.jpg)
Totalcrime
A true crime podcast, written and produced by Chris Summers, veteran crime reporter with more than 30 years of experience. He has been writing producing content for Totalcrime on Substack since March 2024 and is now launching into podcasting. The podcast will be a mixture of Chris narrating true crime stories from the UK and around the world, and occasional interviews with people who are knowledgeable about crime.
Totalcrime
The Suiciders
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This is an exclusive interview with Zac Law, from Yorkshire, who tells me how he discovered one day that one of his American friends on the app Discord, Travis Dyer (pictured), had killed himself and then later found out that three other people he knew on the app - including "Jimmy" - had played an active part in encouraging Travis to shoot himself and had even watched it on a videocall. Dylan Phelan - who was "Jimmy" - was jailed for six years on Friday (12 June) at Leeds Crown Court for encouraging Travis's suicide.
Welcome back to the Total Crime Podcast. This is episode 18. And it's quite an unusual one because firstly, can I explain before I introduce the guest what happened on Friday last um we had the sentencing of Dylan Phelan and I wrote a Substack about that, which you can find on totalcrime.substack.com. This is the guy who encouraged somebody in America to kill themselves, basically, on a video chat. And after that, just by chance really or luck, I came across uh Zach Law, who I who I mentioned in the article right at the bottom of the article. Um, and he's agreed to talk to me. So welcome, Zach. How are you doing? Yeah, not too bad. How are you? I'm good. Now you're you're uh in Doncaster, is that where you live? Yeah, I'm in Doncaster. Yeah. Okay, so that's not a million miles coincidentally, I guess, from uh this guy Dylan Phelan, who was in Leeds or Morley, I think, near Leeds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, nearby Leeds. I mean, he he'd even met up with me previously. Um he was a very, very I mean prior to this, I I I never believed anything like this could have come from him, truly.
SPEAKER_01No, uh well, I mean it was obviously a bit of a shock to his family as well. But we'll we'll get into the detail uh in a moment. So firstly, uh can you tell me uh so there are obviously people know there's loads and loads of different apps where people can talk to each other. Um, you know, you know, from WhatsApp to Telegram to Discord and Signal and Session, which I've I've used a few times. Um and there's also Kick, K-I-K. Um, and all of them, you know, most the vast majority of people using them use them completely sort of legitimately and for various reasons, you know, they they don't maybe want to um give their identity out or whatever, they just want to talk to somebody and they don't want to sort of be completely, you know, this is who I am and this is my photograph and all that sort of thing. Um, so you you were on Discord. How how did you get on it and what what were you using it for?
SPEAKER_00Um, so I begun using Discord in, I mean, I've I've used Discord for for many years now. Um, I'd started using Discord sort of myself May 2024 when I was sort of dealing with my own mental health issues and stuff. And uh I'd come across sort of a lot of different communities. Um eventually I ended up making sort of my own server of my friend group and stuff, but you can make a Discord server for anything. So it could be based on a game, it could be based on sort of a TV show or something, or it it could be best based on like mental health support and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, so when when we say servers, that's um I mean community.
SPEAKER_00Like a WhatsApp group or essentially, yeah. So I mean, I think the most comparable thing would sort of be how you you've got like a Teams chat. So you can add people into it. You could, if you wanted to invite anyone in the world to it, you could just invite a close group of people, and then you can set up different chats within there for sort of different topics and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so the person who sets it up is kind of the gatekeeper.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they they if they they become the owner of the server and they're they're they're able to decide who's able to join and not.
SPEAKER_01Okay, right. Um, yeah, okay. And to most people, uh I don't know. I mean, obviously you were you know having um um um some mental health problems. Were you you know using an an alternate identity or you were keeping your own identity a bit private or I mean I I I've always sort of not not been too worried about keeping my identity too private.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I just went by Zach on all of those social media, but the vast majority of everyone else just went by some pseudonym or random name that they've made up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the the names we'll come across. We don't really know. I mean, you may know, but you may you don't have to tell us but whether they were their real names or not. Certainly Dylan Phelan wasn't using his real he was called Jim or Jimmy or Yeah, he just went by Jimmy, uh and everyone knew him by Jimmy. Right. Can I I well before we get into one, there was one strange bit where they were talking about um how he uh sort of etched some names into the into the victim. And was one of them J Fallon? I was thinking, was it Jimmy Fallon as in the comedian?
