The Binge Cases: U R NEXT - U R NEXT | 6. Remember Me?

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Sergeant Finley’s case comes to a climax. More than a decade on, host Leigh Alexander investigates whether Vicious is still a danger to women. What she finds is unnerving. Want the full story? Binge every episode of U R NEXT ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. U R NEXT is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evening, buyer's remorse. Buy a new car, I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.

So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana.

Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. all episodes of You Are Next, ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit the binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession. The Binge. I'd like to talk about the arrest, which took place in December 2014.

Could you talk me through some of the events that led up to that arrest? Oh, that's a big question. Gary Young is a staff sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. You first heard from him back in episode three. It's the 5th of December 2014. Gary and a small group of investigators are hovering outside a rundown apartment block, about 40 minutes drive from Vancouver. Through our assessment sweep at the time,

there were only a few people that were still living in there. Including Vicious. and his family. The cops have been tracking Vicious for weeks, and now they're here to arrest him. A lot of work was done beforehand in trying to have surveillance in place. He was the type of person

from our surveillance that he barely ever left his residence. They know that Vicious isn't just in the house. He's also online right now. We did have somebody in the office monitoring all his online, So we knew that he was active. Gary and his team are busy getting into position. We needed his laptop.

We needed that computer to be turned on. We're always afraid they will always be quicker to erase or destroy evidence. We entered the residence. We were looking for any type of electronics, laptops. As the police fan out into the apartment searching for evidence, they're floored by the state that Vicious's home is in. It's kind of sad to see how unkept he was and how unkept the immediate state he was living in. Probably has not been cleaned or touched for a whole long period of time.

The search partner and I, we were in charge of one room searching, and we found another laptop. We quickly moved it aside to see what was underneath it. And as soon as we moved it, because there was heat underneath, the herd of insects, maggots, crockroaches, He kept running out so quick, we thought that it was going to crawl up for shoes. Creatures, insects that's crawling out of the sink, liquids, from overstacked dishes, seeping onto the floor, garbage, that is essentially the sad part of it. But make no mistake, does not excuse the behavior of the individual responsible for what he's done to the many, many victims out there as well.

Making his way through to Vicious's bedroom, Gary finally comes face to face with the teenager he's been investigating. He was sitting in his bed under the blanket. Laptop was actually on top of his thighs. His physical appearance, I would say, would almost be the opposite of how he was portrayed online. He had long, uncapped hair. He's not necessarily what I call an in-shaped person. His shoulders were hunched.

His demeanor was, I want to say subdued. He wasn't sad or anything. He didn't seem surprised. He was just like, yeah, okay. Vicious is arrested in his home and then taken to his local police station. He's given an attorney, and then Gary and his colleagues start conducting the interviews. His demeanor was, again, subdued. As the interrogators dig in, Vicious starts to reveal more of the character.

we've come to expect. It slowly came out. You can sense then the arrogance behind it, saying like he thinks it's funny. He doesn't know if you can stop. My opinion is he lived in a world where he get to exert a great degree of power and control over someone.

The online community is where he can exert that. He wanted his online community to know just how good he is. When the R.C. The MP was first contacted by Sergeant Ben Finley around spring of 2014. They couldn't share any information about vicious. Because he was a minor, but also because the threshold to build and then try a case in Canada is just not the same as it is in the U.S.

At the time, Ben and his colleagues just didn't have enough of the right evidence. They scratched their head. They were like, man, you Canadians, how do you even put anybody in jail? But that didn't mean Gary and his colleagues didn't. know exactly who Ben was talking about. He was arrested a couple of times before we made the big arrest. Vicious was arrested in both March and October of 2014. On the first arrest, he was released on certain conditions.

Which included staying off the internet. He wasn't supposed to have access to any computers either. Obviously, he did not abide by those conditions. At the time of those earlier arrests, the RCMP didn't understand the scale. of what was happening. So at the beginning, when he was first identified, it was very localized. Swatting in general was a very new phenomenon.

