Detectives missed key opportunities to stop Britain’s worst catfish as it preyed on 3,500 girls.
Alexander McCartney, 26, was yesterday jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years behind bars. He claimed victims in thirty countries during a campaign that lasted at least five years.
By ‘catfishing’ – using a false identity to deceive people online – as a young girl on the social media app Snapchat, McCartney groomed, blackmailed and abused young people around the world.
One of his American victims, Cimarron Thomas, 12, shot herself in the head with her father’s gun rather than submit to his sadistic demands.
Her father Ben, a U.S. Army veteran, took his own life after being consumed by guilt for leaving his gun where she had access to it in their West Virginia home.
Alexander McCartney, 26, was yesterday jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years behind bars
McCartney, from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Cimarron and 184 other offences, relating to 70 sample cases, of blackmail and inciting a child to sexual activity
McCartney, from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Cimarron and 184 other offences, relating to 70 sample cases, of blackmail and inciting a child to sexual activity.
Following his conviction at Belfast Crown Court yesterday, the Mail can reveal there were two missed opportunities to stop him, at least one of which could have saved Cimarron.
He was twice investigated on suspicion of acquiring indecent images, in 2016 and 2018, but neither investigation led to criminal charges.
His behavior only ended after a 13-year-old girl in Scotland revealed she was a victim, and Britain’s largest catfishing investigation was launched in 2019. The missed opportunities to save potentially hundreds of girls are being investigated by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman.
Jailing McCartney, Judge O’Hara said he was responsible for the “deviant and sadistic” attacks on vulnerable victims on an “industrial scale”, adding: “I find it difficult to judge a sexual deviant who poses more risk than this defendant.’
He described the former University of Ulster computer science student as ‘devoid of normal human empathy’ and relished his ability to humiliate his young victims.
Cimarron Thomas (right) with her father, a US Army veteran, Ben Thomas, who later committed suicide after being consumed by guilt for leaving his gun where his daughter had access to it
Most of McCartney’s victims, who lived in countries including Britain, Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand, were between the ages of ten and sixteen, but some were as young as four.
Chief Inspector Eamonn Corrigan of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said: ‘McCartney is nothing but a disgusting child predator who posed as young girls online to groom, manipulate and sexually abuse his victims, as young as four years old, to achieve his to satisfy victims. own sexual perversions and those of other child abusers.’
McCartney contacted Cimarron in May 2018. After receiving intimate photos, he attempted to blackmail her into carrying out his deviant demands.
Even though she was tearfully happy that he stopped, McCartney threatened to send the photos to her father and friends.
When she refused his demands and said she would shoot herself, he cruelly began counting down and told her, “Goodbye and good luck.”
She was found dying by her nine-year-old sister.
The family had no idea why Cimarron had killed himself – the reason only came to light in 2021 when police in Northern Ireland found a transcript of the conversation between Cimarron and McCartney, which he had kept on his computer as a ‘trophy’.
Cimarron’s family said McCartney “might as well have pulled the trigger” and were furious he was not charged with murder.
Prosecutor David McDowell described how McCartney “degraded and humiliated” his victims and showed no mercy when they begged him to stop. McCartney, who refused to listen and sat in the dock with his hands over his ears, told a girl that he would have people come to her house and rape her if she did not comply.
When another said her mother was dying of cancer, he said, “I don’t care,” and continued his brutal abuse.
Cimarron and Ben Thomas with mother Stephanie. The double tragedy tore the family apart
McCartney grew up in a quiet farming community less than ten miles from the Irish border, living with his father, a timber yard manager, mother and three siblings in a five-bedroom bungalow near Newry.
He showed an aptitude for computers at an early age and went on to study computer science at university.
As it got closer, police raided his home while he was in his bedroom, “literally in the middle of a trespass, with Snapchat open,” sources told the Mail. More than sixty digital devices have been seized and forensically examined.
What they contained – graphic images, plus accounts of conversations with terrified girls that McCartney had kept, apparently as trophies – shocked even seasoned detectives.
Researchers in the US praised Snapchat’s cooperation after the company “provided everything they could” to the investigation.
A man who knows McCartney’s family told the Mail they were “dearly loved” and added: “This must be hell for them.”
“It’s beyond disgusting what he did.”