Judge Orders Probe into E-Mails in MySpace Case

A Fayette County judge has directed District Attorney Nancy Vernon to trace the source of e-mails that an attorney says proves his client did not create a Web site that threatened violence against blacks.

Judge Steve Leskinen on Monday granted Uniontown attorney Simon B. John’s motion to have prosecutors contact MySpace.com to obtain records of the e-mails between his client, Kevin Andrew Burd, and an unidentified person.

Burd, 21, is charged by state police at Uniontown with terroristic threats, identity theft, recklessly endangering another person and harassment.

In a criminal complaint, police said Burd used a 16-year-old student’s name and photograph to create the fake MySpace page in April 2007. It contained numerous racist slurs directed against blacks and a threat to “bring a gun to school someday and kill them all.”

In copies of the e-mail messages that John included in his motion, a person known only by the screen name “Riss” appears to take responsibility for creating the site.

“They’ll kick me out of school if they find out I’m the one who did it,” Riss purportedly wrote in an online message to Burd.

Leskinen directed Vernon to determine who owns the computer that Riss used to send the messages, and to provide that information to John.

Originally published by The Tribune-Review.

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