The Cutprice Guignol

Please note that this article contains discussions of suicide, self-harm, and depression, including discussions of specific suicide methods.

In November, 2006, Celia Bray received a message from a young woman she had become friends with over the internet – a message letting Bray know that her friend had entered into a suicide pact, and planned to take her life in the coming days.

Bray, then sixty, a retired schoolteacher living in Wiltshire, had connected with her friend (who lived in South America at the time) when she had stumbled across an online board for people suffering with suicidal ideation – though Bray had initially planned to use the internet to research her interest in medieval history, she had reached out to people on the forum and befriended a few of those struggling with suicidal thoughts, including the South American teenager who reached out to her one evening in November 2006.

The teenager told Bray that she had connected with another young woman on the board, a nurse who went by the username Li Dao, and that the two planned to end their lives at the same time from across the world, while on video chat to one another to ensure that they wouldn’t be alone. Bray, more than anything, was angry – angry that her friend had been talked into such a thing, angry that she had not received the treatment she needed for her problems, angry that her life might be over before she’d so much reached adulthood. Bray remained in contact with her friend and, just four hours before the pact was due to be carried out, she managed to talk her out of going through with the suicide attempt.

But, Bray soon realized, this was not Li Dao’s first attempt at convincing a member of the forum to take their own lives on the other end of a webcam feed. Because Dao was not, as she claimed, a young female nurse struggling with depression and other mental health issues like so many on the forum – but a man coaxing others to kill themselves who’d exploited the users of these forums to

William Francis Melchert-Dinkel first discovered these forums in the early 2000s – in his early forties at the time, he lived with his wife and their two children in Minnesota, and was registered as an LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse). What led to the development of this fetish isn’t clear – Melchert-Dinkel has not spoken on the matter himself, nor is there much research into the fetishization of suicide or self-harm. With that said, based on the messages that were later released as part of the case against Melchert-Dinkel, it seems clear that he had a personal interest in suicide, particularly instances of hanging, and it was with that in mind that he began to seek victims on these forums. He went by various usernames, but the most prominent was Li Dao, a twenty-five-year-old woman and “veteran nurse” who was currently struggling with her own suicidal ideation and depression.

It was under this assumed identity that Melchert-Dinkel made contact with Mark Drybrough for the first time, in early July 2005. Drybrough, a thirty-two-year-old IT technician from the UK, was struggling with severe mental and physical health issues, according to his exchanges with the person he thought to be Li Dao – after a bout of glandular fever several years earlier, he had been left with debilitating fatigue and pain along with severe depression. Seeking to end his life, Drybrough posted on the forum asking for advice on how to hang himself, to which Dao replied, offering her point of view as a nurse and claiming that she had attempted the method several times before and that it would be the one she used “for certain” when she ended her life.

Drybrough continued to post on the board, searching for answers as to how to effectively take his life via drug overdose. When Dao saw these posts, however, she reached out to Drybrough personally to try and steer him back towards suicide via hanging, emphasizing that it was the “best and surest” method if he was “serious about dying”. The message ended with “good luck”.

The two began to exchange messages, wherein Dao continued to press the idea of suicide via hanging to Drybrough as the best method, peppered with kisses and pet names. Drybrough’s messages speak to the depths of his mental distress at the time – “I know that it won’t get better,” he wrote to Dao, “but nobody I know will accept that it’s true and they say good things on my behalf, so I don’t mention it as much as possible, then I feel alone in having to keep it to myself”, a sentiment that’s all too recognizable to anyone who’s lived with depression or suicidal ideation. Drybrough, according to his messages, seemed to be distancing himself from his family, indicating that he couldn’t meet with his parents due to marks that a test ligature had left on his neck – in his final weeks, it seemed as though he was in contact with few people other than Dao.

Dao, for her part, seemed supportive – insisting that Drybrough keep in touch with her and that if he had questions, she’d be happy to answer them. She revealed that she’d been in contact with other suicidal people online, including a male friend who she had watched end his life via webcam just two weeks before she contacted Mark. “He asked if I could be with him when he died,” she wrote to Drybrough. “He asked if he could hang himself to death while I watched on the web cam [sic]…in the end I watched him go and it was very peaceful”.