SPEAKER_00Uh no, it's so his surname was Phelan. Um I mean I I can't I think the the Jimmy name came from just some some dumb jokes of before years before I'd met him to do it like Jimmy Neutron or something. Um but that I think that was just some random name he'd he'd come across and sort of stuck to over time.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but so he was using the surname Phelan or uh no, so you're just using the the name Jimmy uh on there. Okay, right, got it. Um okay, so then so you set up this server. What was the name of the server? Do you remember?
SPEAKER_00So I had my community, which I just called Grill. Um it just like a dumb inside joke name. And uh there was another server which was set up initially by Robin Mads. So my server was always sort of a private friend group server. You invite the people that you know and stuff like that. Whereas Robin Mads had set up their server, which was a public one. So anyone who who came across it, it was sort of advertised a mental health server. So anyone that saw it could could decide to join and sort of talk with other people based on that topic and everything.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and their name of their server was Recovery for All, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_00So this one that I'm on about. So the public one was one called Cynical Serenade. Okay. Um so separate, so there was my server, which was called Grill, which was a private server. There was the public server that Robin Mads had initially set up, which they'd called Cynical Serenade, and sort of as a branch off of that of their sort of private friend group server, they also had a server called Recovery for All. So I'd initially met them from sort of the friend group of Gorill and my server merging with the friend group of Cynical Serenade. Yeah, and then over time, sort of the that that's how I'd sort of initially met uh Dylan and Travis and everyone.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah, and we haven't spoken about Travis yet. So Travis Dyer um was what he was um 20. Um he was 21, wasn't he, at the time of his death. Um and it's obviously he obviously had mental health problems that he was going through, and that's sort of how he found these groups. Um and can you tell me what's what sort of stuff did you talk to him about? Because you had you had like one-to-one chats as well as group chats, or yeah, I mean we talk about everything really.
SPEAKER_00Um I I mean, sometimes we we talk more personally and like more in detail about the issues affected, or sometimes it'd just be a case of saying yeah, you feel like crap and the other person feels like crap and you sort of play some games and distract yourself from almost like a form of escapism in a way, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah, right. Um, and when when we say talk, are we are we saying are we literally talking, you know, like like we are now, or was it sort of messaging?
SPEAKER_00Uh I mean both. Um sometimes it would just be messaging, but I mean especially Travis, he was very active in like the the uh voice calls um practically every day. So I mean I I spoke to him on a on a daily basis for for quite a few months or so while uh while I was friends with him.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and what where what did you glean about his life, where he lived, what sort of he'd been through some tragedies, hadn't he?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I mean it goes back to like you were saying of sort of people wanting to use pseudonyms and stuff. I I knew bits and pieces I could tell he was he was obviously struggling a lot. And I I got bits and pieces of sort of family life and stuff like that going on, but I didn't know the full picture of everything, like especially his family, um, like all the tragedies in his life and stuff. I didn't know a lot about a lot of them until I'd managed to contact the family afterwards. Um I I know he'd been he he'd spoken a lot about you so struggles with mental health and self-harm and stuff, but uh nothing on not the whole picture of everything, I guess.
SPEAKER_01No, I mean what we learnt uh at the sentencing hearing on Friday about that he when it when he was a child, I believe his um his mother and his uh younger sister died. I don't I'm not sure if it was presumably it was the same drowning incident, not separate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I believe it was a yeah, a car crash that had led to it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, right. Yeah. So he was a child at the time, and his younger sister has died, his mother's died. Um you know, so that is inevitably gonna, you know, just put a you know, that's gonna affect your mental health for years later. And then there were other tragedies. I think his great great grandmother or great-grandgrandfather died.
SPEAKER_00Um it sounds like it was just a very unfortunate horrible, yeah, a horrible series of events.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And then so he comes to groups. Now uh there's been a lot of discussion about um mental health groups and even the sort of suicide forums where I I mean I I I don't I've never been involved, you know, I've never seen one or see how they work. Um, but presumably, you know, if you are in a mental health group and you are sort of mentioning that you have suicidal thoughts, most people in the in those groups would would just try to not cheer you up, you know, not in a flippant way, but they would they would just sort of help you listen or or try to sort of tell you the you know there's a bigger picture and you know things will get better and and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I think that was a big part of it in that it wasn't a traditional sort of mental health space of yeah, sort of constant support sort of thing. It more felt like a friend group where you knew everyone else was sort of in the same boat as you. You knew that you were dealing with these mental health issues, so was this other person, and it it just helps sort of build that bond or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, maybe um, you know, like I'm I'm in WhatsApp groups where with friends where sometimes the it sort of banter is gets quite dark or quite kind of a bit maybe politically incorrect or just sort of a bit dodgy. But you know, you feel that you're among friends and you can share these things, but maybe um you know, in Discord, if you if you are ultimate ultimately strangers, you know, you don't know what the other person's getting out of it, or you know, they don't you don't know they have your your best interests at heart. Which clearly Robin Mads and um Jimmy, as we as we then know him, uh clearly really didn't, did they?
