. People began to be afraid to go out at night when the moon was full and police all over the country increased patrols and doubled the number of officers on the streets on the nights around a full moon. None of the measures seemed to work, the killer appeared to be smarter than the police and able to outfox them at every turn. The killer didn’t kill during every full moon phase and sometimes went months at a time between killings before going on sprees where he took one life for several full moons in a row, all the time aggravating and frustrating the police and the FBI. At one point, under growing pressure, the US president even appointed a task force to find the Full Moon Killer and bring him to justice.
The last page was the story of how a single US Marshal alone had finally tracked down and caught up with the killer as he attempted to murder a nine year old girl in a Seattle suburb. The marshal had tracked him through a piece of jewelry he had stolen from one of his victims and had pawned to support his endeavors. DNA testing revealed the killer to be one Kenneth Wayne Daniels from Weston, Florida, who had disappeared from home as a 16 year old twenty nine years earlier, had never been seen or heard from again, and had been presumed dead.
When Craig hit Next again it took him back to the beginning with the Jenny Meadows story. With only one button left to try, Craig clicked on Home. That brought him to a page with a white background and blue bold faced letters on top screaming out, ‘IT IS UP To You'
Below the words the screen was split between two newspaper stories. On the left was the original story he had been directed to by the emails, that of the Full Moon Killer’s confession of over 200 murders. On the right side was the story of Craig’s own execution.
Craig sat still for some time, stunned. He couldn’t help the feeling that someone was grooming him to kill a student for some unknown reason. On the other hand, all of the pictures and the stories seemed so real, too real, in fact, and too well organized for someone to have concocted them up so neatly and tied everything together into such a nice, neat package. What if it was true? What if this was what the future could look like unless he did something, something he definitely did not want to do but maybe had to do. He thought what if someone had future knowledge of the Boston Strangler or the Son of Sam or the Hillside Strangler or the Yorkshire Ripper and had the power to prevent all the murders.
He slowly and calmly got up from the computer and went to the large closet in the master bedroom. In the back of it was a gun safe. He stared at the safe for a short time before he opened it. Inside it he kept a 20ga shotgun, a .30-06 hunting rifle, and two handguns. He picked up the Beretta 9mm from the top shelf and held it in his hand. He popped out the magazine to make sure it was loaded and pushed it back in again. Two hundred lives for one, he thought. It seemed a fair trade to him. He closed the door to the gun safe and went to put the Beretta in his briefcase.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Having made up his mind and with the future set, Craig felt good as he went to school but as the day dragged on he began to have doubts. As second thoughts flooded his mind, he began to dread the coming of fourth period when he would have to face Kenny Daniels, innocent student and future serial killer. He was about to chicken out at the end of 3rd period when he saw an unsuspecting Jenny Meadows walk by. He stared at her in passing. She saw him and smiled. When he saw her braces, the same braces he had seen in the picture that accompanied the story of her murder, he made up his mind.
Just as Jenny had passed from sight, Kenny Daniels appeared at the door to the classroom. As he walked in he said, “What’s up, Mr. MacDonald,” and continued on into the room.
Craig’s will threatened to shatter and he said nothing. Something in the back of his mind screamed, ‘What if it’s all an elaborate hoax?’ Another part, the part that remembered the 200 smiling faces, retorted, ‘What if it isn’t?’
The tardy bell rang and Craig nervously stepped inside. Despite the air conditioning he found himself sweating and shaking. The class chatted quietly as he walked to the table at the front of the room next to his desk where he had placed his briefcase. He opened up the briefcase and there the 9mm sat in the bottom, gleaming in the overhead lights of the classroom. He closed the briefcase and began to teach class.
He got more and more nervous as the class progressed and last second doubts flew up to haunt him. At ten minutes to the end of class he chickened out. He stopped teaching to let the class begin their homework early. At five minutes until class was over there was a knock on the door. One of the students near it opened it and Jenny Meadows walked in with a piece of paper in her hand. She walked up to Craig where he sat behind his desk and handed the paper to him.
It was a note folded over and stapled together. Already spooked by the unexpected reappearance of Jenny Meadows, he nervously opened the paper. On it was a computer printed note. All it said was, ‘What will you do?’
Craig looked up at Jenny, who still stood beside his desk as if she expected an answer. “Th-Thanks,” he managed to stammer.
“You’re welcome,” Jenny said and smiled, revealing her braces. She turned and walked out of the room.
His shirt nearly covered in sweat, Craig looked at the clock on the wall. Three minutes until the bell rang to dismiss class. Time to decide.
He stood up and walked to the briefcase, still left closed on top of the table. He opened the briefcase and looked at the gun. He looked back at the clock. Two minutes. He looked back down at the gun and licked his lips, then at the note he noticed he still had in his hand. ‘What will you do?’ it asked. Back to the clock. One minute.
