There has not been a quadruple murder in Greenbrier County. Police Captain Mitchell Dobbins did not say that Brandon Dugan, 39, was charged with four counts of homicide, and Kathy, Trandon, Layla, and Debra Dugan were not found dead inside their home.
Recently on Facebook in the local community, a link has been shared from profile to profile about this quadruple homicide. However, a search on West Virginia’s Regional Jail & Correctional Facility Authority website yields no results for anyone with the last name of Dugan.
“There’s been no record of any kind of incident that big,” said Chief Deputy Josh Martin of the Greenbrier County Police Department. “Usually something of that magnitude [we would hear about], and we’re informed of what the other departments do.”
The original link is http://first news.online/?p=23. The site looks like a current news site; however, when the home button is pressed, the page is mostly blank.
“This is your front page,” the home page reads. “Click the ‘edit’ link to change the contents.”
This is a default phrase that often appears on websites so that an editor can test how text would display before typing out content onto the pages. In addition, if the URL is changed at the very end from 23 to another number, different pages display. While the story on each page reads exactly the same, Brandon Dugan murders his wife and four children, the headlines are different in a specific way.
“Mother And 3 Kids Found Dead In Greenbrier County, Dad Arrested,” the headline reads on the shared article. However, the other pages read the same with the county replaced with another name.
“Mother And 3 Kids Found Dead In Mingo County, Dad Arrested,” another one reads. Other counties include Wythe, Pittsylvania, Ashtabula, McLennan, and Cuyahoga, with some in Virginia and some in West Virginia.
According to www.whois.com, a website designed to display the name of the person who holds the registration of an online URL address, or the location of a website on the internet, Zurab Jashi of the country of Georgia, located at the crossroads of western Asia and eastern Europe, is the registered administrator of http://firstnews.online.
Whois.com also states that Jashi lives on Budabepeshti Street in Tbilisi, a city in Georgia, postal code 0130. Jashi’s email address is jashizura@gmail.com, though no response was received when The West Virginia Daily News reached out to him or her.
It is unknown what the purpose of the site is, although clicking the home button will open another internet browser page with advertisements and, sometimes, a warning from the computer that the site is not encrypted, running the potential to contract a virus.
Not every link on Facebook or Twitter is a reputable link. With the ongoing Congressional investigation into fake news purchased and distributed in order to destabilize the U.S. by foreign agents, source checking information before it is shared on social media has become a necessity.
Read more in the Tuesday, October 3, edition of The West Virginia Daily News.
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