December 31, 2024 • 26 mins
While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we will be shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts from the New Zealand Herald network over the last year.
In 2011, then Herald on Sunday journalist David Fisher reported on what the paper dubbed ‘the Facebook Predator’, an adult woman who had been caught catfishing dozens of teenage boys in the South Island.
She would be named as Natalia Burgess.
Fisher covered the Burgess case for months, before she eventually went to prison for two years as a result of her behaviour.
He thought that was the end of it – until two years ago, an email out of the blue revealed that Burgess returned to her catfishing once she was free from prison.
In the latest series of the Herald’s true crime series, Chasing Ghosts, Fisher went back to re-examine the case, see what he missed back in 2011 – and tried to get Burgess to front up again to what she had done.
You can listen to half of the first episode of Chasing Ghosts: The Puppeteer now, and find the full series on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Toyota.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special of
The Front Page. The Ends at Herald's daily news podcast.
While The Front Page is on summer break, we're taking
a look back at some of the biggest news stories
and top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.
(00:27):
New episodes will return on January thirteenth. In twenty eleven,
Herald on Sunday journalist David Fisher reported on what the
paper dubbed the Facebook Predator, an adult woman who had
been caught catfishing dozens of teenage boys in the South Island.
She would be named as Natalia Burgers. Fisher covered the
(00:50):
Burgess case for months before she eventually went to prison
for two years as a result of her behavior. He
thought that was the end of it until two years ago,
an email at The Blue revealed that Burgess returned to
her catfishing once she was free from prison. In the
latest series of The Herald's true crime series, Chasing Ghosts,
(01:13):
Fisher went back to re examine the case, see what
he missed back in twenty eleven and trying to get
Burgers to front up again on what she had done.
You can Listen to half of the first episode of
Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer now and find the full series
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
This episode contains references to suicide. You can find the
links in our show notes to support services. Let me start.
In December twenty ten. It's Monday morning in Auckland, New
Zealand's largest city, and a cluster of young people are
(01:56):
waking to a nightmare. A young woman, Laura Jane West,
has been killed overnight in a car crash. She was twenty,
survived by a five year old daughter, Caylee. This was
devastating news for Laura's family, but the shock the grief
of losing.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Laura went much further.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Laura was bright, bubbly, vivacious, and like her sister's, very
pretty and popular, particularly online. When it came to Facebook,
Laura and her three sisters and their friends at times,
were a swirling whirlwind of excitement to the first generation
to truly embrace social media. Distance disappeared and they connected
(02:41):
with people across the country. Laura, dead at twenty, was
barely sixteen when she joined Facebook, and the years that
followed she built friendships and even discovered love online. So
when her sister Abby announced Laura's death on Facebook, the
impact the grief they went far beyond her immediate family.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
The last night, at three am, Laura and May hopped
into a car with a guy they trusted and know
really well, who told them he was sober to stand
out to be alive. He was five times over the limit.
My party gole sister just wanted to forget and have
a good night out. On the way home, the driver
of the car chocked the corner at great speed and
lost control of the car, heading into the lamp post
(03:25):
rap be Begger.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
There have been tragedy enough in Laura West's family.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Just weeks earlier, the sisters Rachel, Abby and Becker shared
through Facebook that they had lost their dad. He was
one of the twenty nine men killed when the Pike
River mine on the West Coast exploded. And now Laura
dead too. A young life cut short just when it
was getting going. A daughter, Kaylee left without a mother.
(03:51):
It's a tragedy in every sense of the word, and
the Facebook post was filled quickly with tributes from those
who counted her as a friend if they'd never met
in real life.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
R p.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Baby girl.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
You were there for me always when Amy passed, And fuck,
I'm going to miss you like I do Amy every
fricking day.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
I love you, Rest easy, little one, always missed, never
far from my heart.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
Hey, my sirs, fucking miss you like crazy.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Love you so much.
Speaker 6 (04:22):
Never going to forget you in my heart forever, Love you, bud.
Speaker 7 (04:27):
R P.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Baby girl, I'm going to miss your big time.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
See my God, I can't believe this is true. I
miss you, rest peace. Remember the time when I saw
your face.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I know you watch.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
And my heart goes out to you and weekle.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Then there were those who learned more directly. In the
South Island, in a small town not far from christ
a grand mother called Bernie received a phone call when
her teenage daughter Emma had started making friends online. Bernie
had got on the phone to check them out, and
that's how she came to know Laura and Abby, discovering
(05:13):
through them a distant family connection. They called her Auntie
when they called or connected on a messenger. Emma was
the new founder cousin. So that day, December sixth, twenty ten,
remains fixed in their memory for the impact it had
when a broken, distraught Abby rang to break the news
(05:33):
to Bernie.
Speaker 8 (05:34):
Abby rung Mum and are a mess. So Laura is
dead and my mom was like, she was like, no,
she had a car creation and she dead. They took
it the ICU, but she didn't make it. Yeah, we
got the message. If only I got a message or
a phone call at the home saying she's dead. Your
cousin's dead and no you know that sent both of
(05:58):
us spiraling.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
It was a crushing blow for the mother and daughter,
but especially for Emma. She had lost a friend, a
close friend, to suicide just months earlier, and a friend
who had died before that at a car crash that
was very similar to that which killed Laura.
