Man Accused of Recruiting Women for Valentine Suicides

An Oregon man arrested last week for trying to arrange a mass Valentine's Day suicide had been preying on vulnerable women online for five years, police said yesterday.

Gerald Krein, 26, was charged with solicitation to commit murder after a Canadian woman who joined a chat room called "suicide ideology" tipped off police.

The woman, who had been planning to kill herself as part of the pact, said she decided to go to police when she learned that another participant was planning to kill her two children before taking her own life.

Investigators have tracked down four of the women Mr Krein was in contact with and are searching for others.

Klamath County sheriff Tim Evinger said Mr Krein had been trying to lure women into committing suicide since at least 2000.

"As our computer specialists have been going through mail groups and old chat rooms and old postings and looking at some things that are in the public domain out there, it became clear that he has a history of doing this," Mr Evinger said.

Mr Krein told investigators that he had been in touch with at least 31 women.

"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.

The sheriff said the fact that Mr Krein was living in a mobile home with no beams indicated that he was indulging in a fantasy or planning the mass suicide at another location. He said no deaths had yet been linked to Mr Krein.

"My concern is, if he's been doing this for some time, it's my hope that he hasn't been successful - but it could turn out that he has been," he said.

Of the four women tracked down, Mr Krein had invited at least two to bring their children.

One of the participants, a woman from Oregon, shared with police a transcript of her online conversation.

Woman: "How did you come up with the idea of a party?" Answer: "Just did. So do you want to join?"

Woman: "Maybe." Question: "Do you want to hang?" Woman: "No, gas."

Mr Krein had begun the most recent chat room in December, about the time he had moved from Sacramento, California, to Klamath Falls in Oregon to care for his ailing father.

Police have had difficulty tracking down the women who took part in the chat room because of privacy laws.

The local Herald and News newspaper said neighbours had described Mr Krein as a burly man who wore tie-dyed T-shirts and looked "like a mountain man". His mobile home had an image of a hand making an obscene gesture in the window, it said.