I think it was just looked at as a nuisance. Once the FBI were involved, they were able to work with Ben to gather the right kind of evidence for the RCMP so that together they could finally put a stop to Vicious's reign of terror. But for all his victims, it felt too little, too late. So many of the women my team and I spoke to in the making of this podcast said they felt their local police did not take their report seriously, that they were ignored at best, and at worst, essentially belittled by officers who told them to just log off or to be more careful online.

Even when the justice system did take action, in the eyes of the women who were targeted by vicious, the consequences were pretty toothless. Like his, in my mind at least, completely unenforated. ban from being online. It left them completely vulnerable to another of his attacks. It's something Sergeant Ben Finley can empathize with. I think a lot of it comes down to

different cops that they don't know exactly what they're dealing with here. They don't know the depth and scope of what's going on and they just think it's some kids doing things on the internet. And I think sometimes that's exactly what happens is the victim gets blamed and I can see how that would be

very frustrating to them. Ben's been a cop for decades, so he has a lot of respect for the justice system. But he struggles to understand some of the decisions made around Vicious's previous arrests and releases. It's like they tell you the first time and you violate it and you come back again, it's like, okay, you're going to have to super, super promises this time you're not going to do it. There's no punishment for this. I mean, what type of incentive does he have to do the right thing? This latest and hopefully final arrest might feel long overdue, but at least it's finally here.

Ben takes comfort in that. I was happy. You know, good culmination of a whole heck of a lot of work and investigation. I mean, I've never spent that long on a case in my life. Natasha, one of Vicious's earliest victims who you met in episode four, had tried to seek help from her own local police department, but she didn't get anywhere. She'd kept in touch with other victims who had similar stories and spread the news about Vicious's previous arrests. They kept just giving him slaps on the wrist.

But now, with the mountain of evidence and the collective weight of both the FBI and the Mounties going against Vicious, she feels something she hasn't felt in a long time. I felt relieved. I felt like I don't have to be small anymore if I don't want to. Finally, at long last, Vicious is going to face some real justice. It's time for his day in court.

From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is You Are Next. I'm Lee Alexander. This is episode six. Remember me? It's about seven months on from the arrest, where in a provincial court in BC, Canada, July 2015. Given how often vicious bragged online about the crimes he was committing, how much pride he took in the damage he was causing to his countless victims. It's maybe

not surprising that when his judgment day came calling, it seemed like he wore his culpability like a badge of honor. He's already pled guilty to 23 charges, including nine counts of criminal harassment, eight counts of public mischief, and four counts of extortion. And now, after years terrorizing streamers across the USA and beyond, vicious will be sentenced. In his previous hearings, he'd reportedly been expressionless, save for the odd smirk now and then, and fidgety, he was seen flipping his long brown hair out of his face and tapping his fingers on his knees, which were constantly bouncing up and down. His defense attorney tried to get vicious credit for the fact that he'd pledged,

guilty, saving taxpayer as a costly trial, and sparing the victims from having to travel for the court case. According to media reports, he also told the judge that at the time most of the offenses were committed, Vicious was just 16, what he refers to as the stupidest age group in society. His attorney went on to say that he didn't think Vicious understood the consequences of his actions. But in the sentencing hearing, the judge doesn't seem to be buying it. What you're You'll hear next is taken from the judge's sentencing report read by an actor. It describes vicious as a deeply troubled young person who is at very high risk to reoffend, who takes significant sadistic delight in the discomfort he causes his victims.

Almost all of your primary victims were young women. Despite your attempts to explain this away, there appeared to be a misogynistic attitude underlying your selection of victims. The motivation for these crimes appeared to be, primarily pleasure taken from the distress of others. You demonstrated no remorse and no empathy for your victims. Your reason for entering guilty pleas was the belief that you would receive his shorter jail sentence, not concerned for your victims or acknowledgement of your wrongdoing.

The report also dives into his early life, offering a keyhole view into the home vicious grew up in. It says that until grade four, when he was around nine or ten, And he was a pretty bright, accomplished kid. But once his father returned home, that all changed. Your father has multiple addictions, engaged in a life of crime, and physically abused your mother. Your mother has struggled with depression since before your birth. It is clear that due to her own struggles with mental health issues, she was unable and continues to be unable to be an effective parent for you.