Speaker 8 (06:16):
That's what I went on a big bender because I yeah, no,
I want a big bender. Then I broke my sobriety.
Speaker 9 (06:23):
We just sat there numb and grieving, and we were
trying to help plan the funeral. We were we were
like trying to make the trip up north apparently too,
that's where it was happening.
Speaker 8 (06:36):
Thank you, Yeah, everything, oh nine yards just to get
up there because I was made to carry the casket.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
All these years down the track.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
They can't shake the horror of losing so suddenly, such
a bright spark of life and a thoughtless drink drive
death early that Monday morning. For Sam Baker, who was
dating Abby. He remembers the distress and wanting to console
Laura's boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
I heard from my friend and he was very very upset.
He just read about it on Facebook. I think one
of the sisters had gotten in contact with him, or
it might have even been I don't know. I'm really
scratching my fourteen year old memory here, but there may
have been a mother Facebook page that was involved as well,
that reached out to my friend and said that, yeah,
(07:23):
very very sorry to tell you, but Laura's tragically passed away.
You know, she loved you dearly. She wanted to build
this big life with you and everything. It's really really sad,
But feel free to keep in contact with us because
you know, you're like family to us. Like my mate,
he like he was going to buy a ring for
her and stuff, like they were really really locked in.
So when't he found the news. When I found the
(07:44):
news out from him, you know, I went up to
console him, but he was beside himself. It was really
quite horrible.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
But there's a catch to the story, and that catch
is that Laura never existed. Her daughter Kaylee didn't exist.
There was no car, no car crash, there was no
death at all. Abby didn't exist. None of the sisters existed.
They were all characters created by one woman, a woman
(08:11):
who joined in the Facebook grief posting with a heartfelt
message that she knew wasn't true.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
At twenty you have not even lived yet, my sweet girl.
Why is all I am asking?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
You know?
Speaker 6 (08:25):
I'm getting into a car with a drunk ass driver?
Is Wrongbabe? Rip Laura Jane West. You are going to
be missed and loved.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
That post was written by Natalia Burgess. My name's David Fisher.
I'm an investigative journalist with the New Zealand Herald. I
first heard about Natalia a few months after this post
went up, back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
I've written thousands of stories.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Over thirty five years in journalism, thousands of lives that
have touched mine and carried on into the future.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
In my life, come and go with the stories.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
They have to tell, and then there are those stories
and people that come back.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
This is one of those stories.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
This is a story about Natalia Burgess, also known as
Laura West or Amy West, or Kaylie rose Becka, Julienne,
Abby William, Rachel Drent, and so many other names. There
were so many false identities Natalia Burgess created online and
infused with life.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
And histories and friendships.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
The problem with Natalia's fancy world was how damaging it
became for those whose identity she used and for those.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Who believed she was real.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Hearts were broken, trust was betrayed, someone died, and Natalia
went to prison. I never thought I'd be thinking of
this case again, but here I am in twenty twenty four,
thirty years after all this happened, and Natalia is back
of my life. Back then, she called herself the puppeteer,
(10:06):
and after all these years, she's still pulling all the strings,
and I'm looking for a way to cut her loose.
My journey with Natalia started in early twenty eleven. Back then,
I was working as the chief reporter for the Herald
(10:28):
on Sunday, a twenty two year veteran reporter and quite
a bit more veteran now. It's easy to forget how
much has changed in just thirteen years and how different
technology was then.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Let me take you back to that time.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
This was a time when MySpace and Bebo had just
passed their use by days as the big players and
online social media. Twitter hadn't really taken off in the mainstream,
and Facebook was still young enough and still quirky enough
that topic about its creation was a big player in
Hollywood's Ward season that year. There was no zoom and Skype.
(11:06):
Conversations were often about how I can see you, but
I can't hear you all the other way around. We
were only up to the iPhone four and the first
generation iPad. The idea of smartphones as an everyday part
of life had yet to be embedded in the mainstream.
The Internet and social media may have started to infiltrate
our lives, but not in the all consuming way they
(11:29):
do now. The reason all this matters is the herold
On Sunday, where I worked, was a startup. People had
said it was crazy to launch a newspaper when the
whole news industry was going to shift online. But it worked,
and one reason for that was we worked harder and smarter,
finding every advantage that we could. One of those things
(11:53):
we got really good at very early in the piece
was mining these new social media sites like Facebook, for
information about the people using it and the connections they had.
That meant when the Press newspaper in christ Church reported
that a woman was using false Facebook identities to scam
teenage boys, I was perfectly placed to dig below the surface.
(12:18):
It took a week to identify in Natali Burgess as
that woman. It was a week of building evidence in
developing sources to the point where we could name her
and run her photograph on the front page of the
next edition. Over a year, Burgess used her multiple online
personalities to form Internet relationships with dozens of teenage boys
(12:40):
and men across the country. Almost forty boys at Saint Thomas,
at Canterbury School and christ Church were caught up.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Along with dozens of others. Many believed they were.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
In relationships with attractive girls their own age. She would
arrange to pay for some to have their mobile phones
topped up with credit and they would spend hours through
the night talking to her. I'd later learn that Natali
was not just focused on one school. There were dozens
of young people and adults around the country that fell
(13:10):
into her orbit. One of those people was Sam Baker.