When Drybrough went quiet for a few days, Dao contacted him again, making sure he knew that she was there “to care [sic] and help you”. Drybrough replied, in his final message to Dao, telling her that he was holding on to hope that things might change – “I admire your courage”, he wrote to Dao. “I wish I had it.”

When Dao emailed Drybrough again on 27th July, 2006, he had already taken his life via hanging. However, Melchert-Dinkel would soon move on to new targets – and, just two years later, he found her.

Nadia Kajouji posted looking for advice on a forum related to suicide on March 1st, 2008. Kajouji, who was eighteen at the time, had recently left home to begin studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada – she’d suffered from depression for a lengthy period, but, over the holidays, she found that her mental distress had become unbearable, and she sought to end her life. In her post, under the username tearawayface, she asked for advice on how to successfully carry out a suicide – she hoped to make her death look like an accident to spare her friends and family further distress. A few forum users left comments under her post – some urging her to seek help for her suicidal ideation, some suggesting methods that might fit her needs – but one, a user who went by the name falcon_girl, reached out to Kajouji directly where they began a private correspondence.

falcon_girl and Kajouji exchanged dozens of messages over the coming days. falcon_girl described herself as a thirty-one-year-old nurse who had suffered from depression for more than a decade, and had decided to end her life the year before – due to her work as an emergency nurse, she claimed to know the best methods of suicide to ensure a quick and painless death. Of course, within just a few messages, falcon_girl had told Kajouji that hanging was the most effective method. When Kajouji communicated her intentions to jump from a bridge to make her death look like an accident, she warned her that “most people puss out….I was going to suggest hanging”.

Kajouji was certain in her planned method, though falcon_girl continually circled the conversation to the topic of hanging, even suggesting that the two did it together – “if you wanted to do hanging,” she wrote to her, once Kajouji had re-iterated her plans to jump from a bridge, “we could have done it together on line [sic] so it would not have been so scary for you”. Kajouji remarked that she was worried about surviving the attempt and being left with permanent injuries as a result, to which falcon_girl assured her that she had “never seen a failed hanging that is why i [sic] chose that” (in truth, around 77% of attempted hanging cases do not end in death but can cause severe injury to the victim). She offered to help Kajouji with purchasing an appropriate ligature for hanging and with the positioning of the rope via webcam – “but we’ll cross that path if/when it comes to it hun”.

They continued to chat over the following days, both expressing their desire to end their lives – falcon_girl tried to coax Kajouji on to a webcam call so they could smoke together, but Kajouji declined. By March 8th, Kajouji had begun to get her affairs in order and intended to carry out her suicide in the following days – falcon_girl told her that she had been pondering her own imminent suicide too, “how that final moment attached tot eh [sic] rope ready to step off the stool will feel like”. When Nadia wondered how it would feel to die, falcon_girl replied “nice”. Nadia agreed.

On March 10th, Kajouji carried out her plans. Her body was found in the nearby Rideau River, and she was determined to have died from either drowning or cold water immersion. She was wearing ice skates at the time of her death, a detail she had mentioned as part of her plan to frame her death as an accident – she had expressed her hope that family and friends would assume that she had fallen through the ice while skating.

After Kajouji’s death, the contents of her computer were reviewed, and the conversations between falcon_girl and Kajouji were discovered. A detective from the Ottawa Police Service became concerned that falcon_girl may also have taken her life or be planning to, and, in May 2008, tracked her IP address to the city of Mankato, Minnesota – where Melchert-Dinkel lived with his family.

Melchert-Dinkel contacted the local police department regarding the discovery, and informed them that the falcon_girl screenname was one used by one of his daughters – he suggested that his daughter may have had medical knowledge due to her mother’s involvement in the medical profession, and that he planned to address his daughter’s behavioural issues following the death of Kajouji. For the time being, it seemed as though Melchert-Dinkel’s involvement in the two deaths would go uncontended with – but, unbeknownst to him, a target he had acquired earlier that year would lead to the eventual exposure of the truth.

