True Crime with Kimbyr - Deadly TikTok Obsession: Cosplayer’s Dream Turns Fatal

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

On True Crime with Kimbyr, Kimbyrleigha dives into the chilling case of Helen Hastings, an aspiring TikTok cosplayer whose idolization of a famous creator, “Snow The Salt Queen,” took a deadly turn. How did a cosplay fantasy spiral into real-life tragedy? What drove a self-proclaimed “Junko Enoshima IRL” to cross the line between performance and reality? Join Kimbyrleigha as she unpacks fame, obsession, and betrayal in this haunting true crime story. Don’t miss this gripping exploration only on True Crime with Kimbyr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes there are cases that are so evil and twisted, ones that don't make sense to those of us that are compassionate to loving people with a conscience. But there are monsters walking among us that seem to lack even the slightest bit of humanity. This is one of those stories. It'll leave you asking why and questioning whether you can truly know anyone, because some humans have truly evil minds. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. And if you've never been here before, I'm Kimberlea. it's nice to finally meet you. Today we're going to be diving into another evil minds case. These are a little bit different than my deadly deep dives and other true crime stories. They tend

to be a little darker, senseless crimes, and into the minds of the monsters that commit them. And today we're discussing a case about life's more challenging experiences that can leave us feeling isolated and alone, like no one is there for us when we need them the most in what we're going through. But in today's world, the social media, it allows us to connect with like-minded people from all over the world with just a few clicks. And we can find an entire community of people who share our same feelings or facing similar challenges. But these connections are not always positive. And sometimes these virtual friendships can turn deadly. I want to start out by introducing you to Helen Rose Hastings. She was born in July of 2002

in Houston, Texas, to her father, Philip John Hastings and her mother, Susan Mary Rosenberg. They were considered older parents, with Philip being in his 60s, he was actually 65, and Susan in her 40s when Helen arrived. Philip had been married two times previously and had four adult sons from a previous marriage, Jeffrey, Jeremy, Adrian, and Simon, that Helen was the first and only child that Philip and Susan had together as a couple. Even though Little Helen really wanted a little sister, it was too much of a risk since her mother, Susan, suffered from preclamination, during her pregnancy and nearly died having Helen. I also had this.

I just experienced this last month, giving birth to my daughter, and I know just how scary it really is. So Helen remained the only child, and was named in honor of Susan's Greek roots in reference to the Hellenic people who were referred to as Helens. Thanks to her parents' successful careers as respected geneticists and professors

at Baylor College of Medicine, Helen's childhood was one of privilege and affluence. Helen's father, Philip, graduated from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and then obtained his PhD from the same university and then went on to do his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard. Helen's mom, Susan, went to the State University of New York for her bachelor's degree, then got her PhD from the University of Oregon before doing her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Paris in France. And another one at the University of Utah School of Medicine, as well as the National Cancer

institution, she did three postdoctoral fellowships. So it goes without saying that both Philip and Susan are very intelligent. They were both doing tons of research in molecular biology, cancer research, and genetics, sometimes even writing scholarly papers together. They lived in a very nice home in an upscale suburb in Houston estimated at over $1 million. It's a three-bedroom, two-bath, two-story home on the corner of Goldsmith Street. It has a long brick, walkway to the front door, a pretty tree with pink flowers out front. And Helen also attended pretty expensive private schools. She clearly inherited her parents' intelligence as well. She was speaking in full sentences by the time she was only 18 months old. And her interests as a child included

theater, swimming, music, singing, art, and robotics. And she sure was a cute little girl as well. Philip and Susan traveled all the time giving lectures at different universities around the world. and Helen always accompanied them on their trips. Her favorite destinations were Japan, Croatia, and Norway. I have not been to any of those places and I'm 42 years old. But at just seven years old, Helen actually told her parents, she wanted to start an institute for women scientists in Japan. Wow. That's impressive.

