She dug into his past and found out he’d spent time in prison for assault and robbery and seemed to have adopted radical views behind bars. She started screenshotting everything Finton posted. Back when you could post all the crazy shit you wanted online and no one really took you seriously. This was before Dylann Roof used the internet to self-radicalize, before men flocked to message boards to tap out screeds against women, before the El Paso shooter reportedly dropped his delusional final manifesto on social media. The page gave her a primal, hairs-on-end feeling that she’d learned not to ignore.īack then, online rage was still relatively new. She came across Finton’s Myspace profile in 2007 and was disturbed by what she saw: videos of Islamic extremists carrying out brutal killings alongside quotes glorifying religious martyrdom. He also wanted to kill as many people as he could.Īn elite investigator who tracks angry men online, she’s known to some in her field as the Savant because of her uncanny ability to suss out when, exactly, hate speech will morph into violent action. He liked to hang out and play cards and watch soccer. He was 29 and unmarried, with red hair and white skin, described as polite by his coworkers, as the mild-mannered guy next door by his neighbors. Michael Finton was living in Decatur, Illinois, a shrinking manufacturing town, working as a part-time cook at a cheap take-out joint. Content warning: This story contains details about violence and sexual assault.
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