A screenshot from a YouTube vlogger’s interview with “k0dy” and his ex-girlfriend “Gei”.
The media attention surrounding Amanda Todd, the Canadian teenager who took her own life after being sexually extorted online, has largely died down, as most stories without a clear ending tend to do in our world of fleeting news cycles. Since her suicide in November, the RCMP has been unable to place charges against anyone in connection with her death despite their claims that they had “upwards of 20-25 full-time investigators […] working” the case. Kody Maxson, the individual who a branch of the hacktivist group Anonymous has very publicly accused of tormenting her to death, was declared a person of no interest by Canadian law enforcement. If you’ve been following my coverage of this story, you’ll know that I’ve been able to connect Kody to “kody1206” an online alias that was heavily involved in “capping” an internet subculture devoted to clandestinely capturing images of teen girls who strip on webcam. He was involved to such an extent that Kody was named the 2010 “Blackmailer of the Year” by a website called the Daily Capper for his blackmail of a teenage girl.
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Although the mainstream media has lost interest, a few online activists have been tirelessly investigating the case in what appears to be a reaction to the total lack of action from the RCMP. One YouTube user, who goes by the name EnigmaHood, apparently managed to interview Kody Maxson over Skype. It seems that EnigmaHood was contacted by a girl who claimed to be Kody’s ex-girlfriend after he posted a series of vlogs reacting to Amanda Todd’s suicide, some of which called for Kody’s prosecution. “Gei” the girl’s online alias, set up a Skype interview between EnigmaHood and Kody. Gei was also on the line.
r4p3-k0dy’s Skype profile.
The interviewee doesn’t use the video chat function, and I have never heard Kody Maxson’s voice, so it is impossible to confirm that the person speaking as “r4p3-k0dy” (the alias used, which translates to “rape-kody” in l33t) in this interview is the same Kody that Anonymous believes tormented Amanda Todd. That said, I believe them to be one and the same after examining a footprint of information floating around on the internet, left by r4p3-kody. Searching r4p3-kody on Google yields just four search results, all of which connect r4p3-kody and Gei. Clearly there is only one active internet user operating under such a name.
While investigating the available information that r4pe-k0dy has left online, I found a comment on a YouTube video under the username “bountyhunter176” which reads: “Gei add my skype you know who it is, r4p3-k0dy.” The video, called “Rant on Pointless Suicide” is a confessional where Gei harshly criticises people who publish Amanda Todd-esque anti-bullying videos. It was uploaded eight days after Amanda Todd’s suicide and it is viewable here. In addition, I uncovered a much longer correspondence between Gei and Kody that is associated with the same Skype accounts (r4p3-k0dy and Gei) that were used in the interview with EnigmaHood. I will break down that lengthy chat log later in this article.
A screenshot from Gei’s rant about anti-bullying confessionals.
In EnigmaHood’s interview, he grills Kody relentlessly and frequently cuts back and forth between their conversation and his own asides to his internet audience, where he says that Kody needs to “go to prison where he belongs” and alleges that Gei, Kody’s supposed ex-girlfriend, told EnigmaHood that she thinks Kody is guilty.
When EnigmaHood asks for Kody’s side of the story, Kody says that he doesn’t “really” want to provide it, and that he’s “pissed off” everyone is just listening to the media. He reminds EnigmaHood that the cops do not think he’s a suspect and blames the public for jumping on the “giant bandwagon”. When asked if he knew Amanda Todd, Kody says he “knew her for a bit” and that she was “just a friend”. He then says he “never had, or wanted” pictures of Amanda Todd topless.
Later in the video, when EnigmaHood asks Kody why Anonymous would name him as Amanda’s tormenter, Kody says that he “pissed them off because of the shit [he] was doing to them through certain hacking groups online”. When I asked the branch of Anonymous who named Kody Maxson for a comment on that defence, they told me: “I really doubt he can hack, and I would say that I didn’t know who he even was before that day in October [after Amanda’s suicide] when I researched him. So, his claim that we are attacking him because he made us mad is unfounded.”
Kody also claims he is currently in Cuba, because he likes the weather and the people, which seems a bit odd considering he is up for charges in B.C. for sexual assault and sexual interference against a minor (these charges are unrelated to Amanda Todd). After missing a couple of court dates in B.C., it has been reported that there’s a warrant out for his arrest.
Eventually EngimaHood becomes very aggressive, telling his viewers that Kody should “suck his balls” and that he is a “piece of shit”. Unfortunately, that rant makes it pretty difficult to take the rest of the video seriously. After Kody signs out of the chat Gei tells EnigmaHood that she has “doubts in her head” about Kody’s involvement in Amanda’s death, and that Kody “just explained” that he isn’t guilty so she doesn’t need proof that he is innocent.
The whole interview is extremely strange and really doesn’t get down to the matter of anything. How did Kody know Amanda Todd? How does Kody explain his connection to the “Blackmailer of the Year” award? How is it that Kody is up on sexual assault charges in connection to a minor, and yet the RCMP quickly decided he wasn’t a person of interest in the Amanda Todd case?