He reached into the briefcase and grasped the gun.
“Mr. MacDonald!” one of the girls in the class shrieked as she saw the gun.
“Coach!” one of his basketball players gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Is that thing real?” asked another student in disbelief.
Craig ignored them as if they didn’t exist and made his way between desks to where Kenny Daniels sat in the back of the room. He was caught in the middle of putting his things away in his backpack and had a look of dumbfounded horror on his face as the teacher with the crazed look and the gun in his hand advanced on him.
Students bailed out of desks all around as Craig calmly stalked his prey in the back of the room in silence. Those students nearest the door ran out of it screaming about a gun as the dismissal bell rang. Those students caught between Craig and the door, crowded up against the back wall. Once they were sure Craig’s attention was focused on Kenny, they parted away from him like Moses and the Red Sea. To Craig, they didn’t exist.
Kenny plastered himself against the back wall in shock, his mouth opening and closing but no words coming out. Craig pressed the muzzle of the gun against the boy’s trembling chest. Kenny’s eyes were wide with fright and sweat broke out on his forehead and lip. He breathed in and out heavily, gulping air.
“Why?” he croaked as he looked into Craig’s eyes, the pressure of the gun barrel boring into his chest.
“For all the murders you won’t commit,” Craig said like an emotionless robot.
“What? What?” Kenny whispered, pleading evident in his eyes and voice. “I haven’t committed any murders!”
“You will. Or you would have,” Craig said calmly with confident assurance.
“Craig!” Deputy Hess, the school resource officer, shouted as he pushed his way between the brave or foolhardy students who had gathered at the door to see what would happen. Hess advanced into the room with both hands on his own drawn weapon, aimed steadily at the teacher. Craig turned to look at him but kept the gun pressed against Kenny’s chest.
“Put the gun down, Craig,” Hess gently ordered Craig as if he were speaking to a small child.
Craig looked at the deputy as if he didn’t know who he was or why he was there, although they had been friends for as long as Craig had worked at the school. Dismissing the deputy and his gun as of no consequence, Craig turned his attention back to Kenny.
“Please,” Kenny begged, tears streaming down his face. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“Don’t do it, Craig!” Hess shouted across the room to distract Craig from what he intended to do. He was carefully moving to be in a position to gun down the teacher without endangering the student.
Craig looked back at Hess, and for a moment recognition seemed to dawn on his face, at least in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said softly over his shoulder to the deputy.
Then he looked back down at Kenny. He moved the gun up to the boy’s heart. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Kenny began to sob, “No, no, no.”
“Craig!” Hess screamed at the same time that Craig pulled the trigger. In rapid succession he pulled the trigger five times, before fire from Hess’s gun put him down. Kenny’s bullet-wracked body slid down the wall, leaving a trail of blood on the brick tiles. Craig landed on top of him. Craig stared into the dying boy’s eyes.
“Why?” Kenny whispered again as his eyes glazed over.
Craig rolled off the boy and looked over at the classroom door. There among the students stood Jenny Meadows, with a look of total and complete horror on her face. ‘Now you get to live,’ Craig thought as he smiled at her. ‘Make it a good life.’ As his own life began to ebb from him, Craig thought of 200 more faces that would now get to live, now that he had completed his task. His eyes refocused and he saw Hess standing over him with his gun still drawn and pointed at him. Then Craig remembered something else.
“Future didn’t get everything right,” he whispered as much to himself as to the deputy.
“What?” Hess asked, confused at the deranged killer’s last, incoherent statement.
The deputy alertly saw Craig weakly raise the gun and straightened his arms for a clean shot at the wounded teacher. Then too late he saw where the gun barrel was headed.
Craig put the gun to his temple. “I’m not going to the executioner.”
Hess let go of his gun with his weak hand and tried in vain to reach Craig’s gun and knock it out of Craig’s hand before the teacher pulled the trigger one last time.
“Craig, no!” Hess shouted, but he was too late.
Below the words the screen was split between two newspaper stories. On the left was the original story he had been directed to by the emails, that of the Full Moon Killer’s confession of over 200 murders. On the right side was the story of Craig’s own execution.
Craig sat still for some time, stunned. He couldn’t help the feeling that someone was grooming him to kill a student for some unknown reason. On the other hand, all of the pictures and the stories seemed so real, too real, in fact, and too well organized for someone to have concocted them up so neatly and tied everything together into such a nice, neat package. What if it was true? What if this was what the future could look like unless he did something, something he definitely did not want to do but maybe had to do. He thought what if someone had future knowledge of the Boston Strangler or the Son of Sam or the Hillside Strangler or the Yorkshire Ripper and had the power to prevent all the murders.