He heard earlier talking of his shock over Laura's death.
He was just thirteen when drawn into Natalia's world, all
the way from tiny Murchison, near the top of New
Zealand and South Island. It was once a gold mining town.
Now it's sought after for whitewater adventure sports, and it
(13:33):
is a tiny town. The last census put the population
at fewer than five hundred people. Small as it was,
the incident made Sam's world feel so much bigger, and
that's how he got mixed up in this.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
I was up visiting a friend of mine who was
speaking to a girl that he'd been talking to quite
a while over online, and from what I was under
the impression of they were in an online relationship. At
the time, I just assumed that he had known who
previously and they were just communicating on an online platform.
But I didn't really that didn't occur to me to
press any do that. I was thirteen at the time
(14:09):
and he was a good friend of mine, so I
just thought really nothing of it. Bear in mind, when
I was thirty, he was sixteen. I'm from a small town,
so people from veering age groups just tend to hang
out with each other, I guess. But anyway, I was
talking to this girl who name happened to be Laura,
and I started yearning to all I was up to
seeing my mate and we just I don't know. I
just said, hey, hey, you gn you're good. Thanks. She
(14:30):
asked me what my name was, asked what her name was?
Asked her, you know how long they guys have been
friends talking to each other? She said maybe like a
year or so. And he's like, yeah, I met her online.
Can we get along?
Speaker 8 (14:39):
Great?
Speaker 7 (14:39):
It was, that's pretty cool, sweet as thought nothing of it.
He ended the call. We played a few games of Xbox,
as you do when you're thirteen years old, and then
I Sweet Home and Sweet Home for dinner, and then
to do homework and stuff. But anyway, I log into
my Facebook and I noticed that I have a free
request from a random girl who name. The full name
eludes me nowadays, but it was Rachel. I think her
(15:01):
name was Rachel. And I accepted it and messaged her.
I was like, hello, who are you? It was a
bit more colorful and that I was like hello, who
are you? She's like, hello, my name is Rachel. I
believe you were talking to my sister earlier and Laura.
I was listening to the conversation, and I thought you
had a cute voice. I was wondering, would you begin to,
I don't know, develop her friendship? And I was like, okay, cool.
(15:23):
Bearing in mind, I was thirteen years old in a
town of five hundred people. In my school, there were
one hundred and twenty kids in my classroom. I would
have been probably year seven, year eight at the time,
out of thirty of us. I think they were three girls,
So to be getting this sort of female attention, I
didn't really think twice about it. I just thought, oh
my god, there's a very attractive girl heading me up.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Natalia knew who had targeted demographic well. Her primary false
personality was a young woman called Laura West. Laura entered
Facebook age sixteen, at that time that Tari was.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Around twenty six.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Laura West was pretty with a bright and engaging smile.
She also seemed to be very popular where she went
on Facebook, she traveled with an engaging social circle.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Who liked Laura were.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Young and attractive women, and it seemed that they, like
any teenager, were trying to work out how they fitted
into the world and with others their own age.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So many came under their spell.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
One of those boys was Ethan Williams, whose story is
pretty similar to Sam's. He was a few years older,
around fifteen when he first met Laura, and he too
was a small town boy raised in Montweka and Nelson,
the same general area where Sam lives.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
So I think initially I met a girl called Laura online,
and I think this is probably in the early days
of Facebook or kind of towards the tail end of
the old Bebo social network when that existed, and it
(17:08):
was just one of those kind of random ads on Facebook.
She haded me, and I thought, yeah, oh why not,
you know, but there were there were about three or
four different people that you know, that were family of
this this Laura West that her last name was West.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
That added me as well. And I didn't want much
of it. And I guess as I probably said to you, well,
I wouldn't have set you at the time, but as
I said, just a moment ago, being quite a naive Asia,
I didn't think much of it. And I think also
because catfishing wasn't particularly a well known phenomenon back then,
(17:44):
it wasn't something that ever crossed my mind.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Can you tell me how Laura presented herself.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I mean, who did you think you were communicating with online?
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Yeah, I so it's a very good question. Let me
let me think about an answer. She presented as kind
of an attractive I think she was seventeen eighteen or
something around that sort of age, kind of a little
bit older than me, but you know, quite an attractive
young woman. You know, short blonde here and someone that
(18:20):
I thought, you know, she's she's quite attractive. I'll talk
to her if she's going to talk to me. And yeah,
that's kind of word snowballs. I suppose.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Ethan was fifteen when he started talking to Natalia, or
as he knew her, Laura West, and Sam was just
thirteen when he started dating her sister, Rachel. This was
in twenty ten. At this time, Natalia been twenty six
years old, is literally twice the age of Sam. I
(18:55):
remember being told once that the guide for age suitability
is to take your age, split it in two, add seven,
and the results at the youngest end of the sliding
scale that you should be on. You've probably heard something similar.
It's one of those unwritten rules of humanity. We all
just seem to know by that measure. Natalia shouldn't be
(19:17):
talking to anyone younger than twenty, or at least not
in the way she spoke with Sam and others his age.
