[Air-l] vampirefreaks and yesterday's massacre

[Sara M. Grimes]

Hi All - 
The shootings at Dawson's College in Montreal, QC, Canada yesterday remain
big and deeply disturbing news in Canada, as the Quebec and Montreal police
begin to piece together a profile of the killer. Today's CBC online news
site mentions a goth/vampire themed web community that the killer belonged
to (vampirefreaks.com), where he apparently kept an online diary and gave
hints about what he was planning
(http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/09/14/gunman-shooting.html).
In trying to access his blog today, I discovered that it has unsurprisingly
been removed. I'm assuming that police officials are responsible for this,
to allow the investigation to proceed without interference, but could also
see the site operators taking it down for other reasons. I was wondering if
anyone has heard anything to confirm when/why/by whom the diary was removed?
Is it standard practice during this type of investigation? I seem to
remember hearing about similar blog deletions after past shootings of this
kind, but I can't find anything written on this.

Sara M. Grimes
PhD Candidate/School of Communication
Research Assistant/Applied Communication + Technology (ACT) Lab
Simon Fraser University