He slowly and calmly got up from the computer and went to the large closet in the master bedroom. In the back of it was a gun safe. He stared at the safe for a short time before he opened it. Inside it he kept a 20ga shotgun, a .30-06 hunting rifle, and two handguns. He picked up the Beretta 9mm from the top shelf and held it in his hand. He popped out the magazine to make sure it was loaded and pushed it back in again. Two hundred lives for one, he thought. It seemed a fair trade to him. He closed the door to the gun safe and went to put the Beretta in his briefcase.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Having made up his mind and with the future set, Craig felt good as he went to school but as the day dragged on he began to have doubts. As second thoughts flooded his mind, he began to dread the coming of fourth period when he would have to face Kenny Daniels, innocent student and future serial killer. He was about to chicken out at the end of 3rd period when he saw an unsuspecting Jenny Meadows walk by. He stared at her in passing. She saw him and smiled. When he saw her braces, the same braces he had seen in the picture that accompanied the story of her murder, he made up his mind.
Just as Jenny had passed from sight, Kenny Daniels appeared at the door to the classroom. As he walked in he said, “What’s up, Mr. MacDonald,” and continued on into the room.
Craig’s will threatened to shatter and he said nothing. Something in the back of his mind screamed, ‘What if it’s all an elaborate hoax?’ Another part, the part that remembered the 200 smiling faces, retorted, ‘What if it isn’t?’
The tardy bell rang and Craig nervously stepped inside. Despite the air conditioning he found himself sweating and shaking. The class chatted quietly as he walked to the table at the front of the room next to his desk where he had placed his briefcase. He opened up the briefcase and there the 9mm sat in the bottom, gleaming in the overhead lights of the classroom. He closed the briefcase and began to teach class.
He got more and more nervous as the class progressed and last second doubts flew up to haunt him. At ten minutes to the end of class he chickened out. He stopped teaching to let the class begin their homework early. At five minutes until class was over there was a knock on the door. One of the students near it opened it and Jenny Meadows walked in with a piece of paper in her hand. She walked up to Craig where he sat behind his desk and handed the paper to him.
It was a note folded over and stapled together. Already spooked by the unexpected reappearance of Jenny Meadows, he nervously opened the paper. On it was a computer printed note. All it said was, ‘What will you do?’
Craig looked up at Jenny, who still stood beside his desk as if she expected an answer. “Th-Thanks,” he managed to stammer.
“You’re welcome,” Jenny said and smiled, revealing her braces. She turned and walked out of the room.
His shirt nearly covered in sweat, Craig looked at the clock on the wall. Three minutes until the bell rang to dismiss class. Time to decide.
He stood up and walked to the briefcase, still left closed on top of the table. He opened the briefcase and looked at the gun. He looked back at the clock. Two minutes. He looked back down at the gun and licked his lips, then at the note he noticed he still had in his hand. ‘What will you do?’ it asked. Back to the clock. One minute.
He reached into the briefcase and grasped the gun.
“Mr. MacDonald!” one of the girls in the class shrieked as she saw the gun.
“Coach!” one of his basketball players gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Is that thing real?” asked another student in disbelief.
Craig ignored them as if they didn’t exist and made his way between desks to where Kenny Daniels sat in the back of the room. He was caught in the middle of putting his things away in his backpack and had a look of dumbfounded horror on his face as the teacher with the crazed look and the gun in his hand advanced on him.
Students bailed out of desks all around as Craig calmly stalked his prey in the back of the room in silence. Those students nearest the door ran out of it screaming about a gun as the dismissal bell rang. Those students caught between Craig and the door, crowded up against the back wall. Once they were sure Craig’s attention was focused on Kenny, they parted away from him like Moses and the Red Sea. To Craig, they didn’t exist.
Kenny plastered himself against the back wall in shock, his mouth opening and closing but no words coming out. Craig pressed the muzzle of the gun against the boy’s trembling chest. Kenny’s eyes were wide with fright and sweat broke out on his forehead and lip. He breathed in and out heavily, gulping air.
“Why?” he croaked as he looked into Craig’s eyes, the pressure of the gun barrel boring into his chest.
“For all the murders you won’t commit,” Craig said like an emotionless robot.
“What? What?” Kenny whispered, pleading evident in his eyes and voice. “I haven’t committed any murders!”
“You will. Or you would have,” Craig said calmly with confident assurance.
“Craig!” Deputy Hess, the school resource officer, shouted as he pushed his way between the brave or foolhardy students who had gathered at the door to see what would happen. Hess advanced into the room with both hands on his own drawn weapon, aimed steadily at the teacher. Craig turned to look at him but kept the gun pressed against Kenny’s chest.
“Put the gun down, Craig,” Hess gently ordered Craig as if he were speaking to a small child.