SPEAKER_00No, definitely. I mean there was a lot of people that were that were friends with Travis in the community, and everyone was so shocked and heartbroken to find everything out when it had initially happened. It uh it it really sent a shock through everyone about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, so let's um move along to the actual sort of events we're talking about. Um so this was in um Yeah, so I mean also reminds it reminded me of the case of um uh Michelle Carter, who um was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, but she she basically encouraged her boyfriend, a guy called Conrad Roy, to to kill himself in 2017. Um there's a documentary about it on Netflix, and it's just a bizarre case where you know they were they were all intents and purposes boyfriend, girlfriend. Um, but she sort of basically encouraged him, talked him into killing himself, and then almost immediately sort of went onto Facebook and um sort of professed her sort of shock and grief. Um you know that which is a very you know, that's a sort of different motivation. It was she was all about sort of I have to be their centre of attention, I want people sort of sympathizing with me and all that, you know, in a very strange sense. But with Dylan feeling, it it sounds like he had a slightly different motivation. So we're talking about um it was actually October 2024, 30th of October 2024, when Travis died. Um, can you remember, you know, in hindsight, you know, what how you found out about it, or or had you sort of lost touch with him a bit before that? No.
SPEAKER_00So I'd mentioned about sort of the two friend groups merging between the servers, between sort of Cynical Serenade, their public server and my server. And so most of the people, like uh Rob, Mads, Jimmy, Travis, were in all servers, so they were also in my my private server. Um, and then I'd woken up on in the morning um and Mads had posted a message saying that uh Travis had killed themselves. Um and Mads in particular always was kind of sadistic in his humour. Like a lot of people read that and thought he was making some kind of sick joke that it that it wasn't actually happened, and it was only sort of reading other chats and you know reading everything further that everyone realised that it actually had happened.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And do you do you remember Jimmy's reaction to that?
SPEAKER_00Or what his he he he very much framed it at the time that it was Rob and Mads that had done this. Um he he sort of alluded that he he'd messed up in some way, um, but very much framed it as uh Rob and Mads have done this thing and I want to help give evidence on them or tell people what they've done while no one was aware that he he was actually involved in it to that extent. Um I mean I mean, even when people had sort of found out that that Rob and Mads were involved uh and that Jimmy was involved, people very much didn't think Jimmy was involved directly. They they they thought that maybe sort of in the VC as it happened, but they they could almost expect it from Mads and Rob, but Jimmy was just a complete shock of how far he went with everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh I guess the the fact that um so we we think that Mads and Rob are in the US or were in the US, yeah. So maybe you know people would would assume when they're Jimmy was in the wrong time zone, he done you know, he wasn't involved or whatever, but um that turned out not to be the case.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, and he was uh he was very much involved.
SPEAKER_01So so you eventually sort of realised that it was true. Um I mean you had no way of reaching Travis's family or any any sort of any anybody who could actually you could sympathize with or you could just confirm it or nothing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was gonna say that was one thing um that that they mentioned a lot of the articles. I don't know if you'd misspoken in court. Um the person who'd contacted US authorities had actually done it before I'd woken up. So I'd woken up to finding out about this had happened, and also from this friend that's spoken to US police that she'd contacted the police and stuff with the information that she had. Um so that that was sort of how they initially found out about it and everything.
SPEAKER_01Okay, right. Yeah, so the uh we should let people know that the um the police were notified by somebody on on Discord then.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, by by someone that I was also mutually friends with, sort of from this community of servers.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and they they sort of sent somebody round who I think went round just before um is it Eddie? Was is that his father? Um his grandfather. Oh his grandfather, yeah. So he was living with um this guy Eddie, who was his grandfather, who'd taken him in a few years earlier. Um and but you know, he I think saw the you know the body as well, didn't he? Just after the police got there.