Court psychologists theorized that this experience with his mother is possibly why vicious focuses his attacks on women, which makes my eye twitch a little. Even though their own report states that a lot of his issues began when his violent father returned home, is it really so impossible that a son might continue a cycle of abuse that his own father taught him, with new and improved weapons forged in the digital age? Vicious's mother speaks about him to reporters outside the court, saying that she and his brother miss having him home. He's been locked up in juvenile detention since his arrest back in December of 2014. She says this is not how I raised him to be to take revenge out on women.

She also says she doesn't recognize the sadistic qualities outlined in the report and that he was more inward and depressed and otherwise is a wonderful boy. I'm not sure if his mother really believes this or just wants to. Maybe so that she and his father don't have to face their failings in recognizing or influencing what their son has become. Or maybe she's speaking from a place of fear. Either way, she's still a target of her own son's humiliation, as I've seen by digging into some of Vicious's posts online. One of his tweets is portrayed as an imaginary back and forth between them both. Mom, clean your room. Me. Are you going to send me news?

Mom. No. Me. Then you just answered your own question. There's another post I found, this time by a Reddit user. They alleged that they watched Vicious on stream often and would overhear multiple interactions between Vicious and his mother. The most memorable being when his mother came in to offer Vicious a Pepsi. He allegedly screamed at her. Do you want to get raped? Go to the store and get me some fucking ginger ale.

The post said that she did go to the store in the end. In her sentencing report, the judge lists what 25 different victims went through at the hands of vicious. Although from our reporting, we know that the total number of people he targeted is much higher than that. For page after page, it goes on, listing in detail all the ways he terrorized them and their families, the images he extorted, the threats he made, the information he doxed and the swattings he called in. At the end, the judge has a message just for vicious. While you may think that you enjoyed greater success in the online world,

that success was an illusion. Your computer skills have been focused on antisocial applications that will lead you only to a lifetime in prison, Only being detained in custody has stopped you. You have indicated that your aspirations are limited to living alone in a small apartment, working in some kind of computer-based job, and ordering in pizza. That is the life of a loser. On the 9th of July 2015, Vicious is sentenced to 16 months in a juvenile detention center.

16 months for that? I mean, that's actually pretty good for something. something like that, being a juvenile, you would hope that that would be a learning experience for him. Sergeant Ben Finley is kind of a changed man after this case. He's just taken the ultimate online crash course. He's unrecognizable from the cop who once said, what the hell is a Google? In 2016, Ben leaves Johns Creek Police Department and starts working for Forsyth County Sheriff's

Office. With all of his experience in dealing with such a prolific digital criminal, he ends up taking a role as high-tech crime unit commander. But the new job takes Ben into some dark places. I was responsible for our computer forensic units, and I had our internet crimes against children task force, which basically deals with all types of child sex abuse material. Ben and his team have to review all the evidence they find.

Oh, it's terrible. It's absolutely freaking one of the most horrific things I've ever done. and my job. I tell people all the time, I said, I don't even know how to tell you about it. I don't want to cloud your mind with it because I wish to God I'd never had to see it or dealt with it because I don't want it in my mind, but unfortunately it's there. Ben's been a cop for over 20 years at this point. The work he's doing is high-tech crime commander is vital. But it's grinding him down.

It's like anything else. You try to compartmentalize it and you stick it somewhere and you just don't think about it. The unfortunate part is the longer you do this job, you can only put so much stuff in that bucket before that bucket gets full. It's September 2018. Ben's still working for the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, but his bucket is getting dangerously full and something is about to make it spill over. That day was this a normal work day. This particular incident happened at like 11-something p.m. that night. I got an alert on my phone that, hey, we'd had a shooting at this location.

Multiple shots have been fired. Guys barricaded themselves. Ben arrives at the scene. Cops are stationed all around the suspect's house who's standing in his front yard. He's holding two guns. I think he was one of the influence. of alcohol and drugs, which he wasn't thinking in his right mind. Basically was walking all over the place.

He'd be over on the left side, be over on the right side of the yard, come down to the front side by the road. I mean, he was just roaming all over the place. Our guys were doing everything we could to try to talk him out of any of this stuff. He figures out he can hear our negotiator talking to him. He can see him, like, looking and trying to figure out where he's at, kind of like vectoring in on his location. and he starts walking closer and closer.