It seemed like Helen would achieve that goal and many, many more, even changed the world one day. And I can say that she definitely made an impact, but not in the way that anyone would have ever. imagined or wanted for her, sadly. But that will be apparent later on. In her adolescence, Helen enjoyed her classes at Aulte International School, and this was a private school. It's Houston's premier pre-K through 12th grade institution. And wow, when I looked it up, I was thoroughly impressed to say the least. It's $30,000 a year. Yes. Audi offers students a rigorous path to graduating

with either an international baccalaureate, hope I'm saying that correctly, or the French baccalaureate diploma. I am probably butchering that pronunciation. But Audi is the only school in Houston to be fully accredited by the French Ministry of Education, so it's a pretty big deal to get the opportunity to attend. And Helen excelled academically, but school wasn't always rosy for her. You would think with a school of this caliber and the cost, that would not be the case. But she was relentlessly, bullied at school and it's really unclear exactly why the bullies were picking on her, but let's be honest, there really is no excuse. On its website, the school boasts that it has a warm and friendly environment, but apparently that wasn't the case for Helen. Supposedly it had something to do with a diagnosis that she received in primary school.

She suffered from misophonia, which is a condition that makes you feel angry and disgusted when you hear certain sounds that are made by others. You might know someone who is eating, maybe they're chewing is starting to gross you out. It sounds really disgusting. But this makes a person suffering with this condition physically repulsive. Like they cannot stand it. And I have to say, I kind of suffer from a mild form of it myself. If you don't suffer from it, you are very lucky for me. It makes me want to physically hit someone.

So if you know, you know, and obviously I would never do that except for maybe when I hear someone chewing in my ear. But for Helen, other sounds like pencil tapping, sniffling, coughing could also trigger a negative physical reaction without any warning. You could consider misophonia like the opposite of how the sounds of ASMR would be. It's soothing to so many people. For Helen, listening to ASMR would have been extremely disturbing and unsettling. When her classmates found out about her condition and how easy it was to set Helen off, they made it their mission to disrupt her life. They would intentionally make loud chewing noises in the cafeteria until it got to the point where she had to eat outside by herself. Or her classmates would tap their pencils loudly and make these throaty sounds in class so that she could not pay attention.

And that's so cruel. And I am left wondering if the school did anything to prevent these kids from doing this to her. But the only thing that got Helen through the day at school was her group of supportive friends, including her best friend from childhood Bailey. They enjoyed being Helen. friend, especially because according to Bailey, Helen, quote, seemed like she wanted to know everything, end quote. And that could make for some fun adventures playing together, I'm sure. Helen was very friendly and extroverted. And thanks to her broad interests and membership with so many extracurricular clubs,

Helen was known as an extremely welcoming and non-judgmental person, even though she was bullied. She did not do that to others. So naturally, other kids who might be considered outsiders or who were different, found it really easy. to be friends with her, and she would defend them fiercely. Helen's condition wasn't the only thing that set her apart from her peers. She was also very small at just five foot one, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm even shorter, but people would pick on her, and they'll pick on you for anything these days. And maybe because she was smaller, people would think she was more vulnerable and an easy target. But as Helen moved through puberty, she realized that her feelings towards

other people were different than how most of her friends described themselves. When she learned the right language to explain her feelings, she told her friends that she identified as non-binary and pansexual. This can be confusing if you don't understand these concepts, but it's simple. Non-binary refers to a gender identity that doesn't fit strictly within the categories of male or female, and pansexual describes a sexual orientation where a person is attracted to others regardless of their gender or their gender identity. It is important to note that Helen chose to go by she and her as their pronouns, and in junior high school, Helen tested out what it would be like to date,

and she entered into a relationship with a female classmate. But when the relationship broke down, her ex outed her gender identity and her sexuality to their entire class, which gave her bullies even more fuel for their torment. We know how mean juveniles can be towards one another, and it's truly sad. many times it's unwarranted. I'm currently following a case right now of Aubrey Wyatt, who took her own life and only 13 years old, apparently,

over being bullied by her classmates. And I wonder when it is going to stop. What will it take for this to stop? And even though Helen had a good group of friends, the relentless bullying at school took a toll on her mental health, as it would for many people. She developed anxiety and depression, and she also struggled with body image issues,

which followed her for the rest of her life. I do not think people realize the profound ripple effects that bullying can have on people. Just when things look to be at their darkest, Helen found her light. In the eighth grade, her good friend Bailey invited her to a cosplay convention for the very first time,

