More RA Students Slain

[ham]

Not seeing any unaccredited schools on this list. Looks like the gold standard has another monopoly.

Good point.

People do not tend to get killed in Distance Learning environments. Maybe somebody's wife might get pissed at him spending too much time on the computer and shoot him. But I have not heard of such a thing happening.

It has.
There are at least a few murders arisen out of online interaction. The funniest story follows:

In his day job, Russell Tavares was a skilled technician trained to operate the US Navy's state-of-the-art Aegis combat system. Among the many complex and onerous tasks he performed as fire controlman 2nd class, it was his job to trigger the launch of million-dollar missiles aimed at the enemy's distant lair.

But it was another long-range salvo launched while he was off-duty that landed Petty Officer Tavares in deep, deep trouble, ultimately costing the 27-year-old his reputation, career and last month - his freedom.

A frequenter of social networking websites, Tavares joined communities such as MySpace, Flickr, Deviant Art, Rate My Body and Geocities.

Calling himself PyroDice, he scattered details of his life across the internet. Such as the fact he owns a toy koala that his parents bought for him when he came to Australia as a 10-year-old, that his favourite pet was a Labrador retriever cross called Fergus and that he has a tattoo, but no piercings.

But if you play with strangers on the web, sometimes you can get hurt. And that's exactly what happened when Tavares started frequenting a site called Yafro. For reasons that no one can explain, Tavares became caught up in a bitter, long-running feud between members of what was otherwise an innocuous photo-sharing community.

Barbs were traded, insults thrown and threats made in an environment that grew increasingly hostile. The social networking site had morphed into an anti-social one. And for Tavares, it came to a head when John Anderson, a Yafro member calling himself Johnny Darkness, posted a digitally embellished image of Tavares.

The photo composition showed Tavares cradling a laptop in one arm, a pistol in the other and wearing a shirt with a pocket full of pens.

In the background, Anderson had photoshopped in the title from the 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds.

Tavares flipped. Anderson taunted him, daring Tavares to make good on his threat to "come and kick my butt", never believing for a moment that someone who lived 2000 kilometres away could physically threaten him.

But on October 9, 2005 - after driving from his base in Virginia, near Washington, DC - Tavares pulled up near a compound in the small community of Elm Mott near Waco in Texas.

There he knocked a hole in the side of a mobile home between a propane gas container and the hot water system, poured in a mixture of petrol and Styrofoam and ignited the flammable cocktail with a flare.

Moments later, the home belonging to John Anderson was engulfed in flames. No one was hurt in the fire, but the damage bill came to $US70,000.