And as he gets like what we deemed way too close, one of our guys lit him up with a flashlight just so everybody could see him. And as soon as he did that, he raised his shotgun up. With a gun aimed at them and seemingly no way of de-escalating the situation, the cops are forced to take action. He just happened to be right in front of me and several of us shot him all at the same time.

I was just like standing there. I'm like, I was in a freaking bed not an hour ago. And now I'm standing out here and over the top of a dude in his yard dead. I think a lot of that just kind of got to the point where it just, I don't know. All of it kind of rolled up on me at one time. And I said, you know, I'm done. After serving more than two decades in the police, Ben decides to retire. He recently got married.

Now he focuses on being there for his family, including, of course, his new wife. That and taking as many long road trips on his motorcycle as he can. He's happy and he's moved on, but he suspects that Vicious hasn't. I doubt very seriously if there's been any improvement in him. He's a psychopath and he loved to see the pain and agony of other people, and he thrived off of it. He lived daily for it. Unfortunately, it looks like Ben was right.

It's around March 2016. Vicious has been released from prison. Esther, who was swatted by Vicious, is nearly 18. She's spent these past months trying to put Vicious out of her mind and trying to continue building up her streaming career. She's at home on her computer when she gets a message. Hey, remember me?

want a deeper look behind cut, color, kill, now is the time. Join our free newsletter at patreon.com slash the binge, and you will get exclusive story details you can't get anywhere else. Again, join me at patreon.com slash the binge. There are a lot of true crime podcasts out there, and I have 30 seconds to give in to you why you should check out crime lines. Crime Lines is one of those shows that just lays it all out there, the backstory, the legal context, and details of cases you haven't heard before. If you hear about a true crime case and want to know what happened and why, you're my kind of listener. You can check out crime lines wherever you get your podcasts. That's crime lines, one word, and get ready to dive deep. At first it's just like

cut reaction, terrified. Staring at the screen, Esther feels like she's traveled back in time, that she's right back there with Vicious hovering over her. Like taunting, your heart drops, I'm horrified. I didn't know he could get in trouble for contacting me afterwards. Vicious was given a no-contact order for his victims, including Esther, though here he is fresh out of Juvie and seemingly right back to his old tricks. Esther can't face going through this again. I was just done at that point.

So shut down and just trying to keep my head above water. I'm just going to click block. That's how I dealt with it. Last time Esther blocked Vicious, it only made him angrier, made him ramp up the harassment and abuse he was hurling her way. Everything was very much like I was a pawn in his game. He might be psychopathic, which I don't mean to use that term lightly, because I don't want to, you know, run around calling everyone a psychopath.

But he doesn't seem to have any regard for anybody else. Everybody's just here for entertainment. It's very unsettling that people like that in this world exist. Esther braces herself for the floodgates to open again. But they don't. Never heard from him again. That's the only time. Esther must spend the next few months looking back over her shoulder just in case.

But she's determined to build up her streaming career. She doesn't want to let vicious win by pushing her away from gaming. It's still her lifeline. Esther eventually tells her mom, Grace, that she wants to quit school and focus on streaming full-time, which Grace is not exactly thrilled about. Oh, yeah. I was so stunned by that because she was almost through her junior. year, all she had to do is get through senior year. We could do this. We could do this.

But Esther just doesn't have any more to give. She's been struggling with anxiety for months and school is only making it worse. I can't go there. I can't focus. I'm just crying all the time. Just please don't make me go to school. I can't do it. It really took me some time to wrap my head around that because I had to let go of this idea that school equals success. Like, how are you going to make money? How are you going to support yourself? How is this going to be a thing? Esther agrees to get a job at a clothing store to make ends meet while she works on her streaming channel. My channel starts doing really well and then a few months later it gets to the point where my streaming is making more money than my job is. Esther starts dating someone and moves across the country.

