On Monday, January 6th, at 11:28 a.m., the 911 emergency dispatch center received a call from the owner of a rental property in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. The man, who wished to remain anonymous, reported that he had been unable to contact the tenants of the second floor apartment at 132 Jefferson Street for several days.
The owner arrived in person to check on the premises and reported a strong smell of rot in the condo and a faint humming noise coming from electrical appliances behind the door. He opened the door with a spare key. 9 minutes after the call, a New York Police Department patrol arrived at the scene.
According to officer Alan Cosner, who was the first to enter the premises, the apartment was a chaotic space with darkened windows, numerous lamps, heaters, and turned off cameras on tripods. The body of a young woman was found on the bed in the bedroom. She was dead. Her hands and feet were handcuffed to the metal frame of the bed.
Her eyes and mouth were sewn shut with surgical thread. There were signs of burns, cuts, and multiple injuries on her body. Three fingers were missing from her right hand. Next to her was a video camera connected to a laptop. The screen displayed a player with a paused video. Investigators from the serious crimes department arrived at the scene 31 minutes later.
The police evacuated the building and called in forensic experts and digital media technicians. City prosecutors were notified by one Maurosax PM. By that time, it was clear that this was not just a murder, but a serious crime involving torture and possibly public display of violence. A few hours later, the identity of the deceased was established.
She was 23-year-old Caitlyn Ray, who had previously lived in the Jersey City area of New Jersey. Her disappearance had not been reported. The police began reconstructing her last days and the events leading up to the discovery of her body. Caitlyn Ray was born on November 5th, 1996 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. At the age of 16, she moved with her mother to New Jersey and graduated from St.
Peter’s College with a degree in visual communications. She had been living in Jersey City for the past 2 years working as a freelance SMM and graphic designer. According to her personal pages, she was active on social media, attended cultural events, and volunteered. She was in contact with young artists and activists from New York.
According to her mobile phone bill, her phone was last active on January 2nd at 1:24 p.m. in Manhattan. Then, complete silence. None of her friends or relatives reported her missing. The police later recorded an attempt to log into one of her online accounts from an encrypted IP address in Brooklyn on the evening of January 4th.
This was one of the first digital clues that the investigation picked up on. Neighbors in the building where the body was found reported hearing screams, noise, and strange sounds resembling metal banging and electronic interference coming from the apartment periodically. One of the residents on the third floor reported that for 2 weeks he had noticed a man carrying heavy bags into the apartment but had not paid much attention to it.
There were many such visits in the area. None of the witnesses saw a woman entering the apartment. This led investigators to believe that the victim may have been brought there by force or was already unconscious. At the start of the investigation, they couldn’t figure out who the tenant was. The name Brian Miller was on the documents given to the landlord, but they turned out to be fake.
The photo on the driver’s license didn’t match the guy on the security camera. It was decided to request fingerprint data found in the apartment and compare it with the databases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FBI. Judging by the equipment found in the apartment, several computers, external drives, lights, and several professional cameras, the suspect had been filming the events for a long time.
One of the investigators, who wished to remain anonymous, said that a video recording lasting about 40 minutes was found on one of the seized devices. It showed the process of so-called cleansing. The video was accompanied by a distorted voice reading excerpts from a religious text. According to experts, the video could have been broadcast on a closed forum.
The police asked the FBI’s cyber crime department for help. Caitlyn was identified by her mother, Margaret Ray. In a conversation with journalists, she said that she had not seen her daughter since New Year’s Eve and thought she had gone away for a few days with friends. The last communication between them took place on the evening of January 1st.
Caitlyn wrote that she wanted to take a break from her phone and people and asked not to be disturbed until the end of the week. This coincided with the date of her disappearance. The investigator’s first suspicions arose after analyzing the list of calls made from Caitlyn’s phone in the last few days.
Among them was an unknown number registered to Joshua Hart. This number had previously appeared in a case involving the illegal streaming of video material on the dark web. However, by January 2020, all accounts associated with this number had been deleted. This gave investigators their first clue about a possible link between the disappearance and closed online platforms specializing in broadcasting scenes of violence.
On the third day after the body was found, the New York Police Department issued a description of a man captured on cameras in the building’s lobby. According to experts, he was wearing a black jacket, a medical mask, and gloves. His face could not be clearly identified. However, analysis of his gate and tattoos on his wrist allowed investigators to match him to a video taken at a subway station two weeks earlier.