After her conversation with her teenage friend in 2006, Celia Bray had spent several months investigating the Li Dao username on her own time – she soon discovered that Dao had used the screennames Cami D. and variations of Falcon Girl, and that the pact made with her South American contact was far from a new venture for the self-proclaimed nurse. Dao had made several suicide pacts with people via the forums, most of them focused on hanging – Dao would agree with her target that they would end their lives at the same time via webcam, and then, at a crucial moment, she’d claim that her camera wasn’t working and that she would simply watch. How many of these instances were successful is unclear (though Bray herself believes the number of victims to be in the double figures) but one thing was certain – Dao was making these pacts for reasons far removed than her purported claims of sharing her final moments with another person.

Once Bray had collected some evidence from the previous targets of the Dao username, she brought it to her local police, who chose not to move forward with any investigation – much to Bray’s chagrin. But, despite the brush-off from authorities, Bray persisted in her attempts to expose and stop Dao – eventually enlisting the help of Kat Lowe. Lowe, a friend of Bray’s from Wolverhampton, was the perfect bait for the trap to lure Dao under the falcon girl username – Lowe had dealt with a number of personal problems before, and was, at the time Bray contacted her, was struggling with suicidal ideation. But her current mindset gave her an edge of realism that soon lured in the person behind the falcon girl username, and, with the help of Bray, Lowe began to converse with her in early 2008. Just weeks later, falcon_girl would make contact with Kajouji.

Even though she was distinctly aware of the methods used by Dao to manipulate her targets, Lowe soon found herself drawn in – purchasing alcohol and a rope based on Dao’s specifications. When questioned about previous suicide pacts she had been part of, Dao claimed that various factors, such as new medication, had encouraged her not to go through with her end of the pact, but that this time, she was truly ready to die.

Over the course of their conversation, Lowe was able to piece together enough information to identify the person behind the various usernames as William Francis Melchert-Dinkel – including a brief glimpse of him via a webcam video. With the new information acquired by Lowe, Bray contacted authorities once more, along with, this time, the FBI. They once again declined to investigate, but the Saint Paul Police Department eventually picked up the information she had on Melchert-Dinkel, and, at last, authorities met with Melchert-Dinkel at his home in Minnesota to question him about his involvement with the suicide forums.

Melchert-Dinkel was quick to defend himself – claiming that he viewed himself as an advocate for those suffering with suicidal ideation, and that his conversations with suicidal people had been an attempt to make their deaths as painless or quick as possible. He admitted to entering into five suicide pacts with various people he met via the forums over the years, though he claimed only two of them had gone on to take their lives – these people, of course, being Drybrough and Kajouji. When explaining to his wife what he was being questioned over, Melchert-Dinkel told her that he was “being an advocate or helper or, or, God, or something”. When he was brought to hospital after his initial arrest, a nurse noted on his file that he had a suicide fetish, and claimed to have been involved in the suicide of two people.

Despite his assertations to the Associated Press that he had “moved on with his life”, Melchert-Dinkel was charged with advising, encouraging, or assisting both Drybrough and Kajouji in ending their lives, and was convicted on March 15th, 2011 – just over three years since Kajouji’s death. He faced just under a year in jail, a verdict which he appealed; after serving 178 days in prison, he was released with ten years’ probation, his nursing license revoked. His wife chose to stand by him, saying that she understood and accepted his actions as having sprung from a sexual fetish for suicide.

Nadia Kajouji would have been around thirty-five had she not taken her life in 2008 after Melchert-Dinkel’s encouragement and advice. Mark Drybrough would have been fifty-two. They are just two of the estimated 720,000 people who die by suicide every year, and, while we’ll never know if they would have acted on their ideation had it not been for Melchert-Dinkel, their loss is just as enormous. If you’re dealing with suicidal ideation, please know that you’re not alone and there are resources out there for you – here’s a list of resources related to suicidality by country, and here’s a great resource for beginning conversations about suicide with someone you’re concerned about. If you have any resources you’d like to share, please feel free to drop them in the comments below.

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Other True Crime Writing:

The Sex Slave, the BDSM Blog, and the Murder

The Impossible Case of the Pimlico Poisoning

The Mystery of the Phantom of Heilbronn

The Troubled Life and Debated Death of Cindy James

Sources:

Minnesota Court Files regarding the case: original case – appeal

Wiltshire Times article on Celia Bray

The Times article on Celia Bray