tree to live with him. But her boyfriend soon becomes controlling and physically abusive. Esther is thousands of miles away from her family at this point and disconnected from the support system of her mom, Grace. That relationship, I think, very much inhibited and changed her ambitions for herself or her trajectory. All this time, Esther has been trying to shake off the memory of vicious. But a reminder of how accessible streaming makes her is just around the corner. One day, Esther is recording near her house. I was recording this surrounding area, like, kind of the main roads. And that was enough for people who watched. They recognized my car. They'd seen me driving around. They saw it in the video. So they rode their bikes around the neighborhood,

found my car, and came up to our house. And I was like, oh my gosh. Thankfully, they were just nice kids that wanted to say hi. But this scare, plus what she's experiencing in her relationship, is enough to make Esther start pulling back from streaming and the world. It all just gets too much. I just kind of disappeared for a while. My life up until 23. I was just shut down because event after event,

kept like speeding me to where I was like, I can't deal with this. I can't be here. I can't focus. I can't function. Esther finds the strength to leave her boyfriend. She moves back home with her mom, Grace, and they rediscover the closeness they lost through all the distance and the trauma. She's literally the most amazing woman you'll ever meet. She's really a light in the world. that I aspire to be like.

I just truly love who she is as a human being. And I wouldn't trade that for anything, nothing, not even for a millisecond of a millisecond. Esther's 27 now. She's in a new, very happy and supportive relationship. These days, she's a lot more careful about what she puts online. I've pulled back the intensity of it and like how public I am. Now I have my job to pay my bills.

and then on my days off, I get to do my streaming. I'm content with that. I'm happy with that. Keeping my community small and not going for numbers and not making it about growing number-wise has made it way more intimate and way more special. And that's what I value about streaming. There's no pressure in it, and it's just love.

When my team and I first reached out to Esther, she was really hesitant to talk to us. I think I've been scared to talk about it for a long time, and still kind of have that fear. Like, I don't want this guy to come after me again. But I also care way more about other people knowing that this kind of stuff happens and how it happens. I'm extremely grateful to Esther, her mother Grace, and every person that was brave enough to share what they've been through.

But Esther is not the only person who claims Vicious contacted them after coming out of prison. at least two other victims also claim he tried to contact them again too. It looks to me like his time in prison hasn't made him change his ways. So I need to find out exactly what Vicious has been up to since his release and how much of a danger he still might be. I want to find out exactly what Vicious has been doing since getting out of juvenile detention about a decade ago. So I've asked my producer, who, in a weird person,

coincidence is also called Lee to help me comb through court records and social media. The first thing that he basically does around about 18 to 19 years old is he commits a large-scale spam-bought attack on a website. He sends 150,000 spam messages. All these different users of this website were getting all these horrible messages and they were sexist, they were racist, they were anti-Semitic, they were Islamophobic, they were homophobic, they were kind of just every variation of offensive that you could do. And how long since the time he was released did that occur? Like, how much time had he been out before he was back to these tricks again? It seems like less than a year. Wow. Yeah. And so then we thought the best thing to look at would be to just continue

looking at his court appearances. And he's had a few over the years. He's got a lot of traffic violations. In 2023, kind of, I guess, kicks up the gear. And he seems to be involved in this fraud case, where he seems to have defrauded this supermarket using some sort of gift card scheme, which feels like a step down from his time like a raining terror on the internet and now he's scamming a local supermarket for gift card points. Yeah, I mean, this points to me,

like someone that's not really able to function in the productive world and is looking to cut corners because they have no other way of making money or maybe even feeding themselves. Obviously, the main thing we want to discover is could he still be a danger to women. A warning that in this next part, we discuss allegations of sexual assault. The assault took place in 2025.

It's an assault case. Basically, it appears his ex-girlfriend has accused him of assault. He denies this. But he takes two talking about it on Twitter. He actually posted transcripts from the court case himself. Wow. He basically is posting these as a way to try and discredit the girlfriend who's accusing him. of assault. But it's interesting to me that what he focuses on is the fact that she was on drugs

and she was on alcohol, and that's a reason for her not to be taking seriously. As opposed to it being a reason why she can't have a given consent. Exactly, yeah. Now, I think the most telling thing that he posted, and he has since deleted this, but it really struck me. He said, we'd had sex countless times by then, so why would it even matter? To me, that's such a giveaway, because if you were so disgusted by the idea that you were being accused of this kind of assault, why would you say that? Yeah. Like, those two thoughts surely can't coexist in the same person, but yet they do.