Cameras captured the same man with a large black case similar to the one later found in the apartment with Caitlyn’s body. The work to establish his identity continued for several days. The investigation began to examine Caitlyn’s circle of friends, her subscriptions, correspondents, and meetings. More than 20 people were interviewed.
Among them were several art college students with whom she had been in contact in December. One of them, Alex Cohen, said that Caitlyn was interested in contemporary radical art movements and had been discussing body perception and pain with someone named Jake for some time. He did not know his full name, but showed a photo of them together taken at an exhibition in the Lower East Side.
The man’s face matched the police description. On the fifth night after the body was found, January 13th, a patrol officer spotted a man matching the description in the Williamsburg area. He was walking along an industrial area with a camera in his hands. When the officer attempted to identify him, the man tried to flee.
He was detained. He had a fake passport in the name of Daniel Mason. After fingerprinting, his real name was revealed as Jacob Wheeler, 31 years old. He had a previous conviction for unauthorized hacking into the Cooper Union College system, where he had been a student until 2015. He was living without registration and working as a freelance media professional.
After Jacob Wheeler’s arrest on January 13th, 2020, investigators focused on establishing his role in the murder of Caitlyn Ray and gathering the evidence necessary to bring charges. During the first 24 hours, he refused to give a statement, invoking his right to remain silent and demanding the presence of a lawyer.
However, he did not resist a search of his personal belongings. Two SIM cards, a 128 GB flash drive, and a memory card from a video camera containing several video recordings were found in his possession. After obtaining a search warrant for his temporary residence, the police went to 27 Grant Street in the Greenpoint neighborhood.
Wheeler rented a room in the apartment under the name of Daniel Mason. Inside they found two laptops, four hard drives, a diary with notes, boxes of surgical instruments, cans of antiseptics, needles, syringes, and packages of thread. A preliminary analysis of one of the hard drives revealed video recordings dated November and December of the previous year.
The tapes showed scenes of staged violence against women, but none of them were identified as Caitlyn. Judging by the surroundings, the videos were filmed in the same apartment where the body was found. Files stored in hidden partitions of the drives attracted particular attention. According to the FBI’s cyber crime department, some of the videos were posted in a closed section of the darknet accessible by invitation only.
This forum, as it turned out later, was called silent process. The platform operated as a closed club. Access was granted only to users who passed a so-called entry verification. They had to upload unique video material or pay a significant amount in cryptocurrency. The content on the platform consisted of a series of scenes visualizing physical restrictions, isolation, sensory deprivation, restraint, and sewing shut of mouths and eyelids.
The videos were accompanied by audio recordings of excerpts from religious texts and philosophical treatises. All forum participants used pseudonyms and IP addresses were hidden through VPN and tour chains. Investigators determined that at least six videos posted on silent process were made by Jacob Wheeler.
A comparison of the video metadata with the digital traces of his devices yielded a direct match. One of the videos titled phase 3 voice purge.mpp4 was identical in content to material found in the apartment on Jefferson Street. This was the first direct evidence linking Wheeler to Caitlyn’s murder. At the same time, work began on investigating Jacob’s past.
He was born in 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents were teachers, his father a professor of theology and his mother a history teacher. He attended a Catholic school and was an excellent student. Still at the age of 16, he began to show signs of social isolation. According to his former classmates, he often discussed topics such as sexual guilt, language as an instrument of evil, and absolute silence.
He underwent psychological evaluation at school several times, but was never officially diagnosed. At the age of 18, he moved to New York and enrolled at Cooper Union College to study installation art. He was expelled for disciplinary reasons after an incident involving a performance that used nude models and medical equipment.
After being expelled, he began to lead a reclusive lifestyle. He worked as a freelance editor and sold digital collages and 3D art. He exhibited several times at independent art festivals where he was described as a radical experimentalist. Investigators believe that Jacob used pseudonyms to hire models and performance participants, inviting them to his studio where he filmed them.
However, only in Caitlyn’s case did the crime cross the line from filming to actual murder. Investigators considered the possibility that Caitlyn may have been misled into agreeing to participate in an art project or experiment. This was partially confirmed when her laptop was found. In an email dated December 30th, she discussed an invitation to a visual project shoot with an address that later turned out to be linked to Wheeler.