SPEAKER_00Uh I'm not I'm not 100% sure. Um, so so when my friends in the US had contacted the US police, um, we we didn't have too much information on Travis. We knew uh where he worked. We thought his first name was Travis, but we weren't 100% sure because he was always quite quite private about his like personal information stuff. So um I think she'd managed to give all the information to US authorities, or local authorities, I should say, um, to be able to find him. And I think I I think I read in an article or something they'd gone to the Chuck E. Cheese or something where he worked, um, and then mate managed to make inquiries there to to work out where he lived.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and it it was somewhere in Louisiana.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um yeah, so then they um well presumably I don't I don't know how the police in America sort of first responded to it. They they obviously it was on the face of it, uh you know, suicide, and it was a suicide, but um, you know, they had obviously been told some information about you know there's people on Discord who were talking to him just beforehand. How how how soon did you know about this actual sort of live video call that was actually taking place at the time he died?
SPEAKER_00So I'd initially I'm not sure exactly when I'd have I'd have found out about it. I so I I'd found this information out in the morning, um, and I'd probably a bit foolishly decided I was gonna go to work anyway. So it was sort of as I was at work that day, um, and I think on my lunch break at some point, I'd I joined a call that had Jimmy in it. Um and and I remember him hacked acting so almost hysterical, like a really I I can't think of the the emotion to describe it, just like really nervous, hysteric energy of his mind's in a thousand places at once. And it was as I was talking to him then he gave more information about you know other people's involvement and what everyone had done to to push Travis to this.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but he he told you that yes, I I saw it or words to that effect, or words to that effect, I'm not I'm not sure on the exact wording, if I'm honest.
SPEAKER_00Um I I can't remember how I exactly found that it was a video call where they were all in. Uh it it could have been when so so at one point as well. Um so so initially in the morning I I'd found out about all of this, and then through the day I was sort of reading the other chats that I'd access to both in my server and their public server, uh Cynical Serenade. And it was then I started to piece more things together of what had actually happened. I mean, like I said, Matt Mad's always made very he had like a sociopathic sense of humour. So he'd always make very macabre jokes. Yeah, but I I think it took everyone a ri like a moment to realise that these aren't macabre jokes he's making this time. You know, he's talking about Travis dying and it's not I don't know, he's making really offensive humor as a way to cope or something. He he's actually admitting it. He's saying everything that everyone did, how everyone was involved, you know, what what they did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then so Mads, Rob and Jimmy, there's no there's no obvious remorse or you know, like they they did something terrible, and then oh my god, what do we what have we done? It's for a while, for a good while later, they were sort of well, some of them were bragging about it and others were just sort of thinking about it, but not in a not in an ashamed way.
SPEAKER_00No, I mean Jimmy had eluded that he'd he'd messed up in some way, but Rob and Mads from the last time I saw a message from them were either saying they weren't involved or saying they hadn't done anything wrong, or with some of them like openly bragging about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. And when how do you know uh I mean when the police in this country in the UK learned about it or began looking into it?
SPEAKER_00I assume when Dylan had turned himself into the police station.
SPEAKER_01Oh, right, yeah. So that was five months later, so not until then.
SPEAKER_00I I assume so because I'd um well actually my my dad had got a phone call from the police asking if they could speak with me. Um my dad obviously panicked. The second I'd heard about it, I knew instantly what it was gonna be about. But I I don't think my mindset at the time was I didn't know what the UK police would be able to do. Like I thought I I don't know, I'd I'd get a crime report number or something. I'd my mindset at the time was I'm gonna try and give everything I can to American police because they're the ones that that that's where the crime physically happened, sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01Um so you were in in contact with the American police quite quite early on, or via that friend in the US as proxy.
SPEAKER_00Um I I sent a lot of stuff to that friend that then forwarded it to the US police.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Uh yeah, so we don't know much about their investigation, but they clearly didn't uh hadn't identified uh Dylan Phelan to the British authorities because you know. When he suddenly walks into Ellen Roe Police Station in Leeds in in um March um 27th of March 2025 and with his parents, he sort of almost sort of frog marched in there by the sound of it. They they um you know tell him, Oh, you've got a you've got a sort of tell all sort of thing. Um they obviously take a big long statement from him and it's the first they they've heard of it. They they clearly haven't been told anything by the Americans.
