10 Disturbing Crimes Solved By Amateurs
4. Nurse Of Death: Retired Schoolteacher Stops Suicide Provocateur
Seeking aid with her depression online after suffering a miscarriage of an unwanted pregnancy, Nadia Kajouji entered a forum, created a speculative post about suicide, and encountered a self-professed female nurse living in Minneapolis. The nurse’s username was ‘Cami D’, and she prompted the vulnerable Kajouji to enter a suicide pact by assuring that the feeling of death was ‘nice’.
Alone, depressed, and encouraged to record her final act, 18-year-old Kajouji leaped off a bridge and was found on the banks of Ottawa’s Rideau River in April 2008.
Retired British schoolteacher, Celia Blay, was counselling online when she learned about Cami D and uncovered that she was indeed a professional trained to help people, but one housed in Faribault, Minnesota with a scrotum. The nurse of death’s real identity was William Melchert-Dinkel, a married father of two who had found joy in using online aliases to persuade unhappy people to off themselves since 2005.
Blay’s involvement resulted in the authorities confronting and taking down the online miscreant. Although the former nurse unjustly had his initial sentence of 360 days reversed by the Minnesota Supreme Court on First Amendment Grounds and the feeble defence that his acts were immoral but not illegal, Kajouji’s brother, Marc, was grateful for the media’s reporting of the case and vowed to help people suffering with severe depression. He was later convicted on one count of assisted suicide, serving a paltry 178 days in jail.