In a landmark case in the UK, a 14-year-old boy was convicted of inciting his own murder for the first time. The presiding judge at Manchester Crown Court expressed disbelief, stating that ‘skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as that which arises here’.

The incident took place twenty years ago, in the summer of 2003, when John, a schoolboy, posed as a female British secret service agent in an MSN Internet chatroom to orchestrate his own death. He groomed his 16-year-old friend Mark into a scheme involving six fictional characters and an astonishing 58,000 lines of text, culminating in Mark attempting to stab John as part of a made-up initiation for the British secret services.

On a Sunday evening, Mark attempted the plot, stabbing John twice with a knife they bought together at the Trafford Centre. The attack left John critically injured, with wounds to his kidney and liver, leading to emergency surgery and a week-long hospital stay.

Initially, authorities believed the incident was a robbery gone wrong due to Mark's convincing but fabricated account. However, when CCTV footage was examined, the story began to unravel. In hospital, John eventually confessed that Mark had stabbed him and the latter was charged with attempted murder.

Investigators discovered the bizarre nature of the case when they uncovered the pair's communications in a chatroom. In addition to messages from John, they found various personas, including a romantic interest named Rachel and a supposed stalker named Kevin, as well as other fictional characters.

Detectives established a common typing style among these characters, leading to the realization that they were all fabricated by John. The character Janet, a British secret agent invented by John, was crucial to the plot, claiming that John had a terminal brain tumour and needed to be killed.

John convinced Mark that carrying out the murder would result in monetary rewards, a job in the secret service, and a chance to meet then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Text messages revealed Mark's confusion and willingness, as he inquired about the details of the murder, to which John, as Janet, responded affirmatively.

After the stabbing, Mark's role unraveled when detectives traced final messages to John, revealing his true involvement in the orchestration of the crime. In May 2004, during the court proceedings, Mark pleaded guilty to attempted murder, while John pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and incitement to murder.

Both boys were spared jail sentences, with Judge David Maddison noting the unusual circumstances of the case. He remarked on the extraordinary nature of a 14-year-old devising complex false identities leading to such tragic events.

Furthermore, the court highlighted John’s psychological struggles, indicating that he was coping with depression and a dissociative existence influenced by his online activities and fantasies. After assessing their cases, Mark received a two-year supervision order, and John was subject to a three-year supervision order with strict internet access limitations, alongside a ban on any contact between the two.