Deadly Charades: Double Lives, Extortion and the Suicide of a Respected Texas A&M Professor

[TexasTowelie]

At 10:29 a.m. on January 8, Texas A&M Communications Professor Jim Aune stood on the roof of a campus parking garage and texted the man who had been extorting him for weeks. It was the last thing he would ever do.

"Killing myself now And u will be prosecuted for black mail," Aune said, according to federal court records. Then Aune stepped off the roof and fell six stories, landing on his back. The fall didn't immediately kill him; he died at a hospital later that day.

Aune, a 59-year-old married father of two, believed he had texted the father of a 16-year-old girl he'd been chatting with online after first meeting her on Gay.com. Aune never actually met or spoke on the phone with the girl who called herself Karen McCall. There was no way he could have, because she didn't exist.

Federal authorities say that both "Karen McCall" and her father were actually a 38-year-old New Orleans-area man named Daniel Timothy Duplaisir, a self-employed house painter with a habit of extorting men who liked to carry on sexually explicit online relationships with underage girls.

More at http://www.houstonpress.com/2013-06-20/news/am-prof-suicide/full/ .

Related threads:
A&M prof & department head jumps from campus building, dies
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10785249

Alleged blackmail behind A&M professor's suicide
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10787255

[Ilsa]

1. I went to the site and read all

of this. I'm still confused about whether the perpetrator of blackmail has been charged for that yet. He appears to be a sociopath.

It's a horrible story. I feel badly for Miriam Aune. She is left to care for their two disabled children. I hope she has family who can help her.