But there's really only one equation that matters here, and
that is back in twenty ten, Sam is a child
and Natalia as an adult. And another thing to think
on is that Sam had no idea the girl who
(19:40):
contacted him online was twice his age. The voice he heard,
the photographs he saw were of a teenage girl, while
Laura West herself didn't exist. The photos belonged to a
real person. The photographs Natalia used wherever real woman could not.
(20:02):
This was someone Natalia did not know, but as Ethan says,
she knew the effect she could have with the photographs.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
She had chosen.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Those boys at Saint Thomas and Canterbury, Sam, Ethan, their friends,
none of them.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Stood a chance.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
At the age of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and some a
few years older. They were confronted with bright, vivacious Laura
and a coterie of friends who were intent on forming
bonds and exploring relationships. By the time I came along,
Natalia's online personas were well advanced, brought to life with
(20:40):
other stolen photographs taken from other people's social media pages.
Those characters were so well advanced that they had time
to form relationships, speak of love, contemplate marriage, and all
those other things teenagers do when they first fall head
over heels. Each of her characters was fully realized. Along
(21:01):
with photographs harvested online, Natalia had given them family connections
and personalities, breathing life and credibility into every false persona.
With some of them, she created family. Laura's sisters, as
we've heard, were Rachel, Becker and Abby.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
It wasn't all playing out online either. As Natalia's characters
formed online friendships with schoolboys, she worked to take it
to the real world.
Speaker 7 (21:31):
I think I had the first voice called with her,
maybe like a week into the relationship, and it was weird.
It was I don't know how she pulled it off.
Thinking back, I spoke to her Laura, and there was
another sister. I can't remember her name, but she was
a blonde girl and she worked at Pack and Save.
And I had a freeway chat with all three these girls,
and they told me how much of the nice boy
(21:52):
I think I am, and how I'm going to be
so perfect for the sister and they asked me like,
will you be my sister's boyfriend? Like these two girls
asked on her behalf like I've taken into the back
room so that they can give them the fifth degree,
and I was just like, yeah, all right, sweet, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
There were phone calls and long conversations.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Evidence emerged of Natalia paying to top up phones so
she could speak for longer as Laura or Abby or
Becka or any of the other identities she manufactured, and
even occasionally as herself as the real Natalia Burgess in
the shadow cast by her younger, glamorous friends. As I
(22:31):
said earlier, Natalia wasn't a teenager when she was talking
with all these kids, and it kind of reminds me
of Hollywood's tendency to cast old when casting teenagers like
Greece or nine O two and oer will Glee. Every
generation has some example of a grown adult playing young,
(22:53):
and Natalia was bringing that fantasy to life in her
own way. This was real life, though, and not a
Hollywood set. As I dug deeper, there was seriously disturbing
aspects to her interaction with those she met online as
she built her fictional world and populated it. She started
(23:14):
to develop it with whatever came to hand. Natalia even
attached real life people to false personas. After the Pike
Rivermind disaster, Laura West posted a memorial message with a
photograph of one of the miners who was killed.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I miss you and I will never stop loving you,
Rip Daddy.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
It's one part of the story that Sam Baker remembers
all too well.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
I grew up in Murchison. The tracity happened, I believe
in Greymouth. So Murchison and Greymouth for about two hours
from each other. And what happened was is I remember
there was a whole lot of light. This is way
before crowdfunding and go fund me were a thing. People
used to sort of reach out for donations and help
y Facebook pages and groups, and there was a Facebook
(24:00):
page called the Pipe Rivermind twenty nine and it was
people that could come together that were affected by the tragedy,
that could share photos and memories and maybe like people
that had a bit of money they wanted to donate
to a family that had been displaced because their father
a peerish they could you know, put down their bank
account details and receive donations. Laura started fabricating, making these
(24:21):
big giant like Facebook murals, I guess, like with this
Paul Bloke's photo, and then like the name up and lights,
and then the born day, the death day, and then
like your kids miss you dearly, we love you daddy,
like from Laura, from Rachel, from the other daughter and stuff.
It just all looked very very legit, very polished. And
(24:42):
then she had people from the community who they had
lost family members and the mind tragedy that were like
getting behind her, like, oh my god, we feel so
bad for you. You know who can help you out?
And then I believe she may have been putting down
a bank account and receiving donations from these people as
a like, I don't know, contribute into helping her get
(25:02):
back on her feet because she just lost her dad.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
That feels pretty cold.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yeah, but at the time, what did you make of it?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Because this was the girl that you were dating, This
was her sister, Rachel.
Speaker 7 (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I was dating Laura's sister Rachel.
So at the time I felt horrible for them. It
was like, you, poor girl, that's horrible. So yeah, So
to get the time frame together, the Pipe River disaster
happen and then Laura died in the car crash. So
between Laura between the Pike River and Laura dying in
(25:36):
the car crash quotation marks I felt absolutely horrible for
these poor girls.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
It wasn't the only time Natalia created false links to
a high profile death. When christ Church woman Emma Agney
was murdered, Natalia even went as far as setting up
a memorial page in her personas, linking people she had
invented to people she had never met. In the relationships
she was forming, they were becoming increasingly serious. Sam and
(26:06):
Ethan were far from the only ones caught up in this.