We also looked into vicious's social media accounts. It probably won't surprise you to learn that a lot of his posts repeatedly talk about how much he still hates women. But he also uses these accounts to broadcast apparently his every thought. His Twitter account is like a diary. He's talking about being depressed, how sad he is. You know, he hates his life, he hates existing. So it does appear that the actions and the path that he has taken again and again and again has left him extremely lonely.

And then one of the final posts I thought would be good to look at, and I just thought this was kind of poetic, honestly, in a way. He said it was going to be his birthday and that no one is going to notice, basically, and that no one will care. And nobody liked, responded to or interacted with the post. You know, I thought, if there is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that's it right there. Yeah. I mean, he seems dangerous to women and also to himself. I've seen people like this on the internet before, just shouting into the void, whatever rage he wants to expunge into the environment and then following it up with cries for help. When I see someone, like obviously,

suffering in public, wailing about his loneliness and his past. I think I do see a person that is in a lot of pain and it is probably longing to be loved. And maybe I'm naive, but I hope that he'll grow and change in time, maybe find a purpose in society. Throughout this story, there's been so much wasted potential of the streamers like Esther who had budding, lucrative streaming careers robbed from them by vicious. but also a vicious himself. The judge commented on it in his 2016 sentencing hearing.

It is clear that you have reasonably sophisticated computer skills that you could use for your own betterment through employment and to provide useful services to others. Instead, you applied those skills to inflict very serious harm on a large number of people. I don't believe that someone should be forever judged for the things they did as a teenager. All of us deserve at least one chance to make amends and to make ourselves better. But the problem is, I don't think Ficious has changed.

I don't think he's exercised whatever demons from his admittedly very rough childhood that might have set him down the path he took at 16. I don't think he's safe to be around women. And I still don't think he's remorseful for, for all the streamers he targeted back in 2013 and 2014. I can tell that because looking at his Twitter feed, there's multiple occasions where he's gleefully referenced his crimes as a teenager. He reposted a graphic, listing a bunch of female streamers,

and added, This is just a list of girls I've swatted and hacked. In another post, he laughs about a time a woman made a police report on him after he secretly recorded her. Every now and again he tweets at one of his old targets, offering an insincere apology, but it's always with a wry smile. Looks to me like someone reliving his glory days.

Ava, the undercover super spy from our last episode, agrees. Oh my gosh, I can't believe he's still thinking about me 10 years later. Like why am I living rent free in this man's mind? I obviously still have anxiety thinking about it and have this fear that he's going to do something for revenge. It was just so crazy to me that even after all these years, he still has this impact on me. And I think I got off pretty easy in terms of the whole experience. I don't think anything Ava went through at the hands of Vicious was easy, but I get what she means.

She wasn't swatted like some of the others. He didn't go in as hard. though Ava doesn't think it's because Vicious had some pang of conscience with her. I think he realized that, like, for me, streaming wasn't as important as he thought it was. Ava was never really that interested in making streaming her career. I think that almost took some power away from him, and then he didn't find it as entertaining or interesting anymore. Ava still streams every now and then, although like Esther, she's also changed her online habits. I try to be more careful online, uh, be more.

more private, not being in the spotlight, because being in the spotlight comes with a lot of downsides. Downsides like attracting the attention of a depraved misogynist, like vicious. What are you doing with your life? Honestly, the people that you tried to ruin, they're all living full, happy, productive lives. Despite everything he's done and like all the horrible things and like what a terrible person he was back then and probably now. Like, I still believe in the hope of redemption. Why not apply your skills for good? Do it for the betterment of society.

Do something better with your life. You need to move on. For Natasha, one of Vicious's earliest victims, moving on has been a complicated journey. I had gone through a lot. I had faced adversity at every single turn in my career. Natasha says she's dealt with multiple men harassing her online. A heads up that in the next section, we referenced suicide. I had just had a lot thrown at me in my life.