The email specified a fee of $700, a duration of 2 days, and the theme of refusal to speak and absolute silence. Caitlyn’s mother confirmed to the police that her daughter earned money by participating in art shoots and had worked with independent photographers on several occasions. She did not know what kind of shoot was planned for early January.
Based on correspondence and data from her phone, investigators concluded that Caitlyn arrived at the address associated with Wheeler on January 2nd of her own free will. When the police began re-checking surveillance cameras in the Bedford Avenue subway area, footage was found showing Caitlyn climbing the stairs from the station and heading toward Jefferson Street.
Eight minutes later, the duplicate footage shows a man with a similar appearance walking by, who was later identified as Wheeler. After that, no footage of Caitlyn was found on the streets of the area. Additional material was obtained after decryptting the Wi-Fi connection log of the suspect’s apartment router.
The system recorded connections from various devices, including Caitlyn’s phone, between January 2nd and 4. On January 4th, the connection was lost. This coincides with the analysis of the remains. According to the forensic experts, death occurred between late evening on January 4th and early morning on January 5th.
Along with technical evidence, the testimony of one of the users of the silent process forum became an essential element of the case. This person registered under the pseudonym Nomad Path voluntarily contacted the FBI through a secure channel and provided screenshots of internal correspondence between forum participants.
In one of the messages dated January 4th, a user with the nickname Oblivion Guide shared a link to the final silent cleansing process. The structure and description of this content matched the video found at Wheeler’s home. Investigators began preparing charges. They managed to gather enough evidence, including metadata, video recordings, digital traces, and biological material to link Jacob Wheeler directly to the murder of Caitlyn Ray.
His lawyer requested a psychiatric evaluation, arguing that his client’s actions were the result of a borderline disorder with mystical symptoms. However, the prosecution insisted that the crime was premeditated and planned. According to the official version of the investigation formulated during the court hearings, the day of Caitlyn Ray’s murder was reconstructed based on a combination of digital data, video recordings, analysis of remains, and expert testimony.
The investigation concluded that the key events took place between late evening on January 4th and the early morning hours of January 5th, 2020. According to information from the New York City Department of Forensic Medical Services, death occurred between midnight and 4:00 a.m. The cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation caused by obstruction of the airways.
The threads used to sew the mouth shut were surgical, strong, knotted, and required considerable effort to break. Judging by the marks left on the lips, the mouth was sewn shut while the victim was conscious. This is confirmed by the remains of tissue and thread found under the fingernails, indicating attempts to tear the stitches. A similar technique was used on the eyelids.
The eyes were sewn shut with thin thread secured to the inside of the skull through the brow ridges. This required medical precision and skill. The victim was restrained to the bed with handcuffs fixed to a metal frame with anchors. The structure was homemade but sturdy. Bottles of painkillers and anxolytics dasipam and ketamine were found nearby.
Traces of the substance were found in Caitlyn’s body. According to the toxicologist’s report, the dose was enough to keep her partially conscious but suppressed her motor functions and pain threshold. This allowed the suspect to manipulate the victim’s body without her actively resisting. A key piece of evidence was a video titled phase 3 voice purge found both in the apartment on Jefferson Street and on Jacob Wheeler’s devices.
The 42-minute video documented the stages of the so-called purification. It began with readings from the book of Job and the treatise on the silence of the spirit by an anonymous 15th century monk. The recording shows Wheeler dressed in a white medical gown and wearing a respirator performing procedures on Caitlyn’s body.
Her face is partially covered, but the police confirmed her identity by a birth mark on her cheek and a tattoo on her wrist. The final frames of the video show her breathing stop. After that, the camera remains on for another 9 minutes. A continuous beeping sound similar to the noise of an electrical appliance can be heard in the background.
Digital forensics experts confirmed that the recording was broadcast live via a secure tour channel to the silent process forum. Server logs showed that the broadcast originated from an IP address corresponding to a router in an apartment on Jefferson Street. A total of 19 unique connections were present during the broadcast.
Two of them were from Canada, three from Germany, and the rest from dynamic addresses in the United States. The content of the broadcast was discussed in a separate closed forum thread. One user left a comment, “Clean, no screaming, nice ending.” This comment was later added to the case file. Additional evidence came from a security camera on a nearby street. At 6:00 a.m.
on January 5th, Jacob was recorded leaving the apartment with a plastic container, presumably containing medical waste. He threw the container into a trash can around the corner. This trash can was later seized and the remains of latex gloves, bandages, ampules, and a bag with severed fingers wrapped in cloth were found inside.
