Fair Warning

The FBI and Los Angeles Police have begun an urgent hunt for a man suspected of killing at least 10 people in a cross-country murder spree that included breaking the necks of eight young women.

The killer, who is known as the Shrike on the Internet, targeted the women based on specific profiles from DNA they had provided to a popular genetic-analytics site. The victims’ genetic profiles were downloaded by the unidentified suspect from a site on the dark web that catered to a clientele of men seeking to take sexual advantage of women.

The FBI has scheduled a major news conference tomorrow in Los Angeles to discuss the investigation.

This week the two operators of the site — which was closed down by the FBI today — were murdered by the suspect, authorities said. Marshall Hammond, 31, was found hanged in his Glendale home, where he operated a DNA lab. Roger Vogel, 31, was mowed down in the street in a hit-and-run just seconds after being confronted by reporters from FairWarning. A third man was also killed by the suspect earlier when authorities believe he was mistaken for Vogel.

Prior to the killing of the three men, seven women in places stretching from Fort Lauderdale to Santa Barbara were brutally murdered by a suspect who used a signature method of breaking the necks of his victims. An eighth woman survived a similar attack but was rendered quadriplegic by her injuries. The 29-year-old Pasadena woman, whom FairWarning is not identifying, helped provide investigators with links connecting all of the cases.

“This is one of the most vicious serial offenders we have ever encountered,” said Matthew Metz, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “We are doing all we can to identify him and run him to ground. No one is safe until we get him.”

The bureau released a composite sketch of the suspect as well as a shadowy video of a man believed to be him and taken from a home-surveillance camera in Marshall Hammond’s neighborhood shortly after his murder.

The bureau missed a chance to apprehend the suspect yesterday when he eluded a surveillance that was placed on Roger Vogel, who worked in the administration offices at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. FairWarning reporters confronted him at a smoker’s bench outside the hospital, where he denied any responsibility for the deaths.

“None of this was supposed to happen,” Vogel said. “I’m not responsible for what that crazy person is doing.”

Vogel then stepped into a crosswalk at the intersection of Alden Drive and George Burns Road and was immediately hit by a car believed to be driven by the murder suspect. He was dragged under the car for 30 feet and sustained fatal injuries. The car was later located by the FBI in the nearby Beverly Center parking garage, where it had been set on fire in an attempt to destroy any evidence that could lead to the identity of the killer.

The Shrike came to light after the murder a week ago of Christina Portrero, 44, who was found in her home with a broken neck after last being seen with a man at a bar on the Sunset Strip.

FairWarning began an investigation of the death after learning that Portrero had supplied her DNA to GT23, the popular online genetic-analytics company, for hereditary analysis. She had also complained to friends that she had been stalked by a stranger who knew intimate personal details about her. That man is not believed to have been the Shrike but another customer of the same dark-web site where the Shrike selected his victims according to their DNA makeup.

GT23 openly states that selling anonymized DNA to second-tier labs helps it keep costs to consumers low. Customers pay only $23 for a DNA hereditary analysis.

Among the labs the company sells DNA to is Orange Nano, a research laboratory in Irvine operated by William Orton, formerly a biochemistry professor at UC–Irvine. According to Orange County authorities, Orton left his post three years ago to start Orange Nano when he was accused of drugging and raping a student.

Orton has vehemently denied the accusations. Hammond was a graduate of UC–Irvine and had been a student of Orton’s. He later started a private research lab that received hundreds of samples of female DNA from Orange Nano after they were purchased from GT23.

The FairWarning investigation determined that Hammond and Vogel opened a site on the dark web called Dirty4 more than two years ago. Customers of the site paid access fees of $500 annually to download the identities and locations of women whose DNA contained a chromosome pattern known as DRD4, which some genetic researchers have concluded is indicative of risky behaviors including drug and sex addiction.

“They were selling these women out,” a source close to the investigation said. “These creepy guys were paying for lists of women they thought they could get an edge with. They could go pretend to meet them in a bar or someplace and they would be easy marks. It is so sick, and no wonder you end up getting a killer in the mix.”

The FBI said website records indicated that Dirty4 had several hundred paying members, many of whom were solicited in online forums catering to incels — men who designate themselves as “involuntarily celibate” — and other misogynist viewpoints.

