Sharon Lopatka

Sharon Rina Lopatka (September 20, 1961 – October 16, 1996) was a female Internet entrepreneur in Hampstead, Maryland, United States, who was killed in a case of apparent consensual homicide. Lopatka was tortured and strangled to death on October 16, 1996 by Robert Frederick Glass, a computer analyst from North Carolina. Apparently, the purpose was mutual sexual gratification. The case became the earliest widely publicized example of a consensual homicide mediated through the use of the Internet.

Lopatka's life

The former Sharon Denburg grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland in an Orthodox Jewish home. She was the daughter of Abraham Denburg, formerly the cantor of Beth Tfiloh Congregation. When she was 29, she married Victor Lopatka, an Ellicott City, Maryland native and a practicing Catholic, in an act she considered to be a rebellion against her Jewish upbringing [ [http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0523.html FoRK Archive: Networking With Stranger Was Fatal ] ] .

Lopatka started an internet-based business from a kit she purchased from an Arizona-based company. This enabled her to profit from the use of 900-numbers to give psychic readings [ [http://baltimoretimeline.com/murders.htm Baltimore Haunting Murders ] ] .

The killing

Using the Internet, where she also advertised pornography related to unusual sexual fetishes, Lopatka searched for a man who would torture and kill her. After contacting several people who turned out not to be serious, she finally found someone willing to fulfill her request. Glass and Lopatka exchanged many e-mails until they met in North Carolina, where Glass strangled Lopatka using a nylon cord after torturing her for several days. Glass was later convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the act. He was also found to be in possession of child pornography.

The case shows some similarities to the Internet-mediated cannibalistic killing of Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes by Armin Meiwes in March 2001 in Germany.

External links

* Bell, Rachael: [http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/sharon_lopatka/1.html?sect=13 Internet Assisted Suicide: The Story of Sharon Lopatka at CrimeLibrary.com]

References