There were dozens of teenage boys who believed they were
in a romantic relationship with one of Natalia's personas, and
each one was smitten. Some thought they'd found the love
of their life, and when that was taken away, the
consequences were devastating.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
You've just heard the first half of episode one of
Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer. You can listen to the full
episode and the rest of the series on iHeartRadio or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Toyota.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special of
The Front Page. The Ends at Herald's daily news podcast.
While The Front Page is on summer break, we're taking
a look back at some of the biggest news stories
and top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.
(00:27):
New episodes will return on January thirteenth. In twenty eleven,
Herald on Sunday journalist David Fisher reported on what the
paper dubbed the Facebook Predator, an adult woman who had
been caught catfishing dozens of teenage boys in the South Island.
She would be named as Natalia Burgers. Fisher covered the
(00:50):
Burgess case for months before she eventually went to prison
for two years as a result of her behavior. He
thought that was the end of it until two years ago,
an email at The Blue revealed that Burgess returned to
her catfishing once she was free from prison. In the
latest series of The Herald's true crime series, Chasing Ghosts,
(01:13):
Fisher went back to re examine the case, see what
he missed back in twenty eleven and trying to get
Burgers to front up again on what she had done.
You can Listen to half of the first episode of
Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer now and find the full series
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
This episode contains references to suicide. You can find the
links in our show notes to support services. Let me start.
In December twenty ten. It's Monday morning in Auckland, New
Zealand's largest city, and a cluster of young people are
(01:56):
waking to a nightmare. A young woman, Laura Jane West,
has been killed overnight in a car crash. She was twenty,
survived by a five year old daughter, Caylee. This was
devastating news for Laura's family, but the shock the grief
of losing.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Laura went much further.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Laura was bright, bubbly, vivacious, and like her sister's, very
pretty and popular, particularly online. When it came to Facebook,
Laura and her three sisters and their friends at times,
were a swirling whirlwind of excitement to the first generation
to truly embrace social media. Distance disappeared and they connected
(02:41):
with people across the country. Laura, dead at twenty, was
barely sixteen when she joined Facebook, and the years that
followed she built friendships and even discovered love online. So
when her sister Abby announced Laura's death on Facebook, the
impact the grief they went far beyond her immediate family.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
The last night, at three am, Laura and May hopped
into a car with a guy they trusted and know
really well, who told them he was sober to stand
out to be alive. He was five times over the limit.
My party gole sister just wanted to forget and have
a good night out. On the way home, the driver
of the car chocked the corner at great speed and
lost control of the car, heading into the lamp post
(03:25):
rap be Begger.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
There have been tragedy enough in Laura West's family.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Just weeks earlier, the sisters Rachel, Abby and Becker shared
through Facebook that they had lost their dad. He was
one of the twenty nine men killed when the Pike
River mine on the West Coast exploded. And now Laura
dead too. A young life cut short just when it
was getting going. A daughter, Kaylee left without a mother.
(03:51):
It's a tragedy in every sense of the word, and
the Facebook post was filled quickly with tributes from those
who counted her as a friend if they'd never met
in real life.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
R p.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Baby girl.
Speaker 6 (04:04):
You were there for me always when Amy passed, And fuck,
I'm going to miss you like I do Amy every
fricking day.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
I love you, Rest easy, little one, always missed, never
far from my heart.
Speaker 6 (04:18):
Hey, my sirs, fucking miss you like crazy.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Love you so much.
Speaker 6 (04:22):
Never going to forget you in my heart forever, Love you, bud.
Speaker 7 (04:27):
R P.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Baby girl, I'm going to miss your big time.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
See my God, I can't believe this is true. I
miss you, rest peace. Remember the time when I saw
your face.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I know you watch.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
And my heart goes out to you and weekle.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Then there were those who learned more directly. In the
South Island, in a small town not far from christ
a grand mother called Bernie received a phone call when
her teenage daughter Emma had started making friends online. Bernie
had got on the phone to check them out, and
that's how she came to know Laura and Abby, discovering
(05:13):
through them a distant family connection. They called her Auntie
when they called or connected on a messenger. Emma was
the new founder cousin. So that day, December sixth, twenty ten,
remains fixed in their memory for the impact it had
when a broken, distraught Abby rang to break the news
(05:33):
to Bernie.
Speaker 8 (05:34):
Abby rung Mum and are a mess. So Laura is
dead and my mom was like, she was like, no,
she had a car creation and she dead. They took
it the ICU, but she didn't make it. Yeah, we
got the message. If only I got a message or
a phone call at the home saying she's dead. Your
cousin's dead and no you know that sent both of
(05:58):
us spiraling.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
It was a crushing blow for the mother and daughter,
but especially for Emma. She had lost a friend, a
close friend, to suicide just months earlier, and a friend
who had died before that at a car crash that
was very similar to that which killed Laura.
Speaker 8 (06:16):
That's what I went on a big bender because I yeah, no,
I want a big bender. Then I broke my sobriety.
Speaker 9 (06:23):
We just sat there numb and grieving, and we were
trying to help plan the funeral. We were we were
like trying to make the trip up north apparently too,
that's where it was happening.
