Michael Macartney, 50, confessed to the BBC his role in an extreme monkey torture network.
A ringleader in a global monkey torture network exposed by the BBC has been charged by US federal prosecutors.
Michael Macartney, 50, who went by the alias "Torture King", was charged in Virginia with conspiracy to create and distribute animal-crushing videos.
Mr Macartney was one of three key distributors identified by the BBC Eye team during a year-long investigation into sadistic monkey torture groups.
Two women have also been charged in the UK following the investigation.
Warning: This article contains disturbing content
Mr Macartney, a former motorcycle gang member who previously spent time in prison, ran several chat groups for monkey torture enthusiasts from around the world on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
I gotta admit, I was blissfully unaware that this was a thing. I really did not expect to read a headline like that this morning.
What in the fucking fuck is wrong with people? This motherfucker needs to spend the rest of his life behind bars. The biggest sign of a person becoming a serial killer is their treatment of animals. I mean, he's already been to prison, so it's not like he has any interest in being rehabilitated in prison.
I agree with you but to be fair our prison system is terrible at rehabilitation. Sure it works sometimes but it's not their main focus.
Did you read about the prison that is denying everyone in person visits so they can charge money for phone calls and video calls? They're getting a kick back from the companies whk run those systems. Fucking gross.
The biggest sign of a person becoming a serial killer is their treatment of animals.
I’m going to guess this is the second biggest sign with the first biggest sign being specifically their treatment of the animals most closely related to humans.
Like torturing worms? Maybe 50% chance
Torturing dogs has got to be a good 80%
Torturing monkeys has got to be like a 99%+ chance of being a serial killer.
LMAO, they'll call him a legitimate businessman running a legitimate business, why is the government getting in the way of a stand-up American's monkey-torture distribution network!
Which adds a while other level of hypocrisy. Why can't he have good ol' Americans do the job? Are they not good enough for him?
Also don't care that he did not directly do it. He was facilitating it and it would not have happened on the same scale without his help. So in essence, he absolutely caused the torture of monkeys. Should someone who goes a hitman not be charged with anything? The hit man isn't killing the victim without pay so obviously the person hiring one should be charged.
Pretty much this. They're about two steps removed from actual serial killer tendencies - I'm betting more than a few of these guys wound up needing a fresh pair of underwear after making a video, if you get me.
Mr Macartney has cooperated with investigators from the Department of Homeland Security and agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges. He will formally make a plea later this month and is facing up to five years in prison.
WHAT THE FUCK. 5 YEARS?!
FOR SEXUALLY ABUSING, TORTURING, AND MUTILATING ANIMALS FOR PROFIT?!
And of course hes a MAGAt. Fucking soulless, worthless cumstains on the fabric of society.
I already knew that animal torture communities were present, especially on YouTube where they seem to focus mainly on feeding random animals to large snakes, so the news is welcome to me because it's one less thing to feel sad about. I hope those people continue getting exposed and charged for their crimes.
You see, sometimes you see some fucked up shit in a movie and you think "oh ok, this is just for the sake of story, there's no way this has ever happened in real life"
Then you read an article like this.
The groups were used to share ideas for custom-made torture videos, such as setting live monkeys on fire, injuring them with tools and even putting one in a blender.
How... How do you even come back from this? Is there any hope these people can get rehabilitated? I'm struggling to believe the answer is anything other than "NO."
I'd like to understand the physical and mental variations between the relatively normal population at large and these cretins, just to see if it's lead poisoning or what, but I'd pay tax money to let them eat nutrient loaf behind bars forever.
These people need watching for the rest of their lives to make sure they're not a serial killer in training because they're totally a serial killer in training.
Serial killers always escalate this is what they do they start off being cruel to animals and then it goes from there. These people can be stopped before they get anywhere else.
There is a lengthy BBC article that went into the discovery of this network. Thank journalists. Without journalists this network would likely be alive, well, and thriving. Journalists infiltrated the group and started passing info to the authorities.
When people lament the loss of journalism, catching people like this is what we are losing.
Depending on the monkey or ape species I feel like this is on par with torturing human babies or young toddlers. They’re completely helpless and as intelligent and self-aware.
Well, aesthetically there is a perception of "states' rights" which doesn't feel so ghoulish. I live in Russia, so outright racism is both less visible and more casual here, and I don't have most of emotional and social associations with this flag Americans have.
Point being - there's "Firefly" series, there are Jabiim rebels in Star Wars (and a few other "bad guys against the Republic" groups which them became "good guys against the Empire"), and maybe something else definitely using the association with Confederates in a kinda positive way.
EDIT: I mean, in his case it's just that cowards usually feel the need to use symbols associated with toughness for them. Or torture animals.
