'Catfish' predator who drove US girl to suicide jailed for life in N.Ireland
A prolific "catfish" offender who pushed one of
his victims, a 12-year-old US girl, to commit suicide was on Friday jailed for
life at a court in Northern Ireland.
Alexander McCartney, 26, who admitted 185 charges involving
70 children, posed as a teenage girl to befriend young females across the world
on Snapchat before blackmailing them.
Detective Chief Superintendent Eamonn Corrigan, of the
Police Service of Northern Ireland, said McCartney was a "disgusting child
predator" whose offending had been on an "industrial scale".
"Sitting in his childhood bedroom in Newry (in Northern
Ireland), he began his offending as a late teenager and built what can only be
described as a paedophile enterprise," he told reporters outside court.
"McCartney is a dangerous, relentless, cruel paedophile,"
he added.
Cimarron Thomas from West Virginia in the United States took
her own life in May 2018 after McCartney demanded that she involve her younger
sister in sex acts he had coerced her into.
Eighteen months later, her distraught father Ben Thomas also
died by suicide.
Belfast Crown Court heard earlier that other victims had been in
the US as well as in Australia and New Zealand.
McCartney previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter relating
to Cimarron's death.
He also admitted 59 counts of blackmail, dozens of charges
related to making and distributing indecent photographs and scores of charges
of inciting children to engage in sexual activity.
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