TikTok Cosplayer Killed Friend While Pretending to Be Batman Villain

A TikTok cosplayer with 1.6 million followers was charged with manslaughter after allegedly shooting her friend in a terrible drunken incident in January while likening herself to the Batman villain Penguin. Since being released on bail, Mary Anne Oliver-Snow, who goes by the name Yandere.freak on TikTok, has continued to post cosplay videos, including some that use fake blood. 

According to court filings and a police report, Oliver-Snow “did then and there unlawfully, recklessly cause the death of Helen Rose Hastings by pointing a handgun at the complainant and pulling the trigger.” The incident was first reported by Dexerto.  

There were six witnesses, according to a police report, and Oliver-Snow gave an audio statement at the time admitting that she shot her friend. Oliver-Snow is not identified as Yandere.freak in the police report, but the police report mentions that she is a cosplayer and also lists her date of birth, which matches a Facebook page belonging to her. Images posted on that Facebook show cosplays that match those posted by Yandere.freak on Instagram and TikTok; a mugshot of Oliver-Snow obtained by Motherboard shows Oliver-Snow is the same person who posts as Yandere.freak on Instagram and TikTok.

The shooting occurred around 1:30 a.m. on January 17 in Houston, Texas. According to a Harris County police report, Oliver-Snow was drinking and smoking with friends and playing around with a handgun an ex-boyfriend had left at her home. “The defendant stated her ex-boyfriend left his gun at her residence when he moved out, stating he took all of the bullets,” the report said. “The defendant stated she did not know there was a bullet in it, stating she has played with it before as a joke. The Defendant stated her ex-boyfriend has shown her how to take out the bottom part, referring to the magazine, so it would not shoot.”

According to Oliver-Snow and multiple witnesses, Hastings approached Oliver-Snow and told her to shoot. “‘Ooooh shoot me,’ as they were laughing the Defendant said ‘Oh ok,’ and said it went off, saying she was in shock saying it was supposed to be empty,” the police report said.

The cops asked Oliver-Snow why she had a gun out in the first place. She said “they were watching ‘Gotham’ and said she was drunk, laughing, messing around, saying she’s a Cosplayer, stating they like characters and stuff, and told her friends she had a gun like Penguin does.”

The cops asked one of the witnesses why Oliver-Snow would put a gun up to someone’s head. “Alyssa [one of the witnesses present] stated because their friend group is wild, dumb and does jokes all the time,” the police report said.

Another witness said she moved the gun away from Oliver-Snow after the shooting, then “got a large red and white stuffed bear and used it to compress pressure onto the Complainant, making sure the Complainant was still breathing, leaning over to listen to her heartbeat.”

The group immediately called the police who arrived on the scene. Hastings was taken to the hospital, but her parents took her off life support soon after she arrived and she died, according to the police report. 

Court papers filed on January 21, just days after the killing, show that Oliver-Snow was released on a $20,000 bond and ordered to stay in the state. The person who paid for the bond is unknown. Court records also indicate that Oliver-Snow violated the terms of her bond throughout August. She missed a pretrial date related to the case, violated curfew, and allowed the battery on a GPS tracking device to die.

While she’s been out, Oliver-Snow has continued to post to TikTok. Before the incident she was snowthesaltqueen, but has since rebranded the account as yandere.freak. (A yandere is a stock character in anime, a lovesick fool whose affection often becomes violent. Think Harley Quinn when she’s still dating the Joker.) 

Oliver-Snow’s yandere.freak TikTok persona gives off strong Quinn vibes. She’s often in pigtails, a pink wig, or a blonde wig with blue cat ears ,and wearing mismatched red and blue eyeshadow. Since TikTokers have tied her to the January shooting, she has taken her account private. Some of her 1.6 million followers have made thousands of duets with recent videos saying that her videos feel disturbing given she’s been charged with manslaughter.

In one, Oliver-Snow stands in front of a blood splattered backdrop while Madds Buckley’s The Red Means I Love You plays. “The red on my face Is matching you,” Buckley sings while Oliver-Snow dances and lip syncs. “And goodness you’re bleeding/ What a wonderful feeling/ You’re down and you’re pleading/ My head is just reeling.”

Oliver-Snow appears to maintain a vigorous presence on other social-media channels as well. Her still-active Instagram links to a Linktree that in turn links to a Patreon, an OnlyFans, and an Amazon wishlist asking followers to buy her, among other things, laundry detergent. A Facebook account that appears to be hers has been inactive for over two years.

Comments on her recent Instagram posts show how the cosplay community is reacting. “It’s the killing someone and pretending that you aren’t guilty of manslaughter for me,” hufflepuffpride23 said in a recent post. “Literally the Cosplay community doesn’t want you here so please do us a favor and get out of the Cosplay community.”

Oliver-Snow’s lawyer did not respond to Motherboard’s request for comment. The Harris County District Attorney did not respond to a request for comment.