Speaker 8 (06:36):
Thank you, Yeah, everything, oh nine yards just to get
up there because I was made to carry the casket.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
All these years down the track.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
They can't shake the horror of losing so suddenly, such
a bright spark of life and a thoughtless drink drive
death early that Monday morning. For Sam Baker, who was
dating Abby. He remembers the distress and wanting to console
Laura's boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
I heard from my friend and he was very very upset.
He just read about it on Facebook. I think one
of the sisters had gotten in contact with him, or
it might have even been I don't know. I'm really
scratching my fourteen year old memory here, but there may
have been a mother Facebook page that was involved as well,
that reached out to my friend and said that, yeah,
(07:23):
very very sorry to tell you, but Laura's tragically passed away.
You know, she loved you dearly. She wanted to build
this big life with you and everything. It's really really sad,
But feel free to keep in contact with us because
you know, you're like family to us. Like my mate,
he like he was going to buy a ring for
her and stuff, like they were really really locked in.
So when't he found the news. When I found the
(07:44):
news out from him, you know, I went up to
console him, but he was beside himself. It was really
quite horrible.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
But there's a catch to the story, and that catch
is that Laura never existed. Her daughter Kaylee didn't exist.
There was no car, no car crash, there was no
death at all. Abby didn't exist. None of the sisters existed.
They were all characters created by one woman, a woman
(08:11):
who joined in the Facebook grief posting with a heartfelt
message that she knew wasn't true.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
At twenty you have not even lived yet, my sweet girl.
Why is all I am asking?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
You know?
Speaker 6 (08:25):
I'm getting into a car with a drunk ass driver?
Is Wrongbabe? Rip Laura Jane West. You are going to
be missed and loved.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
That post was written by Natalia Burgess. My name's David Fisher.
I'm an investigative journalist with the New Zealand Herald. I
first heard about Natalia a few months after this post
went up, back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
I've written thousands of stories.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Over thirty five years in journalism, thousands of lives that
have touched mine and carried on into the future.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
In my life, come and go with the stories.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
They have to tell, and then there are those stories
and people that come back.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
This is one of those stories.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
This is a story about Natalia Burgess, also known as
Laura West or Amy West, or Kaylie rose Becka, Julienne,
Abby William, Rachel Drent, and so many other names. There
were so many false identities Natalia Burgess created online and
infused with life.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
And histories and friendships.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
The problem with Natalia's fancy world was how damaging it
became for those whose identity she used and for those.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Who believed she was real.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Hearts were broken, trust was betrayed, someone died, and Natalia
went to prison. I never thought I'd be thinking of
this case again, but here I am in twenty twenty four,
thirty years after all this happened, and Natalia is back
of my life. Back then, she called herself the puppeteer,
(10:06):
and after all these years, she's still pulling all the strings,
and I'm looking for a way to cut her loose.
My journey with Natalia started in early twenty eleven. Back then,
I was working as the chief reporter for the Herald
(10:28):
on Sunday, a twenty two year veteran reporter and quite
a bit more veteran now. It's easy to forget how
much has changed in just thirteen years and how different
technology was then.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Let me take you back to that time.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
This was a time when MySpace and Bebo had just
passed their use by days as the big players and
online social media. Twitter hadn't really taken off in the mainstream,
and Facebook was still young enough and still quirky enough
that topic about its creation was a big player in
Hollywood's Ward season that year. There was no zoom and Skype.
(11:06):
Conversations were often about how I can see you, but
I can't hear you all the other way around. We
were only up to the iPhone four and the first
generation iPad. The idea of smartphones as an everyday part
of life had yet to be embedded in the mainstream.
The Internet and social media may have started to infiltrate
our lives, but not in the all consuming way they
(11:29):
do now. The reason all this matters is the herold
On Sunday, where I worked, was a startup. People had
said it was crazy to launch a newspaper when the
whole news industry was going to shift online. But it worked,
and one reason for that was we worked harder and smarter,
finding every advantage that we could. One of those things
(11:53):
we got really good at very early in the piece
was mining these new social media sites like Facebook, for
information about the people using it and the connections they had.
That meant when the Press newspaper in christ Church reported
that a woman was using false Facebook identities to scam
teenage boys, I was perfectly placed to dig below the surface.
(12:18):
It took a week to identify in Natali Burgess as
that woman. It was a week of building evidence in
developing sources to the point where we could name her
and run her photograph on the front page of the
next edition. Over a year, Burgess used her multiple online
personalities to form Internet relationships with dozens of teenage boys
(12:40):
and men across the country. Almost forty boys at Saint Thomas,
at Canterbury School and christ Church were caught up.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Along with dozens of others. Many believed they were.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
In relationships with attractive girls their own age. She would
arrange to pay for some to have their mobile phones
topped up with credit and they would spend hours through
the night talking to her. I'd later learn that Natali
was not just focused on one school. There were dozens
of young people and adults around the country that fell
(13:10):
into her orbit. One of those people was Sam Baker.
He heard earlier talking of his shock over Laura's death.
He was just thirteen when drawn into Natalia's world, all
the way from tiny Murchison, near the top of New
Zealand and South Island. It was once a gold mining town.
