Sam raised her free hand. “I spoke with Brecken Mayfield’s parole officer, which was illuminating.” She briefed them on the information McCaffery had provided. “We believe it’s possible he became acquainted with Ethan Hogan, Tomas Cambra and Luna Ahern, and could be involved in their disappearance.”
“What’s your theory, Lieutenant?” the chief asked.
“If I had to venture a guess, Mayfield was interested in Ahern and used Hogan and Cambra to lure her out after Ahern rebuffed his romantic advances. It’s a hunch at this point based on the message traffic between them.”
“Where do we stand with getting warrants for Mayfield’s phone?” Farnsworth asked Malone.
“It’s in the works with the court, but we expect the usual pushback with the phone company.”
“Let’s make sure to emphasize that these are minors who could be in grave danger.”
“Yes, sir, that’s the plan,” Malone said.
“McCaffery said he obviously can’t provide a clinical diagnosis, but he suspects Brecken Mayfield has sociopathic tendencies. There’re outstanding parole violation warrants for him and his father, Asher. The father has a long rap sheet that includes numerous domestic violence charges as well as other counts that didn’t stick thanks to his sleazy lawyer, Dunning.”
“Ah, our old friend,” Malone said disdainfully.
“If I may,” one of the FBI guys said. “I’m Agent Fuller, from the Domestic Terrorism team, and I’d like to ask who among the various players used the word ‘incel.’”
Ruiz handed him printouts of the message traffic in which the boys discussed how Ahern had referred to them as incels.
Fuller scanned the pages. “So the term came from the girl, it seems.”
“Yes,” Ruiz said.
“The boys would’ve taken that as a grave insult,” Fuller said. “The sort that couldn’t go unchallenged.”
“How would they know what it means?” Malone asked.
Fuller seemed to choose his words carefully. “Boys and men who have trouble attracting female companionship are well acquainted with the term. When we dig deeper, we’re apt to find that at least one of them is active in manosphere spaces.”
“Man-o-what?” Farnsworth asked, brows furrowed in confusion.
“You should start at the beginning, Agent Fuller,” Hill said.
Fuller stood and used a handheld controller to call up a PowerPoint presentation on the screen at the front of the room.
Sam leaned in for a better view, wondering if she needed glasses since she could barely make out the words on the screen.
“The manosphere,” Fuller said, “is an online community made up of men and boys who call themselves Pick-Up Artists, Men’s Rights Activists, Men Going Their Own Way and incels, all of whom share the common trait of a deep-seated sense of grievance toward women. Incels, which is short for involuntary celibates, believe women have too much of the power in romantic situations. These are usually white men who’ve failed in their attempts to have meaningful relationships with women. They’re deeply resentful of the eighty percent of women, known as Stacys, who show an interest in only twenty percent of men, referred to as Chads, leaving the rest of them out in the cold. Stacys and Chads are their sworn enemies.”
“Is this for real?” Farnsworth asked incredulously.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Fuller said. “All these types of men have acted on their frustration by sexually assaulting, terrorizing and killing women, and sometimes they harm the men the women are romantically involved with.” He went through a long list of cases, dating back to the 1990s when the incel term was first used, through the present. “As recently as three weeks ago, a young couple was kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered in New Mexico by a man with ties to online manosphere communities.”
“Where’re these communities located online?” Malone asked.
“YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, X, Facebook, Discord, to name a few of the more commonly known sites,” Fuller said. “Many of the incel-related subcommunities on Reddit, called subreddits, have been banned, which leads them to seek out more fringe sites, such as Gab, 4chan and 8chan, that tend to be more permissive than the mainstream sites.”
“Does anyone else think this is freaking crazy?” Farnsworth asked. “How have I never even heard of this?”
“Right there with you, Chief,” Sam said. “It’s all new to me, too.”
“It’s becoming more mainstream as we document new cases of violent crimes linked to the subculture,” Fuller said. “It feeds into the overall discontent that’s found among young white men who feel the American dream has passed them by, including the hope of a successful romantic relationship, which they feel is one of their inalienable rights. However, they’ve learned that they can’t make women want them, which compounds the frustration and anger until it boils over.”
“Do we have any way to know if the missing kids are active in this so-called subculture?” Green asked.
“Nothing definitive,” Ruiz said, “beyond the text messages about the Ahern girl using that word to describe them and Mayfield suggesting they shouldn’t let her get away with it.”
