Statement about the tragedy in Fullerton, CA.
by Patch O'Furr
Please visit this GoFundMe campaign for expenses for surviving kids.
There has been a lot of talk about a tragedy this weekend in Southern California.
- ABC: Suspects, Victims in California Killings Were ‘Furries’
- Orange County Register: 4 connected in Fullerton triple homicide have ties to furry community
- NY Daily News: California couple found killed in home mourned by furry community
I wanted to say something about these ties:
This is very sad for everyone. There might be unusual headlines about it, but the social connection could happen with a group of workers, students or anyone else. Killing is against everything our little fan group is for. Thanks are due to the OC Register for telling the purpose in the bottom line, with a quote from a local member: “People come to us to get away from the negative stuff in life.”
This is a niche interest, so when something like this happens, it’s personal tragedy to us beyond just a news story to others. Many members have lost friends or have very close ties to those who did. Please send thoughts to them, and the surviving kids most of all.
I felt a little responsible for saying something, because of the way things started to happen when news started coming out. At first, it was just a call to locate a Missing Person (a fur) who was soon located. I tweeted that and got a high amount of views.
When more came out, I looked into it deeply to write a big story. I talked to people close to it, with personal knowledge that nobody else had. Some info came out that was directed to the police. Then I saw people local to the story asking for space. They asked for it to be kept as their story, given time to process, and handled by professionals and cops. That was when I decided this is beyond fan level. I removed all my tweets and passed on their message.
I think it really is the worst thing that ever happened with ties to this community. It’s not that unusual compared to other crimes that happen in cities, but I think it’s disproportionately big to a niche group. It might have to do with 2016’s explosion of interest and positive activity as well – things are just growing.
That wasn’t quite the end of it. The OC Register reporter had a lot of conversation with me due to my initial notice. They were puzzled about what furries are and what they do. Of course they already knew this was part of the story – that wouldn’t be overlooked. It made a dilemma – I thought that if tabloids were going to exploit this, maybe a real member should say something to real news.
So I sent the best info I could about the definition of “Furry” and referred the reporter to the same local person who I saw asking for space and respect. I thought he was already doing a good job of handling it. So when you see Bandit speaking in the piece, it’s not for attention, it’s because he was asked. Remember that he lost friends, like everyone else close to this story, and that’s the real deal.
There were a few missteps from the OC Register piece (nobody said anything about “sensitive” topics,) but Bandit seems to be getting many thank-you’s for doing a good job from local members. He mentioned turning down other interviews, and I think that’s a good idea. Say it once and let it go.
I have been checking around to see what comes out. I expect tabloids to try riding this, but most of the few I have seen so far seem pretty negligible, and I hope they get little mileage. They can say there’s weird stuff with misfit people, but nobody did a crime while participating in one of our activities. In the end it’s just between regular humans.
TL;DR: Was going to write a big report. Stopped to let locals and pros process. I think it’s beyond fan level. It’s awful and sad. There hasn’t been anything this bad in fandom before. Let it process and share good words to anyone who lost friends and family.
UPDATE 9/29/16:
Thank you to the OC Register and reporter Scott Schwebke for linking here. And thank you to Scott for being professional and sensitive, and doing good detective work. I believe that Scott’s reporting has helped to stop rumors and confusion. There was a screenshot of a supposed murder confession that was degraded enough that you could see it was shared hundreds or thousands of times, before it was posted out-of-context on some trashy tabloid blogs. Scott dug up the source and provided context that I think shows it could NOT have been a reasonable clue of real danger before the incident. Thank you to everyone in the community who stepped up to provide such info to aid police investigation. Everyone’s concern will help heal this incident to heal in time.
This is horrible. 🙁 As a community we can call ourselves lucky that by now the media has already got some priming about what the furry fandom is about due to the success of Zootopia and Fursonas and the abundance of introduction articles which appeared in the last few months. Some media will want to learn more about the community but I think they will be careful overall since we aren’t a shady group nobody has heard of before. If something like this had happened ten years ago, at the height of both anti-furry trolling and dumb public behaviors by furries, the community as a whole could have been shred to pieces by the media and discredited beyond remedy.