I started looking into Kody again after watching this video, and found a nearly 3,000-line chat log between Kody and Gei on the document-sharing site Pastebin. The chat begins with a friend request from Gei to Kody under the r4p3-k0dy username. The conversation is logged continuously from June 24, 2012 until October 14, 2012, four days after Amanda Todd’s suicide.
There are a few red flags in the correspondence. At one point, there is a long conversation wherein Kody tries to convince Gei to give him her email password by saying it would indicate their relationship has “mutual respect and trust”. She responds, “Nah, fuck that. You’ve fucked me over before… You limit me to what I can and cannot do… You try to control me… I fucking hate that.” Eventually Gei gives in and sends Kody her password with the footnote, “Fucking happy?”
Kody and Gei’s conversation about Gei’s email password.
Beyond this obvious manipulation of trust comes an admission from Gei, a week after giving Kody her email password, that she is 14 years old (as of July 30th, 2012), which does not appear to surprise Kody whatsoever. This revelation came after complaining that she was banned from the chat site IMVU for being underage. She then asks Kody to help her get a new account. Court documents state that Kody was born in 1993, so even if Kody’s birthday is December 31, 1993, he would be at least 18 years old at the time he was coercing a 14-year-old girl to give him her email password. There are also numerous sexual exchanges where Kody asks Gei if she likes “rough kinky or passionate” sex and tells her that he is going to “dominate the fuck outta you.”
In another conversation Gei argues with Kody about a virtual hotel she was building in the world-creation game Minecraft. She was collaborating with other male gamers to create the hotel, which made Kody jealous. He asked her for access to the hotel, saying: “If u dont gimme the link im never guna talk to you again… Theirs 2 ways this can go. You gimme the link im nice etc. 2nd way when i do figure it out ill hack it.” [sic]. Kody then asks Gei who she “likes more” him, or these other guys she’s playing Minecraft with. She refuses to answer the question and tells him: “Kody, no. You screen shot everything. And use it against me later.” Instead of denying the allegations of screen capping, he says Gei can call him on the phone to give him her answer.
Another excerpt from Gei and Kody’s chat log.
Just so we’re all on the same page: Gei is (at the time) a 14-year-old girl who Kody, at age 18 or 19, had a sexual online relationship with. He manipulated her in order to gain access to her email account. Gei acknowledged that he had taken screen shots of her and used the images against her to get what he wants, which was exactly the type of behaviour that Amanda Todd’s tormentor used. Plus, the usernames in the conversation between Gei and Kody are the same two Skype handles in EnigmaHood’s YouTube video.
Coupled with all of this is a new set of videos that the Daily Capper’s producer has privately leaked. These new videos connect Kody Maxson to Peyton, a girl he blackmailed in 2010. His tormenting of Peyton is frequently mentioned in videos made by cappers about the capping world, and it was that twisted little saga that won Kody the Daily Capper’s Blackmailer of the Year award.
In a couple of the new videos, Peyton talks about the way Kody treated her. Parts of this confessional video were already online, but these newly leaked clips place the events in a larger context. In a heart-wrenching video monologue, Peyton says:
“It makes me sad. Once you put something on the internet, there’s no way you can remove it permanently. Once you interview for a job later in life, what if they look up your name and see a video of you naked, or something? Obviously I’m scared to death now, right after I found out that he [Kody] recorded me I didn’t want to get on BlogTV. I was scared that something was going to happen and that he was going to record me. I was worried about everything. I couldn’t trust anyone. I don’t know how to trust anyone.”
Peyton then goes on to explain, as I have detailed in a previous article, how she “gave” Kody “what he wanted” before he cut her out of his life entirely. What hadn’t been released in previous videos, however, is the next part of Peyton’s confession where she begins to explain how Kody buttered her up:
“He sweet talks me. He gave me songs to listen to that were sweet, he made a website for me that said ‘I love Peyton’ and at the end it said ‘just the way you are’ and then he linked to the Bruno Mars song. Then he would call me beautiful and talk to me on the phone every night. He pretended to love me and I was living a fairy tale. I was in love with the fact… I never had a guy treat me like that before.”
Chat room reactions to Peyton’s confession.
Those tactics are disturbingly reminiscent of Amanda Todd’s blackmailer, who used similar words of adoration in convincing Amanda to flash him.
While it’s impossible to definitively state that Kody was Amanda’s blackmailer, it is clear that he had two well-documented and sexually extortive online relationships with teenage girls (Peyton and Gei), he was “friends with” Amanda Todd, lived in B.C. at the same time as Amanda, and is up on sexual assault charges against a minor, which he appears to be avoiding in Cuba.
It seems to me that, in light of his repeated manipulative behaviour with teenage girls, Kody’s potential involvement in the death of Amanda Todd is at the bare minimum “of interest” to gaining closure on this upsetting and complicated case.
Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire
More on the Amanda Todd investigation:
Cowards Are Blackmailing Young Women to Death on the Internet
The Disgusting Rivalries of Webcam Extortionists: Kody Maxson, Viper, and r0
Tracing Kody Maxson: the Online Blackmailer Alleged to Have Tormented Amanda Todd