Now it's sought after for whitewater adventure sports, and it
(13:33):
is a tiny town. The last census put the population
at fewer than five hundred people. Small as it was,
the incident made Sam's world feel so much bigger, and
that's how he got mixed up in this.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
I was up visiting a friend of mine who was
speaking to a girl that he'd been talking to quite
a while over online, and from what I was under
the impression of they were in an online relationship. At
the time, I just assumed that he had known who
previously and they were just communicating on an online platform.
But I didn't really that didn't occur to me to
press any do that. I was thirteen at the time
(14:09):
and he was a good friend of mine, so I
just thought really nothing of it. Bear in mind, when
I was thirty, he was sixteen. I'm from a small town,
so people from veering age groups just tend to hang
out with each other, I guess. But anyway, I was
talking to this girl who name happened to be Laura,
and I started yearning to all I was up to
seeing my mate and we just I don't know. I
just said, hey, hey, you gn you're good. Thanks. She
(14:30):
asked me what my name was, asked what her name was?
Asked her, you know how long they guys have been
friends talking to each other? She said maybe like a
year or so. And he's like, yeah, I met her online.
Can we get along?
Speaker 8 (14:39):
Great?
Speaker 7 (14:39):
It was, that's pretty cool, sweet as thought nothing of it.
He ended the call. We played a few games of Xbox,
as you do when you're thirteen years old, and then
I Sweet Home and Sweet Home for dinner, and then
to do homework and stuff. But anyway, I log into
my Facebook and I noticed that I have a free
request from a random girl who name. The full name
eludes me nowadays, but it was Rachel. I think her
(15:01):
name was Rachel. And I accepted it and messaged her.
I was like, hello, who are you? It was a
bit more colorful and that I was like hello, who
are you? She's like, hello, my name is Rachel. I
believe you were talking to my sister earlier and Laura.
I was listening to the conversation, and I thought you
had a cute voice. I was wondering, would you begin to,
I don't know, develop her friendship? And I was like, okay, cool.
(15:23):
Bearing in mind, I was thirteen years old in a
town of five hundred people. In my school, there were
one hundred and twenty kids in my classroom. I would
have been probably year seven, year eight at the time,
out of thirty of us. I think they were three girls,
So to be getting this sort of female attention, I
didn't really think twice about it. I just thought, oh
my god, there's a very attractive girl heading me up.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Natalia knew who had targeted demographic well. Her primary false
personality was a young woman called Laura West. Laura entered
Facebook age sixteen, at that time that Tari was.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Around twenty six.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Laura West was pretty with a bright and engaging smile.
She also seemed to be very popular where she went
on Facebook, she traveled with an engaging social circle.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Who liked Laura were.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Young and attractive women, and it seemed that they, like
any teenager, were trying to work out how they fitted
into the world and with others their own age.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So many came under their spell.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
One of those boys was Ethan Williams, whose story is
pretty similar to Sam's. He was a few years older,
around fifteen when he first met Laura, and he too
was a small town boy raised in Montweka and Nelson,
the same general area where Sam lives.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
So I think initially I met a girl called Laura online,
and I think this is probably in the early days
of Facebook or kind of towards the tail end of
the old Bebo social network when that existed, and it
(17:08):
was just one of those kind of random ads on Facebook.
She haded me, and I thought, yeah, oh why not,
you know, but there were there were about three or
four different people that you know, that were family of
this this Laura West that her last name was West.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
That's right.
Speaker 5 (17:23):
That added me as well. And I didn't want much
of it. And I guess as I probably said to you, well,
I wouldn't have set you at the time, but as
I said, just a moment ago, being quite a naive Asia,
I didn't think much of it. And I think also
because catfishing wasn't particularly a well known phenomenon back then,
(17:44):
it wasn't something that ever crossed my mind.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Can you tell me how Laura presented herself.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I mean, who did you think you were communicating with online?
Speaker 5 (17:56):
Yeah, I so it's a very good question. Let me
let me think about an answer. She presented as kind
of an attractive I think she was seventeen eighteen or
something around that sort of age, kind of a little
bit older than me, but you know, quite an attractive
young woman. You know, short blonde here and someone that
(18:20):
I thought, you know, she's she's quite attractive. I'll talk
to her if she's going to talk to me. And yeah,
that's kind of word snowballs. I suppose.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Ethan was fifteen when he started talking to Natalia, or
as he knew her, Laura West, and Sam was just
thirteen when he started dating her sister, Rachel. This was
in twenty ten. At this time, Natalia been twenty six
years old, is literally twice the age of Sam. I
(18:55):
remember being told once that the guide for age suitability
is to take your age, split it in two, add seven,
and the results at the youngest end of the sliding
scale that you should be on. You've probably heard something similar.
It's one of those unwritten rules of humanity. We all
just seem to know by that measure. Natalia shouldn't be
(19:17):
talking to anyone younger than twenty, or at least not
in the way she spoke with Sam and others his age.
But there's really only one equation that matters here, and
that is back in twenty ten, Sam is a child
and Natalia as an adult. And another thing to think
on is that Sam had no idea the girl who
(19:40):
contacted him online was twice his age. The voice he heard,
the photographs he saw were of a teenage girl, while
Laura West herself didn't exist. The photos belonged to a
real person. The photographs Natalia used wherever real woman could not.
