By RACHEL PORTER FOR MAILONLINE
UPDATED:
At home in her quiet Berkshire village, Celia Blay sat at her computer and clicked open an email from a young online friend. 'I am going to kill myself at four o' clock on Friday,' it read. 'I have made a pact with another girl.'
Until just a few weeks earlier, Celia, a 64-year-old retired teacher and amateur local historian, used the internet only to exchange ideas with academics and fellow enthusiasts on sites devoted to medieval history.
But with a single click, in the summer of 2006, curiosity led her into the dark and deeply disturbing world of the internet suicide newsgroup, where those contemplating suicide - some seriously, some not so seriously - gather to share their thoughts and feelings with each other.
The friend, a 17-year-old girl from South America, was a regular at the largest and most notorious suicide newsgroup on the net at the time.
Although the girl didn't know it, she had been befriended by dangerous predator, going by the name of Li Dao, who systematically sought out vulnerable and unhappy people and convinced them to take their own lives.
What's more, she was not the only one.
She would discover - just in the nick of time - that more than half a dozen people had entered into suicide pacts with the same person at the same time.
They had all been tricked into killing themselves on the same day. To read the rest of the article, click here.