PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 13 -- A man who used an Internet chat room to try to set up a mass suicide on Valentine's Day had been trying to persuade women for at least five years to engage in sex acts with him and then kill themselves, a sheriff said Sunday.
Gerald Krein faces charges of solicitation to commit murder, but prosecutors are expected to increase the charge to attempted manslaughter Monday, said Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger.
Combing through old chat room records, investigators discovered that Krein had been enticing women across North America to commit suicide as far back as 2000, Evinger said. Krein told investigators he elicited more than two dozen suicide pledges for the Valentine's Day plot, authorities said.
"The common theme is that these were women who were vulnerable, who were depressed. He invited them to engage in certain sexual acts with him -- and then they were to hang themselves naked from a beam in his house," the sheriff said. "He was indicating in these chat groups to these women that he had a beam and that it would hold multiple people."
Klamath County Prosecutor Ed Caleb said that because Krein was living in a mobile home while organizing the suicide, the idea of hanging bodies from beams may indicate the plot was a fantasy.
No deaths had been linked to Krein, the sheriff said, but he said he would not be surprised if someone had killed herself as a result of Krein's alleged activities. "My concern is if he's been doing this for some time, it's my hope that he hasn't been successful," he said.
Krein, 26, was arrested Wednesday at his mother's home in Klamath Falls, in southern Oregon.
Detectives learned of the Valentine's Day plan from a woman in Ontario, Canada, who said she was going to take part in the suicide pact but had second thoughts when another chat room participant talked about killing her children before taking her own life, Evinger said earlier.
Krein told investigators he was in contact with 31 people. Investigators have tracked down four women: the Canadian and ones in Oregon, Missouri and Virginia. "In the Missouri and Virginia case, he was inviting them to bring their children with them," Evinger said. "It would have been four children total."