(20:02):
This was someone Natalia did not know, but as Ethan says,
she knew the effect she could have with the photographs.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
She had chosen.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Those boys at Saint Thomas and Canterbury, Sam, Ethan, their friends,
none of them.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Stood a chance.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
At the age of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and some a
few years older. They were confronted with bright, vivacious Laura
and a coterie of friends who were intent on forming
bonds and exploring relationships. By the time I came along,
Natalia's online personas were well advanced, brought to life with
(20:40):
other stolen photographs taken from other people's social media pages.
Those characters were so well advanced that they had time
to form relationships, speak of love, contemplate marriage, and all
those other things teenagers do when they first fall head
over heels. Each of her characters was fully realized. Along
(21:01):
with photographs harvested online, Natalia had given them family connections
and personalities, breathing life and credibility into every false persona.
With some of them, she created family. Laura's sisters, as
we've heard, were Rachel, Becker and Abby.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
It wasn't all playing out online either. As Natalia's characters
formed online friendships with schoolboys, she worked to take it
to the real world.
Speaker 7 (21:31):
I think I had the first voice called with her,
maybe like a week into the relationship, and it was weird.
It was I don't know how she pulled it off.
Thinking back, I spoke to her Laura, and there was
another sister. I can't remember her name, but she was
a blonde girl and she worked at Pack and Save.
And I had a freeway chat with all three these girls,
and they told me how much of the nice boy
(21:52):
I think I am, and how I'm going to be
so perfect for the sister and they asked me like,
will you be my sister's boyfriend? Like these two girls
asked on her behalf like I've taken into the back
room so that they can give them the fifth degree,
and I was just like, yeah, all right, sweet, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
There were phone calls and long conversations.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Evidence emerged of Natalia paying to top up phones so
she could speak for longer as Laura or Abby or
Becka or any of the other identities she manufactured, and
even occasionally as herself as the real Natalia Burgess in
the shadow cast by her younger, glamorous friends. As I
(22:31):
said earlier, Natalia wasn't a teenager when she was talking
with all these kids, and it kind of reminds me
of Hollywood's tendency to cast old when casting teenagers like
Greece or nine O two and oer will Glee. Every
generation has some example of a grown adult playing young,
(22:53):
and Natalia was bringing that fantasy to life in her
own way. This was real life, though, and not a
Hollywood set. As I dug deeper, there was seriously disturbing
aspects to her interaction with those she met online as
she built her fictional world and populated it. She started
(23:14):
to develop it with whatever came to hand. Natalia even
attached real life people to false personas. After the Pike
Rivermind disaster, Laura West posted a memorial message with a
photograph of one of the miners who was killed.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I miss you and I will never stop loving you,
Rip Daddy.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
It's one part of the story that Sam Baker remembers
all too well.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
I grew up in Murchison. The tracity happened, I believe
in Greymouth. So Murchison and Greymouth for about two hours
from each other. And what happened was is I remember
there was a whole lot of light. This is way
before crowdfunding and go fund me were a thing. People
used to sort of reach out for donations and help
y Facebook pages and groups, and there was a Facebook
(24:00):
page called the Pipe Rivermind twenty nine and it was
people that could come together that were affected by the tragedy,
that could share photos and memories and maybe like people
that had a bit of money they wanted to donate
to a family that had been displaced because their father
a peerish they could you know, put down their bank
account details and receive donations. Laura started fabricating, making these
(24:21):
big giant like Facebook murals, I guess, like with this
Paul Bloke's photo, and then like the name up and lights,
and then the born day, the death day, and then
like your kids miss you dearly, we love you daddy,
like from Laura, from Rachel, from the other daughter and stuff.
It just all looked very very legit, very polished. And
(24:42):
then she had people from the community who they had
lost family members and the mind tragedy that were like
getting behind her, like, oh my god, we feel so
bad for you. You know who can help you out?
And then I believe she may have been putting down
a bank account and receiving donations from these people as
a like, I don't know, contribute into helping her get
(25:02):
back on her feet because she just lost her dad.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
That feels pretty cold.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Yeah, but at the time, what did you make of it?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Because this was the girl that you were dating, This
was her sister, Rachel.
Speaker 7 (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I was dating Laura's sister Rachel.
So at the time I felt horrible for them. It
was like, you, poor girl, that's horrible. So yeah, So
to get the time frame together, the Pipe River disaster
happen and then Laura died in the car crash. So
between Laura between the Pike River and Laura dying in
(25:36):
the car crash quotation marks I felt absolutely horrible for
these poor girls.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
It wasn't the only time Natalia created false links to
a high profile death. When christ Church woman Emma Agney
was murdered, Natalia even went as far as setting up
a memorial page in her personas, linking people she had
invented to people she had never met. In the relationships
she was forming, they were becoming increasingly serious. Sam and
(26:06):
Ethan were far from the only ones caught up in this.
There were dozens of teenage boys who believed they were
in a romantic relationship with one of Natalia's personas, and
each one was smitten. Some thought they'd found the love
of their life, and when that was taken away, the
consequences were devastating.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
You've just heard the first half of episode one of
Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer. You can listen to the full
episode and the rest of the series on iHeartRadio or
wherever you get your podcasts.
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