Oddly enough, I'm both not sure you could weld the doors shut, since the body was not metal, and also not sure you'd need to, since apparently the only latch was on the outside.
They're only getting 5 years in prison. The article also says Macartney had been in prison previously. Since the US prison systems are designed for sadism and punishment, it probably did more to make the guy amenable to this kind of horror. It's also known that slaughterhouses frequently get their workers from the prison system, so it's very possible that this guy will simply have his unapproved abuses exchanged with ones that our society sanctions.
When he comes out, his mind is most likely to be more disturbed than when he went in.
Not condoning prison vigilante/revenge behavior, but if this guy's fellow inmates find out what he did, and that is very easy to do, he may be in for a horrible time in prison. Not sure if he will be put into a 'special-cases' prison for his own safety or whether he'll just go straight to a general public prison.
He has really bad paperwork and fellow prisoners always find out what your paperwork is as soon as you land in your new prison. Torture of animals is among the worst things one can do.
Again, I'm not condoning any of this. It's just the reality this guy faces in American prisons
Don't you love how when it's an animal they don't eat they're outraged, but animal agriculture is a-okay for no reason at all, and we're just militant vegans? Lol. Carnists.
Definitely disagree. It's disgusting, but something being disgusting to me doesn't make it wrong. And honestly, I eat pork, so I don't think I really have a leg to stand on with criticizing the torture of intelligent animals
You can absolutely make that distinction, but speaking as another meat eater, it's not really a given that factory farming is more like one than the other
When people warn you about the ideas they associate yourself with, this is what they're talking about.
This is one of the rare occassions when I hope the afterlife is real and what people say about near-death experiences is real. I want these motherfuckers to feel the full horror of what they've done.
You don't find these people on the other political side. You find them on that side. It's a categorical divide, those who use empathy correctly, and those who pretend to suppress it and instead become obsessed with witnessing pain. You know they're all cowards, the shit-my-pants-in-fear kind. Reduced to snot and tears the second the bad cop comes in. Just so incredibly weak and no amount of manmode posturing could ever hide it.
Buried deep in our DNA are these types of people, and I've often thought of exactly why. Back in the jungle our species was born in, we NEEDED shitters. The original battle royal called nature was a harsh mistress, and we carefully evolved these types to carry us through the dark ages.
Sociopaths: to help manipulate the tribe into staying together
Psychopaths: to kill to defend the tribe
General Anxiety Disorders: to stay alert for threats to the tribe
Depression: to keep the tribe realistic about existing on planet earth
Personality disorders: to unlock the creativity it takes to get out of sticky situations
Schizophrenia: to give a sense of higher purpose to the tribe through delusions of grandeur
And so on. Plus when selecting for certain genes to keep the tribe strong, there will be unintended consequences.
I hope yall enjoyed my very unscientific ramblings about this.
At the same time that I'm not surprised this stuff is on YouTube, I'm shocked at how brazen the criminals are to upload this shit to a public website.
We'd think the way these things operate are all Hollywood style, deep-web websites with passwords, 7 proxies, invitations and initiations to "join the club"
Well geez, I guess sometimes it's just Telegram Groups and fucking YouTube.
And let me guess, YouTube is moving at an snail's pace when it comes to removing the videos and banning the channels uploading them, eh?
I think I last heard the words "monkey torture" in the 'Barry Lutz Show' sketch by The State in 1994. Can't find a copy of it on YouTube, ebaumsworld has a copy but it didn't want to load for me and the site itself is ad heavy - direct link to the .flv should work but might not play natively in browser. To be clear, the video link is a comedy bit about psychologically torturing monkeys and doesn't show or inflict any harm to any.
I don't have anything meaningful to add to the discussion about the IRL monkey abuse so I'm hoping to inject a little bit of levity to an otherwise terrible subject.
I want to see them make little edible luggage, because that does sound good. I have the DVD box set, and a friend of mine whom I used to date and I bonded over The State when we met in 2014. Terrific stuff.
Pretty wild how most of that troupe had successful careers in entertainment even outside of stuff they did together. I'm glad at least a couple other people remember the show fondly :)
Can we bring in eye for an eye executions? Like not for everyone but when you're such a horrible disgusting soulless monster and you do something on the level of this, can we do the same to them, slowly.
Simple execution or jail doesn't seem fitting for people like this.
No. It does nothing to prevent these crimes from happening (let alone undo the damage) and you can't say "this act is immoral and worthy of deliberately slow, cruel death... unless I do it then it's fine". It's nothing more than bloodlust, leaving you with more in common with people buying monkey torture videos than with a genuinely good person.