WARNING: GRAPHIC
A 21-year-old Louisiana man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison after plotting a Jeffrey Dahmer-style scheme to meet men on the gay dating app Grindr and kill them, federal officials say.
Chance Seneca of Lafayette Parish targeted one particular victim, along with other gay men, through the app in 2020 because of their sexual orientation and gender, the Justice Department said.
“The facts of this case are truly shocking, and the defendant’s decision to specifically target gay men is an ominous reminder of the unique biases and dangers facing the LGBTQ+ community today,” the Deputy Attorney General said. Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. a statement on Wednesday.
Clarke continued, “The Internet should be accessible and safe for all Americans, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. We will continue to identify and intercept predators who weaponize online platforms to target LGBTQ+ victims and commit acts of violence and hatred.”
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Chance Seneca was sentenced to 45 years in prison on Wednesday for conspiring to kidnap and murder gay people.
(Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office)
Seneca, then a teenager, encountered one particular victim referred to only as HW in a press release on Grindr in 2020 with the intention of murdering him and dismembering his body.
The defendant apparently met HW after they met on the app, then drove the victim to an abandoned house, pulled out a handgun, forced the victim into handcuffs, then attempted to kill him, according to the Ministry of Justice.
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Seneca attempted “several methods” to kill HW, then attempted to dismember the victim’s body.
A person looks at the Grindr app in the App Store on a phone in Los Angeles on March 27, 2019.
(Chris Delmas/AFP)
The accused strangled HW until he passed out, put his body in a bathtub, hit the back of his head with a hammer and stabbed his neck with ice cubes before d call 911 against himself. The victim fell into a coma but survived, according to court documents.
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Seneca confessed to investigators that after his plans to kill HW, he planned to kidnap and murder other gay men to satisfy a gay murder fantasy that “mirrors the murders of gay men committed by the notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer,” the DOJ said in a press release.
“No one should ever be subjected to the type of horrific acts that this defendant inflicted on the victim in this case,” U.S. Attorney Brandon B. Brown for the Western District of Louisiana said in a statement. “The victim never thought they would fall prey to a predator in this way.”
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer, who murdered 17 men between 1978 and 1991 (the majority of murders taking place between 1989 and 1991.
(PA/PA Images via Getty Images)
Brown described Seneca’s actions as “hate crimes”, adding that it “is important that we all remain alert and cautious when using the internet in our daily lives to avoid situations that could lead to destructive behavior by others. towards us”.
Seneca committed the crimes before Netflix released a 2022 TV series called ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’, which brought attention to one of America’s most prolific serial killers, who killed 17 men and boys during the 1980s.