(By the way I haven’t forgotten to reply to your questions in my reply to the Fursonas articles, I’ve just been extremely busy and tired due to the summer conventions and random life stuff. 😛 But I still have the tab open for as soon as I’ll be able to catch breath.)
I don’t actually think it’s that proportionally big for our fandom. The murder rate in the US is 7.6 intentional homicides per year per 100,000 people, and world wide we’re at about the same. I figure we have around 75,000 to 150,000 people world wide.
A triple murder family killing where multiple young witnesses are left alive is going to be bigger than fandom no matter what, though. It’s almost instantly national news, doubly so when there’s recordings of the 911 calls. There’s no real way around that, and while I think this should be left for the pros , it’ll never be a “local furry group story.” It can’t, by it’s nature. You cannot ask the entire US to be on the lookout for someone and then take it back local, it’s already out there. It’s not local business when it’s made national business.
Fortunately, this seems pretty cut and dry (and sad), and it’ll probably be a non-story as soon as the plea deals come in.
It’s proportionally big with how many people are personally connected. Everyone in So Cal who went to the P.S. meets knew one of the 6 people or knows someone who did. It’s a tight knit community.
It’s proportionally big with how bad it is among furs. There hasn’t been a violent crime of this scale for them before, even the MFF chlorine incident didn’t kill anyone.
It’s a local story in the sense that the personal details of it need to be left unmolested. Nobody needs to have personal photos of furry meets and costuming paraded under headlines about murder. Nobody who is just an onlooker should be prying. I would include myself in that apart from the “running a furry news blog” and won’t put out pics or details beyond a little statement.
The social connection is undeniably important, when I’m told all 6 involved had fan ties. So I believe it is completely fair for the news to discuss it. But it could be Country Music, Sports or Nascar just the same and those aren’t about murder or crime either.
The local reporting by the OC Weekly seems to be doing the best job of respect and sensitivity as far as I have seen. The worst I have seen so far is clickbait garbage from Heavy.com who needs to back away.
Oh, I totally get that. It should be left alone.. and it shouldn’t be taken advantage of, but it will be. Walk into any bookstore and you’ll find the same people writing the crime stories for the major newspapers are selling the True Crime novels about that very story. And a triple murder _IS_ newsworthy, and this will be fodder for a true crime novel.
You’re right, though, it could have been anything, and honestly any of those subjects like Country Music or sports or NASCAR would probably have the same level of attention poured on it, and it would have people digging a bit deeper into it.
That said, there have been murders and double murders in the fandom before. There have been murder suicides in the fandom before. There have been multiple child sexual assaults in the fandom before, and people seem to have let those events go with time.
I’m quite a news hound.. lion.. junkie.. myself, and ultimately , and sadly, we’re a culture that thrives on gossip and news, and this one’s going to be around for a bit. That’s sad, and I’m glad you’re respectfully distancing yourself (and I’m the same coderlion on twitter, once I discovered where the story was going I too stepped back and away), but there’s not going to be much in the way of leeway from the overly nosy and in your face socal press. They’re playing nice now, but these are the same people that pay for photos of celebs losing their shit. They’ll play mean soon enough.
I think things are fine with the local press, ones actually in the community, actually being helpful.
There was a screenshot being shared all over – it was heavily generated enough to indicate hundreds or thousands of shares. It went up on a trashy tabloid blog. It appeared to show one of the suspects confessing to planning murder before it happened. So, furries let it happen – horrible people right?
No – because Scott from the OC Weekly put in hard detective work to trace a source. Scott’s work got the rest of the chat and showed the “confession” was backtracked enough so the other person couldn’t have reasonably thought it was real. He settled a rumor that some other tabloid trash didn’t do by putting the one screenshot in context. Good for Scott.
Now, as to connecting furries and crime, good luck. My money says that meme doesn’t have much mileage. I saw it happen with goths and Columbine because the content of the music made it easy. In this case, they already have tried to connect cheesy halloween costumes and crime, but there’s not much shocking to show. It’s just cheesy. Now about trying to make it a sex thing, good luck with that too. These are times of legal weed and gay marriage and everyone has crazy shit all at their fingertips on the net (including hardcore christians, who use it too). Weird misfit people with fuzzy costumes… big deal. Tabloids can smear individuals but it just isn’t all that big a deal with the group any more. Sex scandals are passe.