SPEAKER_00No, I mean I I don't know exactly how much the family knew Ethan themselves. Um I I think when I'd first reached out to them, I'd told them a lot of information that they weren't aware of initially. Um I I'm not really sure what what US police had told them or if they had investigated or anything, or if or if it had been a case of they've been fed this information and not really known where where to go with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maybe they weren't actually doing very much with it, yeah. Um okay, so West Yorkshire police get involved and they, you know, take it very seriously. They they immediately went to his house, uh, his home, family home in Morley and searched through his you know laptop, and they discovered this immense um sort of archive of extremely dark stuff that he'd um found. I'm not gonna go into it in detail. I have put it in the substack and I've put very big graphic warden, graphic content warnings about it because it's really horrific stuff. You know, it's um basically what they call extreme pornography, um, you know, bestiality and you know, you know, snuff videos and all sorts of stuff like that, which he some of it he'd found on the dark web because they found a core browser. I mean, did you when you during any discussions with him or any of the others, did they mention that they were interested in this sort of stuff or that they had seen any of these?
SPEAKER_00Not not from not from Jimmy. Um Mads had mentioned before, or he'd showed an interest in this kind of thing, or you know, more of a curiosity than someone should have, I guess. But Jimmy, I mean, I mean that that's obviously in the side of like gore images and stuff like that. But I I'd never known Jimmy to to act like that in that way. Um I I was uh I I mean I I feel bad for for for Dylan's family as well in a way, because they I mean they didn't know any of this, they didn't deserve any of this, but they've also been just just thrown into everything with everything that's gone on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it was awful. There was um a couple of the relatives, um is it Aunt, I think it was Laurie Warrell and another NVIDIA. Yeah, that's Nvidian, the great great-grandmother. They they were on the um the uh video link from America, obviously, and it was you know, just you just felt for them. They they sounded really nice people as well, because they they one of the things they they actually said was they felt bad for Dylan Phelan's parents, you know. Um so they were they were really kind of you know, not just they weren't sort of full of hate or anything. They were they were just you know, this is tragic, and what what is wrong with that kind of you know, what is what is his family going through? Um so the police look into this, they they then find I think they find the the the Discord messages. I I I think they they must have accessed the actual video call itself.
SPEAKER_00Um is that is that right, or do you think they just sort of he he told them what he'd done or I uh some of it was was sent so so initially sort of after this had all happened, um I'd uh realized what had gone on while I was at work and started to put all the pieces together. And at that point, me and uh a couple of other people, um I mean w when I was at UD I I did digital forensic. So I knew at this point grabbing as much as we could now was the most important thing that was going to help the police here. So me and a few other people at that point grabbed as many screenshots, chat logs, messages, usernames, stuff like that as as we possibly could. Uh and basically organise this big chat where we were shoving all the information that we could possibly need. Um so so some of it could have been from Jimmy's, but some of it also could have been from sort of like myself and people that had managed to help out sort of be able to bring this to the police's attention.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So oh, that's interesting. You you studied dig digital forensics?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I did digital forensics at uni.
SPEAKER_01Okay, right, yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating area because um, you know, a lot of people assume that um you know a lot of the well, I mean, and uh it is the case that sometimes, you know, messages and pictures and whatever can be deleted and and never found again. But um, you know, there are experts who can find these, you know, dig them out, find them in a in a cache or wherever they've been stored. Um or even the some, you know, the um Discord themselves probably have some way of uh recovering them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so yeah, so uh basically to to explain without going into too much graphic detail for the for the listeners, that it it turned out that um on this sort of particular night, um I think it was night in America or Yeah, night in America. Yeah, so it'd been sort of early hours in the morning, probably um for Dylan Phelan in in the UK. But he's um he's been told he's been told that you know Travis has told him I'm I you know I've I've had enough, I'm I'm gonna do it now, I'm gonna kill myself. And um then he and uh Mads and Rob basically sort of just keep talking to him and pushing him over the edge. You know, they could have talked him out of it, they could have probably said, you know, don't do this, you know, there's you know or or they could have just ignored him, whatever, but they they by the sound of it just continually sort of goaded him, sort of threatened him at times, sort of made him, you know, sort of um you know, they they they just went on and on, and particularly um Jimmy, which is Dylan Phelan's um pseudonym, he was actually sort of going into great detail, telling him how to sort of unload the weapon and then practice, you know, pulling the trigger without it loaded and then do it again. And, you know, obviously eventually Travis does kill himself and uh you know just beggars belief that somebody could, you know, that yeah, his his reaction then just beggars belief when um Dylan Feeler actually laughs um after the after he's killed himself. Um I don't know whether, you know, in his offense was that a nervous laugh or was it, you know, did he seriously think that was funny? You know, it's just terrific.