and this experience changed Helen's life forever. So let me know in the comments if you are a cosplay fan. If you're new to what cosplay is, it's a portmanteau, a blending of two words, the word costume, and the word play. It's an activity and performance art in which participants called

cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific fictional character. This practice actually started at science fiction conventions where attendees would come in costume and actually dates back all the way to First World Science Fiction Convention held in New York in 1939. So it's been around a long time. But the Japanese term cosplay was coined in 1984. It grew throughout the 90s, and it's a huge part of pop culture in Japan, especially with cosplayers emulating their favorite anime characters. And in case you are not familiar with anime, it's a style of animation that originated in Japan, and it's known for it's vibrant characters, colorful graphics, and action-filled plots with

a lot of drama, a lot of relationship drama, and in-depth characters. Their term anime, in Japanese, it's short for the word animation, and fans of anime tend to be very invested. in their favorite series or characters. Many times knowing the character's entire backstory, even going as far as knowing intimate details of how each character feels, how they would react in certain situations, and all of their interactions with other characters,

almost like fans of TV shows or certain famous actors would know all the details of a certain character or the person that plays that character. By the time Helen got introduced to cosplay, she was already obsessed with all things related to Japanese culture. Remember, she used to travel, travel there was one of her favorite places and she was already into anime after a recent trip to Japan with her parents so it's no surprise she fell in love with cosplay instantly it wasn't just the

bright costumes or the characters that drew her in it was much more than that dressing up as someone else felt natural to Helen as someone who experienced bullying will tell you pretending to be someone you're not is a protective mechanism they use it every day and try to avoid being targeted by their tormentors Except in cosplay, Helen was choosing to be someone else, not hiding behind it. Not only did it give her an escape from the trials of her everyday life, it also allowed her to be exactly who she wanted to be. And for the first time in Helen's life, she wasn't being bullied for being different. She was being celebrated.

Fellow cosplayers complimented Helen for her near-perfect imitations of their favorite characters, and for once, her petite size was seen as a good thing. Cosplay is all about cuteness, and her, gender identity made it easy for her to switch between whatever characters she wanted. So that's a plus. And when Helen attended conventions dressed in cosplay, she would get endless compliments about her round features, her doe eyes, which made her ideal for Japanese characters. After the Deadpool movie came out in 2016, Helen was often told that she looked exactly like Negasonic Teenage Warhead. And the more realistic or true to

character your costumes are, the better. Bailey described Helen's love for cosplay, and she said, quote, Helen was drawn to the escapism of it. Some people view it as an escape from reality. They're not a human, they're a character. For three days at Comic-Con, they don't have to think about what's going on in the outside world. It's just what's happening in the convention halls." Meanwhile, the bullying still continued, but now Helen had cosplay to focus on as her way to escape. And that passion seemed to help her tolerate with the negative attention she got at school. She achieved good grades and spent her spare time pouring her heart and soul into creating the outfits for her favorite characters. Now, even though cosplay made Helen happy, her mom wasn't so sure about the scene.

Many cosplayers were significantly older than Helen, and she was quite worried about her daughter, that she was very vulnerable and maybe taken advantage of. So a conversation that Helen and her mom had went like this. Her mom said to Helen, maybe it's like theater. And Helen said, it's not like theater. You do everything. You make your own costumes. You're really in charge of your own characters and cartoons. But more than that, there's such a large community of people who love cosplay. There's endless possibilities at making friends. And after seeing how happy cosplay made Helen, Susan decided to support her saying, quote, I saw that it was a community of people who in some way or another

didn't fit in, and they had this group of people with whom they could, end quote. And not long after Helen became involved in the cosplay scene, she downloaded the app musically, which was later rebranded as TikTok. And she posted her first video on June 11th of 2017 on her account, which was called Helen Cosplay. She shared her cosplay characters, did a bunch of typical lip-syncing videos, and posted about the various conventions she wanted to attend or she had attended. She also began attending meetups with other cosplayers. And finally, Helen seemed to have found. her people. But sadly, this is not a case which speaks to the positivity of social media or community or connection and there was no joyful ending for Helen. Once she began

getting a feel for the way TikTok work though, she started to tag other cosplay creators, especially bigger ones in the community, hoping that they would see her videos and respond or share them with their massive audiences so that Helen could accumulate more fans and recognition. Everyone starts on these platforms as a small and some of the initial videos were very basic that she created and they didn't really gain much traction at all. Duetting is another way to get views and another way for creators to give you their attention. I'm sure most of you know what it is, but it's when you kind of sample someone else's creation, someone else's video, and then make your own version.