I felt almost suicidal. I was so depressed. And him coming back into it, I guess it was just like a straw that broke the camel's back. Natasha was one of the victims who claimed she, She was contacted by Vicious after he was released. He reached out and he wanted to talk. Natasha quickly finds herself falling back into the old patterns, trying to appease Vicious

right away. Like before, I would ask him questions because I was stuck talking to him anyway. I asked him about his time in juvenile and he told me he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and what he went through. And I would try to ask him interesting questions. Like, that must have been hard on you and your family. I was just trying to, like, see if he had any humanity, I guess. In 2021, Natasha posted about her experience within the gaming world.

She spoke about the impact of dealing with vicious and others like him. I had really prominent streamers and YouTubers that were women as well that reached out to me and my DMs about it. While the cops caught up to vicious, there's an army of trolls like him, still targeting women online. Since 2014, countless female streamers have continued to be harassed. Some even swatted. Compilation videos of SWAT teams swarming into innocent people's homes reach millions of views. Natasha's post clearly struck a chord. It seemed to really resonate, and people would link to it to be like,

we're not complaining about, we can't take the heat or a couple of things. jokes here and there. It's like we are getting targeted harassment that goes beyond the game that extends into our family being harassed. That extends to our like entire life. Natasha is really touched by the reaction to her post, but it's not enough to erase the memory of the trauma she's been through and all of the opportunities, the streaming career that she's lost. I feel resentful that I put so much work in blood, sweat, and teeth. I feel resentful that I put so much work in blood, sweat, and into something and I don't know, it's just, it's a mixed feeling for sure. One of the biggest challenges I found in telling this story is that we didn't want to play

into the attention-seeking behavior that drove vicious to try and destroy the lives of so many young women. It's the reason we decided not to tell you his real username. It was an attempt by us to try and take back some of the power he tried to steal from Esther, from Ava, and from Natasha. I was hesitant to talk about it because this isn't the first time people have reached out to try to make this a story. And there were a lot of concerns about, one, redirecting his attention to us and two, giving him any kind of notoriety. But I decided that it is something that a lot of women experience, and I feel like the good could outweigh the bad in this case, because bringing light to what we went through and what type of people

exist and what you can do to protect yourself, I think is really important. Okay, so what's been happening in your life as you sort of try to move on from this? I got married and I started focusing more on, you know, skills like coding other ways to support myself. I'm really looking forward to finally setting up my life, starting a family. And now that I have taken a couple years to heal and completely find myself, I decided to come back to streaming because it is something I really love and I really enjoy. I have a lot of people who are excited for me to come back. They count the days to my return. Right now, they're at 191.

I'm really happy for Natasha. I want her to recapture the joy that was taken from her, to stream again on her own terms. Because she and all the women like her deserve to claim their rightful spaces in the online community, without constantly having to look over their shoulders, always fearful of what or who is lurking beyond. But I also know that what should happen and what will happen aren't always the same thing. When she does return to streaming, Natasha has to be careful, because not only is vicious still out there, with each new generation striding further and deeper into the online shadows, there could be a new, even worse version of him.

So if you're a parent, ask yourself this. What are your children doing online? Who are they actually talking to? And if you're in the dark, can you really keep them safe? Unlock all episodes of You Are Next, ad-free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. On the first of every month, a brand-new series drops for subscribers, all episodes all at once.

And between drops, every Thursday a new episode of crime scene lands ad-free in your feed. Plus, you've got instant access to over 60 true crime and investigative podcast. shows like Wild Boys and Blink, so you'll never be short on stories. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe. Not on Apple, head to getthebinge.com. In this episode, we referenced suicide. If you're worried about yourself or a loved one, know that you're not alone. You can reach out to the 9-88 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

You can call or text, and you'll be connected with trained counselors within the 9-88 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Network. You can also visit 988 Lifeline.org. This is You Are Next, an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, hosted by me, Lee Alexander. Lee Meyer is our senior producer. Verity DeKala is our assistant producer. Sandra Schmuelli is our editor.

Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolf. For a novel, our executive producer is Max O'Brien. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive. Our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Story development by Nell Gray Andrews, Willard Foxton, and Salina Mehta, who is Director of Development for Novel. Special thanks to Carolyn Sher Levin at Miller-Corsinick-Raman LLP, and to Ford Collier, who performed the Woodwind for our theme music. And a big thanks to the whole Sony Music Entertainment team.