Internet dragnet

Andrew McCrae’s postings on the Internet, in which he admitted to killing a Red Bluff police officer, helped investigators track him down. The first was sent Nov. 22 as an e-mail from a Seattle internet café to 14 addresses, including that of Neil E. Wright, in Lake Havasu, Ariz.

Wright, a former police officer and self-described Libertarian, said he researched Mickel’s claim of having killed a police officer and immediately contacted Red Bluff police, who were already working with the FBI. Wright traced the e-mail to an Internet café in Seattle

“If I had some small part in [Mickel’s capture], then I’d be fine with that,” Wright said. “I figured if he’s declaring war on law enforcement, he’s declaring war on my brothers, so he’s declaring war on me.”

The owner of Seattle’s Capitol Hill Cybercafé, from which McCrae apparently sent the e-mail, said his café gets about 300 customers day. He didn’t remember seeing McCrae, but then again, he said, “This is sort of a mini Times Square around here. We get a lot of crazies.”

McCrae sent his second posting, a long diatribe against corporations, the U.S. government and the World Trade Organization, on Nov. 25 to several discussion sites run by San Francisco’s Independent Media. In it, McCrae mixes lucid arguments with loony propaganda, saying that he hopes to be immune from prosecution because of his status as a corporate officer. His company, Proud and Insolent Youth, Inc., was named after a quote in the classic kids’ novel, Peter Pan.

He ends the screed with another literary quote, that of Tiny Tim from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “God bless us, every one.”

Official sites: www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/796409/posts