“This is a horrible day,” said Andrea McKay, a Harvard University law professor and recognized expert on ethics in genetic fields. “We have reached the point where the predators now can custom-order their victims.”

The DNA passed on by GT23 was anonymized, but authorities believe that Roger Vogel, a skilled hacker who used the name RogueVogue online, infiltrated the company’s computers and was able to retrieve the identities of the women whose DNA was sold to Hammond by Orange Nano.

One of the Dirty4 users was the Shrike. The FBI believes he used access to the profiles provided on the site to target victims in his murder spree. Agents have identified 11 victims, including the Pasadena woman who survived her attack, and believe there may be more. An exhumation in Santa Fe was scheduled for today and could lead to the determination of a twelfth victim.

The connection between the female victims is the cause of death or injury. Each of the women suffered a devastating neck break called atlanto-occipital dislocation. Medical examiners refer to this as internal decapitation — a complete break of the neck bones and spinal cord — that occurs when the head is violently twisted more than 90 degrees past normal limits.

“This guy is strong,” the FBI’s Metz said. “We think he literally breaks their necks with his bare hands or in an armlock maneuver of some kind. It is a horrible and painful way to die.”

The Shrike takes his online name from a bird that is known as one of nature’s most brutal killers. The bird silently stalks its prey — field mice and other small animals — and attacks from behind, gripping its victim in its beak and viciously breaking its neck.

The killings and the investigation are sure to impact the quickly growing and multibillion-dollar genetic-analytics industry. A FairWarning investigation determined that the industry, which falls under the control of the federal Food and Drug Administration, is virtually unregulated as the agency is in the midst of a long-running effort to promulgate rules and regulations for the industry. The strong indication that measures to protect the anonymity of DNA samples have been compromised is sure to send a shock wave through the industry.

“This is a game changer,” said Jennifer Schwartz, a life-sciences professor at UCLA. “The whole industry is based on the principle of anonymity. If that is compromised then what do you have? A lot of scared people and a whole industry that could start to wobble.”

The FBI shut down the Dirty4 website and is actively attempting to contact women whose identities were revealed and sold by Hammond and Vogel. Metz said that there are strong indications that the suspect has multiple profiles that he retrieved from Hammond’s lab computer after killing him. He said that GT23 and Orange Nano are fully cooperating with that part of the investigation.

“That’s the priority at this moment,” Metz said. “We have to find this guy, of course, but we need to reach all of the unsuspecting women so we can warn and protect them.”

Metz said it was unclear why Hammond and Vogel were murdered but that it is likely the two men held the keys to identifying the Shrike.

“I think he got wind of the investigation and knew that the only two people who could help identify him were these guys,” Metz said. “So they had to go, and they ended up with a dose of their own medicine. There is not a lot of sympathy around here for them, I’ll tell you that.”

Little is known about the relationship between Hammond and Vogel but it is clear that the two men met at UC–Irvine, where they were roommates. Students from that era say the two men may have crossed paths in an informal and unsanctioned group at the school that was involved in digital bullying of female students.

“It was a forerunner of these incel groups you are seeing today,” said a school official who requested anonymity. “They did all kinds of things to female students: hacked their social media, spread lies and rumors. Some girls left school because of what they did to them. But they always hid their trail. No one could prove anything.”

Incels are primarily men who identify themselves as involuntarily celibate and on Internet forums blame and disparage women for their romantic problems. In recent years there has been an uptick of crimes against women attributed to incels. The FBI has listed the groups as a growing concern.

The Dirty4 website appeared to be fueled by similar attitudes and sentiments, Metz said.

“These guys were women-haters and took it to an extreme limit,” he said. “And now seven or eight women are dead and another will never walk again. It’s horrible.”

Meanwhile, authorities fear that the hit-and-run killing of Vogel yesterday may indicate that the Shrike is changing his methods, which could make him more difficult to track.

“He knows we are on to him and the best way to avoid the net closing in on him is to either stop the killing or change his routine,” Metz said. “Unfortunately, this guy has a taste for killing and I don’t see him stopping. We are doing our very best to identify him and take him down.”