SPEAKER_00I think it was a very nervous laugh. Um I mean it it's really hard knowing with with Dylan. I mean, with with the other two people, I don't think they felt anything at all. I I could have imagined them laughing. I think I know to an extent Jimmy had it's it's struck him all of a sudden what he'd done in that moment, I think. Um in that it's actually happened, whereas everyone else seemed a lot more collected, like they'd expected it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. He then he then goes on to um form a sort of relationship with this girl who lived in Portsmouth that who he met in Discord. Um and it it's it wasn't really a hundred percent clear, but he he didn't seem to be sort of uh showing shame or remorse to her. He he told her about the whole incident, and um she described him as sort of lacking remorse and she was disgusted by it, and then she contacts don't know how she got the you know details, but she contacts his parents and basically tells them what he's done. Um you know, do you you didn't you never met her or or you know through Discord didn't know her?
SPEAKER_00Um I think I've spoken to her since. Um so I I want to say probably February uh 2025, so a few months after everything had happened. Um I I've still got my private friend group or whatever. Um, and a lot of people from Cynical Serenade that had been friends with Travis and stuff, I'd sort of invited them into my server, tell them everything that happened and everything. Um and then I think around February time, um Dylan and a few other people had randomly joined the server while I was asleep, probably like 2 a.m. in the morning. So I'd woken up in the morning finding out about everyone had joined. Now, obviously, I immediately, when I found out, banned them all. Um but I'd found out subsequently that the reason they'd all joined was that Jimmy Jimmy had been bragging about it, or at least talking about it in some way, boasting. Um, and when people had sort of called him out and said, You're making it up, you're lying, you haven't done this, he then invited everyone to my server where people had talked about it as proof that he really was involved in this whole situation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh he goes March 27th, 2025, he goes to the police, and it by it it sounds by that point, you know, he didn't, you know, he didn't try to sort of uh pretend otherwise, and and he he obviously pleaded guilty at a very early opportunity once he was charged with uh encouraging suicide, which people should know out there is is an offence. I don't think I think it's a relatively recent offence, but the maximum sentence is 14 years, um, which somebody the guy in uh North Wales got 14 years because he was basically selling um drugs or poisons online at four different people he provided poisons to, so that was you know, that was why he got it. But um Dylan Phelan at the end of the day got a much lower sentence, um, which some people have criticized, you know, that uh partly it was because of his age. Uh he was only 19, I think, at the time of the uh event, and he was um he also had uh some sort of um I think he had Asperger's syndrome or or autism, which I think that was what I heard, yeah. Yeah, which they believe sort of uh affected his. I mean, I'm not I'm not asking generalization on all autistic people, but in his case, it affected his sort of ability to empathize or to sort to sort of understand what you know somebody was going through and why yes, he just didn't react like you might say a normal person might. Um but yeah, so at the end of the day, he he got six years and four months. Um but the the um it was interesting to hear what the judge said because he was clearly really keen that um you know people carry on helping and try, he was hope, you know, he was hoping that people can provide the information that might identify Rob and Mads, um, because they sound you know as culpable, at least uh as Jimmy was. And who knows, maybe they're maybe they're older, maybe they're sort of they don't have any of his sort of uh you know um reasons for for getting a lighter sentence. Maybe they are they just sort of like you say, one of them sounds like a complete sociopown.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think Mads was out of everything, I mean, at the at least as culpable as Dylan was uh during everything. Um I I mean I I was really thankful that I mean either the detectives that I'd spoken to had picked up because I mean from from just the video itself, it seems like Dylan is the mastermind in it, which I I don't personally think he was. I I think if anything, Mads and Rob had a lot more control over the situation than than Dylan did. But I I I was so glad that for only not only the detectives picked up on it, but the the judge said that during his sentencing remarks uh about giving as much information as possible on those people involved as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and it's an incredibly sad case. You know, we've heard recently of um the the government, British government planning to completely ban all social media apps for um you know people under 16, which makes sense to me, but you know, there's there's obviously people over eight over 16 who just don't have the maturity or the you know, just the human empathy to sort of exist on these systems. You know, sometimes they they can lead to people to very dark places, can't they?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely.