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backgrounds, worldviews, and political leanings, drawn to the quest for highly personal reasons, found themselves camped out in a corner of cyberspace with individuals they would likely never have otherwise met or chosen to bunk with.
    Strung up like dirty laundry was evidence of their clashes: forum members banned for perceived or real infractions, users vilifying one another via fake online identities.
    Faceless, behind screen names, separated by time and space, web sleuths baited their perceived enemies with insinuations and wisecracks. Some were capable of elevating philosophical rifts and personality clashes into out-and-out turf wars. “Websleuths is SUPPOSED to be [a] TRUE CRIME forum,” posted someone who variously called herself JaneInOz and Pepper. “However there are now so many rules about what can and can’t be said, that no meaningful discussion can take place without someone taking offense . . . Every discussion seems to turn into a bash fest.” I felt JaneInOz hit the problem squarely on the head when, at the end of a diatribe directed at Utah-based Websleuths.com co-owner Tricia Griffith, she concluded, seemingly without a trace of irony, “I don’t dislike you. Heck, I don’t even really know you.”
    â€œMany of these groups suffer from a healthy dose of egomania,” complained one anonymous poster. “They feel they are being ‘attacked’ or ‘stalked’—I assume as a way of exaggerating their own self-importance.”
    I agreed with what came next: “I often wonder how any serious volunteer could put up with all this and find it remarkable that, not only do they put up with it, but they keep joining groups such as this for even moresenseless heartache and extracurricular bullshit. Perhaps masochism is a prerequisite for membership in online groups.”
    Cyberbullying aside, some web sleuths struck me as purposeful and committed. Despite Wilbur Riddle’s possessiveness of the body he found, it was obvious to me why Todd Matthews, not Riddle, became associated in people’s minds with the legendary Tent Girl. To Riddle, the fact that a girl had been killed and dumped was a shame, for sure. It was also a good yarn, an attention-getter. Riddle clearly believed Tent Girl was his, a prize he had stumbled upon and collected that day in 1968, whereas Todd, not a churchgoer but a firm believer in a higher power, felt a soul-wrenching connection with the girl wrapped in the carnival tent. From the moment Riddle showed him Master Detective ’s hyperbolic headline, Todd felt he had always known her. He identified with her. He, too, could have died young. He, too, lacked an unambiguous identity in a world that everyone else seemed to navigate with ease. He was convinced that a divine force impelled him to search for her name—a search that would both obsess him and sorely try him for ten long years.
    In 2010, after more than two decades as a factory worker in the small town where he grew up, Todd landed a position with an agency overseen by the U.S. Department of Justice, rallying law enforcement and volunteers to use new Internet-based tools that help match up missing persons with unidentified bodies.
    You might think this would validate Todd’s commitment and the volunteers’ efforts, but the fact that Todd was suddenly being paid to facilitate matches on the Internet—something a growing cadre of amateur sleuths did with significant investments of their own time and money—caused dissension in the ranks. While trying to enlist the beast’s strength—crowdsourcing all those neglected cases—Todd incurred its wrath.
    It had taken Todd Matthews years to accrue the power and respect that placed him at a podium in front of a sea of uniforms and gun holsters, and the journey had cost him personally. To some, Todd was a hero, a pioneer. Others considered him a traitor, a sellout, and a contemptible