How a Custody Fight Plus QAnon Turned Deadly
Christopher Hallett spent years helping Neely Petrie-Blanchard fight for custody of her daughters. Then on the evening of Nov. 15, she shot him in the head in his Ocala, Fla., home. While blood pooled beneath Mr. Hallett’s dying body, Ms. Petrie-Blanchard declared her motive. She was convinced Mr. Hallett had joined a cabal of government Satanists to steal her children.
Mr. Hallett was a self-appointed expert in child-custody law, with no formal legal training, whose theories about corruption in the legal system attracted thousands of followers on YouTube and Facebook. He used what he called calculus equations to prove his legal arguments and said he was helping to advise President Donald Trump on a new Justice Department, according to his followers.
Some of Mr. Hallett’s followers said in comments and on regular video calls that pedophiles in the Pentagon steal children. Some ascribed to QAnon, which claims a high-ranking whistleblower is exposing the activity. Some said the Earth is flat. Ms. Petrie-Blanchard, who is now 34 years old, posted photos online in a QAnon shirt and claimed her own custody troubles were connected to dark government machinations. At one point, said a person close to her, she said Mr. Hallett might be Q—the shadowy figure whose online postings form the basis for the QAnon ideology.
For years, Ms. Petrie-Blanchard said, Mr. Hallett had been telling her that “any day now” a U.S. marshal would bring her back her oldest daughter, who is in the custody of her former boyfriend’s mother, even though there were no legal proceedings that could result in such an outcome. Ideas like these, shared and cultivated online, are spilling into the real world, sometimes in deadly ways. Social media amplifies and accelerates the spread of notions formerly relegated to dark corners of the internet, and more and more, violence is the result.
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Mr. Hallett, who was once a Democrat, told his followers that Mr. Trump would bring justice to aggrieved parents. He saw in Mr. Trump a more successful reflection of himself. Mr. Hallett felt a kinship with Mr. Trump as someone who was pushing back against an establishment he saw as corrupt. Mr. Hallett developed a theory that judges and lawyers were violating the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clauses, which govern how the president, members of Congress and other officeholders are paid, and were illegally enriching themselves.
More..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-online-conspiracies-turn-deadly-a-custody-battle-and-a-killing-11617376764 (subscription)
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And to think that there are many more nuts like that and their followers..
