The sage advice “don’t talk to strangers on the internet” went unheeded by 19-year-old Marissa Williams. She recently took her bad choices to the extreme with a man she propositioned for sex over Facebook, asking him to do the unthinkable: kidnap her and murder her aunt and family. Unknown to her was that the man, Tre “Topdog” Ellis, was actually a fictional profile created by her aunt.
According to Al.com , Marissa had only lived with her aunt in Fosters, Alabama since April. Marissa’s behavior caused problems from the beginning because she was in the habit of inviting men she met online over to her aunt’s house.
Her aunt put her foot down and told her that was unacceptable, as was going to parties with strangers she met over the internet. That didn’t go over well with the rebellious teen, who then blocked her aunt on Facebook.
In an attempt to keep tabs on her niece, the aunt opened up a fictitious Facebook account , reports Time . Posing as Tre “Topdog” Ellis, she sent her niece a friend request in late May. The request was readily accepted by the teen.
From day one, Marissa’s online behavior with the alias was dangerous and bizarre. Ignoring every principle of online safety ever taught, she gave the fictitious boy her phone number and address, and asked Ellis to come over to get drunk with her. She even told this person she had never met that she would have sex with him if he would pay her $50 cell phone bill.
It only got worse from there.
Over the next few days, Marissa told the boy how unhappy she was in Alabama and how angry she was with her family. The Facebook friendship solicitation quickly devolved into a murder/kidnapping plot. According to court documents, Marissa asked Tre to kidnap her and take her away. If her aunt got in his way, Williams told him to shoot her.
The plot grew “increasingly intricate and sinister” as time passed. In a deposition, Marissa’s aunt told authorities that her niece described to Tre how to get into her aunt’s bedroom so that he could murder her and her fiance first, while the teen loaded her things into his car. She asked Tre to shoot her cousin and the dog “on the way out.”
The horrified aunt called the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office to report the frightening scheme being plotted in her own house, and asked for help.
When police arrived at the home, Marissa admitted to the plot, but reportedly told the deputies that she “didn’t really mean for anyone to be killed.” She has been arrested and now sits in the Tuscaloosa County jail on charges of solicitation of murder. Her bond has been set at $30,000.
One would hope that Marissa does not have internet access while in jail.
The Inquisitr has covered several stories in the past of murders being committed over Facebook feuds by unstable or psychotic people . Social media has also been used to expose criminal behavior.
Thankfully, it was her aunt’s fake Facebook profile that Marissa Williams asked to murder her family. Had it been someone else, this story could have had a much more tragic ending.
[images via Al.com and bing]