What on earth will Craigslist founder Craig Newmark say at a memorial service for Katherine Olson, the 24-year-old Minneapolis woman shot by a killer who found her using a Craigslist ad?
Olson's family is holding a service for her on May 3 at which Newmark is due to speak. The plans for a memorial come after a jury found Michael Anderson guilty of premeditated murder in the October 2007 killing. (He's the first man to have gotten the label "Craigslist killer"; more recently, Boston medical student Philip Markoff has been accused of using a Craigslist ad to lure a masseuse to her death.)
Newmark told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the Olson case was "the worst that I can recall." The Olson family says Newmark has been supportive of them.
It all seems ridiculous. If Anderson had placed a classified ad in City Pages, would we be calling him the alt-weekly killer? Would its publisher be invited to speak at her funeral? Anderson's just a killer. And Newmark's just an amoral millionaire with an insanely lucrative website which he can't be bothered to police for psychopaths. Does tacking "Craigslist" on either man's label change anything?
















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