Despite improved home security and CCTV, every house is exposed to online attacks at any time. A computer is the modern-day version of a skeleton key that can open any lock.
Which is why Sampson wants to tell his story. It is about one case in which he says he was a bit player.
On March 3, 2007, Sampson was on call when he was told to head to Rosebud Police Station to carry out an arrest warrant from South Australia. It was for the murder of a 15-year-old girl killed on a beach at Horseshoe Bay, about 80 kilometres from Adelaide.
Sampson knew it well. His family had owned a holiday house there, and he spent most summers on that beach.
When police raided the unit, Garry Francis Newman was in his lounge room chatting online to a 14-year-old girl in Perth. Newman was 48.
Garry Newman, murderer, predator and monster.Credit: ABC NEWS
For 18 months, Newman had pretended to be a teenage rock guitarist as he pursued Carly Ryan online. He killed her when his pathetic masquerade was exposed.
“Newman was on the computer in the lounge room,” Sampson says. “His son was there. Newman was clearly grooming another victim.”
When the police officer examined the computer, he found three usernames: Brando, Gary and Gotza. The user Brando was logged in.
When Sampson accessed the computer, there was a live chat on screen. It was clear the middle-aged man had taught himself to communicate as a teenager using adolescent slang and computer abbreviations.
It was also clear he had many identities.
It was found he had 200 identities. One was Brandon Kane, a Texan musician living in Melbourne.
First “Kane” chatted to a South Australian girl who was a friend of Carly’s. Soon, Ryan was also in the chat. It is a classic predator move – gain trust through a friend, club or online social group. The target accepts the online identity because their friends appear to know him. Kane flattered and flirted with Carly as they talked about meeting.
She wanted the guitarist to come to her home in Stirling, near Adelaide, for her 15th birthday on the 2007 Australia Day long weekend. Kane said he couldn’t because he was flying back to the US for a brief visit, but his dad, Shane, would like to come over and meet her.
Carly’s mother, Sonya, was eventually persuaded to add the interstate guest. Shane turned up, and it was soon clear he was a creep. A court would later hear that Carly said the middle-aged man had been “feeling her up”.
Sonya kicked him out and followed up by emailing him, telling him not to come anywhere near her daughter again, and if he did, she would go to the police.
She would later discover Shane had bought the 15-year-old sexually provocative clothing.
Newman returned home filthy that his plans had been thwarted.
Within three weeks, using his cyber character Shane, he had persuaded Carly to meet, this time near Horseshoe Bay. Carly, knowing her mother would never agree, told her she was going to have a sleepover at a friend’s house.
Newman drove nearly 850 kilometres to kill. It was not a crime of passion. “His anger fuelled a sense of vengeance,” Sampson says.
On February 20, sitting in the dunes, Newman gave the vulnerable teenager marijuana, then hit her in the head with a rock. He turned her facedown, pressing her face in the sand to smother her. Convinced she was dead, he began to walk away.
Carly’s mother, Sonya.Credit: Brenton Edwards
“Then she coughed, and so he came back to drag her into the shallows to drown her,” says Sampson.
Newman had convinced himself he was smart by manipulating kids (he had earlier threatened online to butcher a girl in Singapore who saw through his tactics). But investigator Sampson says: “He was an idiot who left a trail of evidence.”
So much so, he was raided and arrested at Rosebud less than two weeks later.
Sampson says that even though Newman faced a mountain of evidence, “he remained defiant and decided to plead not guilty”.
When the officer was testifying in a small court, Sampson recalls: “Newman would lean towards you and glare to try and intimidate. He was an absolute prick.”
He even chose to glare at the judge – not a good idea, as she was the one who decided his sentence.
In her final remarks, Justice Trish Kelly of the South Australian Supreme Court, didn’t miss.
“It was a terribly cruel thing you did to this beautiful, impressionable 14-year-old child,” she said.
“I say ‘child’ because that’s what she was – a child who fell in love with the idea of the handsome, musically inclined and rather exotic Brandon Kane. The real man was an overweight, balding, middle-aged paedophile with sex and murder on his mind.
Loading
“When your deception came unravelled, you killed Miss Ryan. You left in your wake a devastated and inconsolably grief-stricken mother, family and friends.
“You were sexually obsessed with Miss Ryan to the degree that, when you could not get your own way, you prepared to, and did, kill her.”
Newman was given life with a minimum of 29 years.
Carly’s mother, Sonya Ryan, says she knew that if he hadn’t been convicted he would have continued to prey on teenage girls. “I knew Carly wouldn’t be the last. He was grooming multiple girls, one in Singapore and one in the US.”
Loading
Ryan has spent more than 15 years using her daughter’s death to try to protect others, turning herself into an expert in the field and a tireless lobbyist for change.
She set up the Carly Ryan Foundation to educate adolescents on how to navigate social media safely and to provide laws to protect children.
“Out of the grief came clarity, and I could see what was coming,” she says. “I am grateful I am doing something Carly would want me to do. We have to create shields to protect our children.”
Eventually, politicians listened and passed what is known as Carly’s Law in federal parliament. The legislation makes it an offence for an adult to masquerade as a minor online.
It allows police to move in before the child has been successfully groomed and has a maximum penalty of 10 years’ jail.
Ryan became South Australian of the Year in 2013, and was made an officer of the Order of Australia in 2021.
Ryan, who is in the US talking to politicians about introducing Carly’s Law, says the online world is more dangerous for kids than ever before.
She knows such crimes are international and require an international defence.
In the federal police operation Blackheath, officers identified 47 offenders who tricked young people to perform sexually explicit acts online.
The predators record the images to sell to international pay-for-view platforms. Police found about 100 victims in the US, Britain, Russia, Denmark, Argentina, South Korea, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Italy, South Africa, Germany and France.
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation receives about 100 reports a month of children being targeted online.
“Children now carry mini-computers in their pocket,” says Ryan. “Wherever children are online, there are predators.
“AI is really concerning. It is a new tool for criminals. With AI, children can be groomed in minutes.
“Parents can be having a glass of chardonnay, and their children can be in the bedrooms online being groomed.”
She says studies consistently show a decline in the mental health of young people since the development of smartphones.
Ryan says social media platforms deliberately develop addictive sites that are considered “sticky” to keep children online. “They have much to answer for,” she says. “Social media companies need to be held responsible.”
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
