Online Gossip Leads to Murder Charge

When his pregnant girlfriend confronted him about rumors he’d been cheating, Calvin Lawson became enraged. He confronted the woman he believed was behind the rumors and, police tell the New York Post, strangled her to death with her own hair dryer cord. “We got into a scuffle and I choked her,” he said in a signed confession. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Lawson believed that the victim, Caroline Wimmer, and a friend were spreading the rumors, investigators say. When the friend posted messages on Wimmer’s MySpace page implying she was having an affair with Lawson, he assumed Wimmer was the source of the rumor. But despite the confession, Lawson says he’s innocent. “I didn’t do it,” he said leaving the police station. “I already told them who did it.” (More Calvin Lawson stories.)