Craig looked at the deputy as if he didn’t know who he was or why he was there, although they had been friends for as long as Craig had worked at the school. Dismissing the deputy and his gun as of no consequence, Craig turned his attention back to Kenny.
“Please,” Kenny begged, tears streaming down his face. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“Don’t do it, Craig!” Hess shouted across the room to distract Craig from what he intended to do. He was carefully moving to be in a position to gun down the teacher without endangering the student.
Craig looked back at Hess, and for a moment recognition seemed to dawn on his face, at least in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said softly over his shoulder to the deputy.
Then he looked back down at Kenny. He moved the gun up to the boy’s heart. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Kenny began to sob, “No, no, no.”
“Craig!” Hess screamed at the same time that Craig pulled the trigger. In rapid succession he pulled the trigger five times, before fire from Hess’s gun put him down. Kenny’s bullet-wracked body slid down the wall, leaving a trail of blood on the brick tiles. Craig landed on top of him. Craig stared into the dying boy’s eyes.
“Why?” Kenny whispered again as his eyes glazed over.
Craig rolled off the boy and looked over at the classroom door. There among the students stood Jenny Meadows, with a look of total and complete horror on her face. ‘Now you get to live,’ Craig thought as he smiled at her. ‘Make it a good life.’ As his own life began to ebb from him, Craig thought of 200 more faces that would now get to live, now that he had completed his task. His eyes refocused and he saw Hess standing over him with his gun still drawn and pointed at him. Then Craig remembered something else.
“Future didn’t get everything right,” he whispered as much to himself as to the deputy.
“What?” Hess asked, confused at the deranged killer’s last, incoherent statement.
The deputy alertly saw Craig weakly raise the gun and straightened his arms for a clean shot at the wounded teacher. Then too late he saw where the gun barrel was headed.
Craig put the gun to his temple. “I’m not going to the executioner.”
Hess let go of his gun with his weak hand and tried in vain to reach Craig’s gun and knock it out of Craig’s hand before the teacher pulled the trigger one last time.
“Craig, no!” Hess shouted, but he was too late.
Miami Herald, Saturday, October 23, 2013
High School Teacher Kills Student, Then Self
WESTON – For unknown reasons, at the end of class yesterday, high school geography teacher and basketball coach Craig MacDonald of Sawgrass River High School pulled a gun from his briefcase and shot to death one of his students, 16 year old Kenny Daniels. MacDonald was then shot several times by school resource officer Charles Hess before he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide in front of the deputy and several stunned students.
With no apparent motive, investigators questioned several students and staff members. MacDonald and Daniels apparently
got along well. Neither teacher nor student had any prior history of problems at the school.
Most reacted with disbelief, although a few mentioned that MacDonald had not seemed quite himself for the last couple of days. Broadcasting teacher Les Ward reported that MacDonald had told him he had been receiving mysterious e-mails allegedly claiming Daniels would become a serial killer in the future and that was why MacDonald had done what he did. As of this time those reports are unconfirmed. Police removed computers from both MacDonald’s home and classroom.
Daniels’ parents reacted with outrage to the reports but no other explanation was forthcoming as to why a popular, veteran teacher would do such an out of character and senseless thing. Principal Dwight Guerrero reported that MacDonald was an exemplary teacher and coach and was horribly confused as to why he would commit such an irrational act. Funeral services for both Daniels and MacDonald are pending and grief counselors from the district are scheduled to be at the school in force on Monday.
Jeff Vanderslice
High School Teacher Kills Student, Then Self
WESTON – For unknown reasons, at the end of class yesterday, high school geography teacher and basketball coach Craig MacDonald of Sawgrass River High School pulled a gun from his briefcase and shot to death one of his students, 16 year old Kenny Daniels. MacDonald was then shot several times by school resource officer Charles Hess before he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide in front of the deputy and several stunned students.
With no apparent motive, investigators questioned several students and staff members. MacDonald and Daniels apparently
got along well. Neither teacher nor student had any prior history of problems at the school.
Most reacted with disbelief, although a few mentioned that MacDonald had not seemed quite himself for the last couple of days. Broadcasting teacher Les Ward reported that MacDonald had told him he had been receiving mysterious e-mails allegedly claiming Daniels would become a serial killer in the future and that was why MacDonald had done what he did. As of this time those reports are unconfirmed. Police removed computers from both MacDonald’s home and classroom.
Daniels’ parents reacted with outrage to the reports but no other explanation was forthcoming as to why a popular, veteran teacher would do such an out of character and senseless thing. Principal Dwight Guerrero reported that MacDonald was an exemplary teacher and coach and was horribly confused as to why he would commit such an irrational act. Funeral services for both Daniels and MacDonald are pending and grief counselors from the district are scheduled to be at the school in force on Monday.
Jeff Vanderslice