And about a month into her TikTok journey on July 23rd of 2017, Helen was duetting a video with one of the biggest creators in the cosplay world on TikTok at the time, who went by the handle, Snow the Salt, Queen, another local creator from Texas, and Helen was emulating the video that they created on their TikTok, which was much bigger than Helens at the time. Now, when you duet someone, you're not really creating a video with them. Their video is on one side of the screen. I'm going to show it to you, and yours would be on the other side on TikTok. This is the way it used to look. However, there is a chance by tagging the creator you would get their recognition. It seemed by going through Helen's TikTok, she was a huge fan of Snows, constantly tagging their account and

many of her videos, more than any other creator. A lot of Snow's TikToks were over the top, and I'll get into that in one moment, but they were definitely on the darker side. They were aggressive, they were all about being tough, about girl power, and just a bunch of jokes and songs about murder and even making light of it in many ways. There was one that Helen did that was inspired by Snow, and the audio was, are you a slinky? Because I would love to push you down the stairs. Another one inspired by Snow had a song on it by Todrick Hall. The song was called Sell Black Django. And in the music video, women are in jail behind bars. And Helen is lip singing to the lyrics. And the lyrics are, he had it coming. He only had himself to blame.

If you would have been there, if you would have seen it, I bet you would have done the same. I think you can kind of get the gist to what these people are saying. They're in jail. They must have done something criminal. Sounds like they did it to maybe they're husband. So I think you get the picture of these kind of TikToks. And yet another one of the videos that Helen was lip singing to had the lyrics. At the same time, I want to hug you. I want to wrap my hands around your neck. Or this one that I'm going to play for you. It will speak for itself. I'm confused. Are you making the sound effect of me dragging your body bags? Just me one more damn time. It's dark humor, I suppose, but definitely a theme to Snow's choice of content. And Helen was a fan

to say the least. But Helen also had her own style of content, mostly creating videos of characters from Homestuck. And there were a lot of those videos. And Helen finally answered a question from a viewer who asked, what is Homestuck exactly? I know a lot of cosplay, Cosplay Homestuck characters. I just don't know. So I'm going to let Helen explain it. Homestuck is a web comic that you can find on Microsoft Paint Adventures, also known as MSPA. Read it. Just do it. Just trust me, man. Just do. According to Wikipedia, because I wanted to know what it was too, Homestuck is an internet fiction series about a group of teens, John, Dave, Jade, and Rose. And they trigger this inevitable

destruction of the entire Earth by installing the beta version of an upcoming PC game. They learned that playing the game has inadvertently triggered the destruction of Earth, and that they must beat the game to create a new universe. Helen was so down to earth, and it's so obvious why she was gaining so much attraction and so many followers. She was great at playing these characters, and she would stop and answer questions from her audience. In this one, she answers a question about her favorite cosplay. My favorite character to cosplay is probably Dave or any of the trolls, but I do feel super confident in Mystery Girl, and I really like that.

But with the others, it's just like fun, you know? Yeah. She is just so sweet and so innocent and relatable. She's just a sateen in her bedroom or bathroom with her messy hair and a smile, waiting to entertain or embrace you as a friend. And as I watched her videos, I could not help but truly love her personality. There's something so genuine about Helen. It's hard not to be drawn to her.

And by 2018, it seems from TikTok that Helen was dating a person named Devin, and she called them her boyfriend. Devon's profile name was Mysterious Reaper, and Helen would make many videos tagging Devin, and those videos focused on how much she liked Devin, and when asked who her favorite person on TikTok was, Helen, of course, mentioned Devin, but also Snow the Saul Queen.

Boyfriend, actually, and his name is Devin, and his at is Mysterious Reaper. So y'all should follow him on Musically. He's great. I love him so much. I love him so much and he's amazing. In terms of actual person, it's Devon, my boyfriend. In terms of, like, other stuff, it would have to expand to include Snow the Salt Queen and Turdini

and just like people like that because they're chill. Yee.