Online Killers by Christopher Barry-Dee;Steven Morris Read Free Book Online Page A

It would not be quite right to say people in Lenoir are surprised at killings in their midst, because they get around six murders a year, even if they could not have dreamed up the scenario that follows.
    Rural America no longer is, and maybe never was, quite so sheltered as its apple-pie image suggests. “People think that, because this is a small town, these things don’t happen. It’s not true. We have people here no different than the big cities,” said Brenda Watson, owner of the Carolina Cafe at 209 Main Street NW. “And I wouldn’t let my kids walk alone here at night.”
    Indeed, former district attorney Flaherty claims, “Most of the murders are love triangles, but when Lopatka lost her life she also lost her anonymity, and she was none of the things she claimed to be.”
    In fact, according to her autopsy report, she was dark-haired with dark eyes set into a heavy face and five foot ten and 189 pounds when she died. Far from the wild video star she claimed to be, she lived her life quietly in a ranch-style home in Indian Court, a cul-de-sac in the quiet, hilly town of Hampstead, Maryland, where children play tag in front yards, dogs tease the post-man and deviancy is a failure to join recycling efforts.
    When Lopatka graduated from Pikesville High School in Baltimore in 1979, her name was Sharon Denburg. She had many friends and was a member of the volleyball and field hockey teams. During her junior and senior years, she was a nurse’s aide, a library aide and a singer in the school’s chorus.
    “She wasn’t an outcast or anything of that nature,” said Steven Hyman, who attended school with her. “She was about as
normal as you can get. I think making her this weird loner is just some media thing.”
    Sharon Denburg was the oldest of four daughters born to Mr. and Mrs. Abraham J. Denburg in 1961. The family lived in a suburb of Baltimore. Sharon Denburg’s parents were devout Orthodox Jews, who were active in the Beth Tfiloh, Baltimore’s largest Orthodox Jewish synagogue, where Abraham was a cantor. Sharon had been active in sports, sang in the school choir and was perceived by classmates to be “as normal as you can get,” reported the North Carolina News & Observer on November 3, 1996.
    In 1991, Sharon wed Victor, a Catholic construction worker from Ellicott City, but her parents did not approve. A former high-school classmate told the Washington Post on November 3, 1996, that the marriage was Sharon’s “way of breaking away.” Sharon moved with her husband to a small, ranch-style tract house in Hampstead in the early 1990s. They had no children.
    Sharon started up several small internet business ventures from her home to make some extra money. She made a new friend, Diane Safar, who lived nearby, and the two of them put together a 30-page booklet on home decorating and country crafts entitled Dion’s Secret of Home Decorating Guide .
    “Here we were decorating our houses one day and talking to each other for advice, and we just said, ‘Hey, we should put this stuff in a book,’” Safar explained. “We put it together and then we went around to ladies’ groups and churches selling it. It was fun.”
    “What I want people to know is the woman I knew was not crazy in the slightest,” Safar said of her friend. “She was always a happy person, always bubbly even. This person who was killed was not the person I knew.”

    In her business called Classified Concepts, Sharon rewrote ad copy for advertisers for $50 per advertisement. She also operated several other websites, where she sold psychic readings and advice. On the sites Sharon would also post ads selling other services, with a premium rate number for which she would receive a percentage of the revenue.
    Another way she made money was by advertising pornographic videos.
    All varieties of sex were for sale 24 hours a day in Sharon Lopatka’s world. She could provide nearly anything anybody desired at any time. With a tapping of