Two days after what would have been Amanda Todd’s 16th birthday, Kody Maxson—the man who Anonymous claims is behind the harassment and sexual exploitation that led her to take her own life—skipped out on two Surrey Provincial Court hearings in British Columbia.
Now there’s a warrant issued for the 19-year-old, who was due to appear in court twice Thursday for charges of theft under $5,000, sexual assault, and sexual interference (touching with “sexual purpose”) of a person under the age of 16.
The charges are unrelated to Amanda Todd’s death. In fact, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, investigating Todd’s suicide, had deemed Maxson a “person of no interest.” But Maxson—as I detail here and Kevin Morris discusses here—happened to be deeply involved in an online ring of pedophiles who were notorious for stalking, recording, extorting, blackmailing, and harassing teenage and preteenage girls.
One of those girls was Amanda Todd, whose chilling, eight-minute video went viral in October, shortly before her death. In it, she describes how as a 14-year-old, she visited the teen videochat hub BlogTV and was talked into flashing the camera. A lurker recorded the show and passed it around to a group of fellow “cappers.”
Later that month, Todd started receiving threats. A man asked her to strip and masturbate for him in private chat sessions, and, according to Todd, when she refused, he sent Todd’s topless images to her friends and family. That week, Todd gave Kody Maxson’s information to an anonymous source who passed it on to the producers of a Web series called The Daily Capper.
The informant called himself “kodypwned” and wrote, “I just got the full dox [personal info] of kody1206 (blackmailer of many like peyton, amanda, blahblahblah), Kody Maxson.”
Amanda’s family moved twice in the next two years, but the man continued to stalk, threaten, and blackmail her. Her schoolmates began to abuse her; when Amanda attempted suicide by drinking bleach, they told her to try again. She was pronounced dead October 10.
Days later, the hacker group Anonymous ID’d Kody Maxson as Amanda’s alleged blackmailer. Kody claimed he was innocent, but the media firestorm after Todd’s death led him to wipe his online footprint, which included activity on forums dedicated to trading jailbait, or sexualized images of underage teen girls.
As you can see, Maxson was listed under an anonymous code, 197413-1, for one scheduled court appearance Thursday. Given his history, the no-show and disappearance look extremely suspicious. Perhaps he was trying to avoid the press—or perhaps he knew there was information he didn’t want to come to light in the wake of Amanda Todd’s suicide.
Court reports via ag.gov.bc.ca. Post has been edited to include Maxson’s theft charges.
Illustration by Max Fleishman