Biological examination confirmed that the remains belonged to Caitlyn Ray. This was a turning point. Now the police had not only digital traces, but also physical evidence linking the suspect to the murder. Neighbors reported hearing faint sounds the night before, either crying or a humming noise.
However, noisy parties were often held in the area, and no one paid any attention to what was happening. When Jacob was asked about this during questioning, he claimed that it was a completed act and that Caitlyn voluntarily entered into the process. According to him, she allegedly understood that silence was the last stage of freedom.
This version was refuted based on an analysis of her messages, the nature of her injuries, and data on drugs administered without her consent. Wheeler himself behaved aloof during questioning, spoke in short sentences, and most often refused to provide explanations. According to investigator Jeff Malone, who worked with him during the first 24 hours, Wheeler showed no remorse.
He perceived what was happening as the realization of his artistic program. His diaries found in his apartment contained diagrams, descriptions of procedures, reflections on the artist’s right to transform the body, and quotes from religious and philosophical texts. One of the fragments was marked in red pen. Speaking, she sins.
Seeing she distorts, not hearing, she is pure. A psychiatric examination conducted in February 2020 concluded that Jacob Wheeler was sane. He understood the nature and consequences of his actions and was capable of participating in the trial. No diagnosis were made that would exclude criminal responsibility. Experts noted the presence of pathological beliefs and a maniacal obsession with the idea of purification.
Still, they found no symptoms of psychosis or schizophrenia. Thus, the defense was unable to build a case based on insanity. By the end of the investigation, the case file consisted of more than 500 pages. The evidence included digital media, physical evidence, witness statements, correspondence, and expert reports.
Jacob Wheeler was charged with firstdegree premeditated murder, unlawful detention, use of torture, distribution of scenes of violence resulting in actual death, and participation in a criminal enterprise. The Kings County District Attorney’s Office insisted on the death penalty, citing the particular cruelty of the crime and the fact that it was broadcast on the dark web.
The trial of Jacob Wheeler began on October 6th, 2020 in the New York State Supreme Court, Kings County, Judge Raymond Barklay presided. The trial was held behind closed doors. Members of the press were only allowed to attend the verdict as the case files contained scenes of actual violence and material that violated ethical standards.
The prosecution was led by Kings County Senior District Attorney Linda O’Hara. The defense was led by courtappointed attorney David Ranken. 16 witnesses were heard during the trial, including investigators, forensic experts, digital security specialists, and the mother of the deceased. The primary evidence consisted of video recordings from Wheeler’s devices, correspondence, witness testimony, and physical evidence, including recording devices, biological materials, and surgical instruments.
Jacob Wheeler declined to make a final statement. Throughout the trial, he behaved in a reserved manner and showed no signs of remorse. He admitted to filming the incident, but did not admit to murder, claiming that everything happened consensually as part of a performance. His defense was rejected by the court based on expert opinions and witness testimony.
No documents confirming Caitlyn’s consent to participate in the filming were presented. On November 12th, 2020, the jury returned a unanimous verdict. Guilty on all counts. Judge Barkley sentenced Jacob Wheeler to death by lethal injection, setting the date for execution no earlier than January 2022. Since New York State has a moratorum on the execution of death sentences, Wheeler was transferred to the Green Haven Maximum Security Prison with solitary confinement and daily medical supervision.
The public reaction was limited but caused a stir in the media. There were publications about the problem of darknet forums, the lack of control over extremist art content, and legal loopholes regarding filming real violence. Several activists submitted an initiative to the New York City Council proposing the introduction of special articles regulating digital forms of complicity in crimes.
Caitlyn’s mother, Margaret Ray, said in a brief comment at a press conference, “I am grateful to the investigators for their work. What happened to my daughter must never happen again. I hope this man never gets out of prison. Nothing else matters.” According to the prosecutor’s office, Jacob Wheeler’s case files have been transferred to US federal authorities for further analysis.
The Silent Process Forum has been shut down. Several of its members have been identified and questioned. As of early 2021, related investigations are continuing at the international level. The Wheeler case has been added to the list of the most serious crimes broadcast on the darknet, investigated in the United States over the past 10 years.
It demonstrated the need to adapt the legislative framework to the realities of digital crime. It drew attention to the phenomenon of justifying violence through performance and experimental
