Article Paris Hilton Death Hoax
Mike Burke’s fake CNN page alleging the death of Paris HiltonIn June 2007 several websites separately posted stories claiming that celebrity heiress Paris Hilton had died while in jail. These stories soon began to circulate by email as well. It was true that Hilton was in jail. She was doing time in the Los Angeles Twin Towers Correctional Facility for violating her probation on an alcohol-related reckless driving charge. However, she was not dead.
One of these death hoaxes was perpetrated by a man named Mike Burke. He later explained his motive on his myspace blog: “On Friday after hearing the Paris Hilton news in regards to her going to jail, I decided to make this fake website to express my feelings about it being front page material.”
| PARIS HILTON HAIKU |
| Paris Hilton is
Dead. Stabbed many times in jail. Is Paris burning? (by Patricia) |
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On his website, Burke alleged that Hilton had been stabbed while in jail. He disguised this false claim to look like a story from CNN.com. His faux news release read:
Paris Hilton Stabbed Multiple Times
Disgruntled inmate said to have stabbed the Hieress out of anger.LOS ANGELES, CA Paris Hilton who not more than four hours earlier was physically removed from a courtroom, has been stabbed multiple times.
Although no official statement has been released, unnamed sources from within the Lynwood medical ward tell CNN that Paris received two wounds to the chest, one to the back, one to the throat and three to the abdomen. Although her condition has been stabilized, surgeons are pessimistic about a full recovery. Their main concern being that the puncture to her back may have severely damaged her spinal cord.
This all comes only hours after Paris was dragged back to a Lynwood jail to serve out the remainder of her sentence. The woman in custody for the stabbing claims that she was being verbally assaulted by the heiress. The weapon used in the stabbing was a shank made from grinded down metal ruler.
“She probably had it coming.” A guard said under the conditions of anonymity, “The moment she got was checked back in she was yelling at everyone. She called me a country bumpkin and I was born and raised in [ Los Angeles ]. I don’t know what her deal is.”
While some speculate as to how an inmate was permitted to obtain such a close proximity to Paris , others wonder if this will effect her singing career.
Burke later claimed that this article received close to a million pageviews in three days.
At around the same time, another hoaxer posted an article online claiming Hilton had committed suicide while in jail. The identity of this hoaxer remains unknown. This article was disguised to resemble a news release from Australia’s ABC network. Bob Johnston, ABC’s head of online news, was quoted as saying (in reference to the imitation of their site): “From time to time it has happened in the past. If we can track down who’s done it we are going to issue a cease-and-desist notice. It’s a pretty rough hack, people should be able to tell it’s not our style. The links to the stories are all out of date. It is annoying that people would do this.”
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