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The internet can be a powerful tool that connects us to friends, communities & opportunities that we wouldn’t normally have. It can also be a dangerous place where those looking to prey on the young & vulnerable lurk. The scary reality is that predators aren’t rare; they’re anywhere teens chat & since these groomers can be highly skilled, a teen is likely unable to realize that they’re in danger. Teens also oftentimes overestimate their ability to identify danger, something that makes them more vulnerable. Since young people spend so much time online, concerns regarding online safety have only increased.
On a quiet February evening in 2014, 14-year-old Breck Bednar told his family that he was going to a friend’s house nearby. When he left the safety of his home, he was meeting someone he had only ever known online for over a year. Breck was a bright, remarkable teen who loved gaming, coding & connecting with friends in online communities. When he went to meet his online friend in person for the first time, he wasn’t worried since in his mind, this was a person he could trust.
Since online grooming normally starts with the illusion of a friendship, in the beginning stages, it rarely resembles danger. Predators often approach their victims on platforms where children feel comfortable: gaming servers, chat apps, social media or internet-based communities. Since the predator often mirrors their victims interests, a sense of trust is established since they feel understood.
Over time, a groomer begins to gradually isolate their victim, slowly convincing them that their friends & family don’t understand them like they do. By the time red flags begin to emerge, a teen is likely already emotionally tied to their groomer.
Because predators rarely push their boundaries right away, over time, many victims naturally begin to voluntarily share personal information as they’re manipulated into trusting. When the trust is established, the victim will feel comfortable enough to share their address or agree to meet in person.
Little did Breck know, but for over the course of a year, someone had been weaving a web around him that left him manipulated, isolated & controlled the way that he saw the world. The trust that was built was about to be used against him in the most horrific way.
Breck Bednar was born on March 17, 1999 in Surrey, England to American parents, Barry Bednar & Lorin LaFave. In 1996, three years before Breck’s birth, the couple relocated to England for Barry’s work as an oil trader. When Breck was 2, his mom gave birth to triplets, two girls & one boy, Carly, Chloe & Sebastian.
From the beginning, it was clear that Breck was a mature, responsible & caring boy who, as young as 2-years-old, would help his mom gather supplies for his infant siblings. Breck was a wonderful student & had goals of eventually becoming a pilot. He loved to fix things & understand how they worked by taking them apart & putting them back together. Lorin recalls just how easy it was to raise Breck because he was always so fun, laid-back, responsible & kind.
In 2006, Barry & Lorin divorced, but they were sure to put their children’s needs first as they began to transition between their mom & dad’s homes. When Breck started his new school after the divorce, he was reconnected with previous friends from primary school. Here, he was invited into a gaming group. The boys would hang out together at school & then rush home to play their games online together. This was a situation that Lorin was extremely comfortable with since she knew the boys that her son was playing with as well as their parents. His younger siblings would often gather behind him, watching him play as they idolized their big brother.
Breck had a love of technology & computers & would often dismantle & rebuild them. He was a resourceful kid who saved his birthday & Christmas money, he sold & exchanged parts in order to develop the set-up that he liked.
As Breck got older, his gaming set-up transitioned from a common area of the home into his bedroom where he had three monitors where he would play games like Call of Duty & Battlefield while chatting with his friends online. Since he kept his door open, Lorin was still able to see & hear what her son was up to. Since the situation was very typical for a teen, Lorin never once questioned her son’s safety at that point.
However, Lorin clearly remembers the day when peppered amongst the familiar sound of the voices she recognized in Breck’s chat group, she noticed a deeper sounding voice that she didn’t recognize. The voice sounded a lot more mature than a child within her son’s age range & she immediately worried. When she confronted Breck about it, he indicated that it was the person who ran the server, TeamSpeak, that he & his friends played on, something similar to Discord. Not only could they message each other while playing together, but they could also talk to one another using their microphones or headsets.
Breck told his mom that it was his new friend, Lewis, a 17-year-old who was great with technology & despite his young age, he had his own business & his own apartment in New York City. He also worked for the U.S. government on contract which allowed him to work his own hours.
As Lorin learned that her son’s new friend was Lewis Daynes who went by the screenname, Eagle-One-Six. He portrayed himself as someone who was living an unbelievable lifestyle for a 17-year-old, yet at the same time, he had a lot in common with Breck & his friends. Since Lewis was the administrator of the chat they used, he had the ability to mute & expel members at his own discretion.
With her son being only 14, Lorin felt uncomfortable about Breck playing with someone who was several years older, but when she voiced her concerns, Breck was quick to defend Lewis. When she questioned how he managed to play online for so many hours if he was truly running such a successful company, Breck told her that it was because he made his own schedule. He said that Lewis wasn’t ever able to show his face because of the line of work he was in. Inevitably, there was always an answer to any question she asked.
Lorin herself chatted with Lewis online to try to gain insight as to who he was as a person & when she asked him specific questions about his life in New York, she couldn’t help but notice that his answers were always vague.
Each evening, Lorin made dinner for the family, knowing it would be a time that everyone would come together, catch up & chat about what was going on in their lives. After Breck befriended Lewis, Lorin started to notice that Lewis used this time against her & questioned Breck why he would be forced to go eat if he wasn’t hungry. He even encouraged Breck to just ignore her calls. She started to have the feeling that she was in a constant battle with a person that she didn’t even know.
In the summer of 2013, Lorin began to notice changes in her son’s personality; he began questioning or challenging her on things he previously did without hesitation. Being a teenager, she wasn’t sure if it was normal behavior or something different. His dreams of becoming a pilot were also wavering & he debated dropping out of the Air Training Corps where he was a member of the 135th Squadron.
Lewis was questioning Breck on why he would want to wear a uniform or follow their rules. He told Breck there was no need for him to finish school since he could get him a Microsoft apprenticeship when he turned 16. Breck’s moods were suddenly low & he began to distance himself from his family, spending more time alone in his room.
During this time, Lorin often popped into her son’s room to check in on what he was doing. What used to be funny messages & memes that came up on the screen were now images of the wicked witch or Hitler as if Lorin was a bad guy who was controlling her son rather than a concerned parent.
On December 17, 2013, Lorin decided to contact the Surry Police Department to discuss her concerns that she believed her son was being groomed by someone online who indicated he was 18-years-old. On multiple occasions, she’d overheard Lewis preaching his anti-government beliefs to her son & she feared that he was grooming him for either sexual purposes or to potentially carry out terrorist attacks.
During the twelve minute phone call, Lorin also voiced that her son was turning against his family & she worried that the person online wasn’t who he said he was. She gave the police his name as well as his username & they assured her that the police would carry out their checks & open an investigation, if warranted.
When Lorin hung up the phone, she wanted Breck to know how serious she was about the situation so she took away all of his devices. However, as she walked out of his room, she didn’t realize that she’d missed a small MP3 player. This was how Breck was able to record a serious conversation that Lorin & Barry had with him about their concerns. She later learned that Lewis had instructed him to do this so he could hear what was being said first-hand.
During their discussion, Lorin & Barry told Breck that they wanted to meet Lewis in person & suggested they do so over coffee. However, Breck told them that this was something Lewis wasn’t comfortable with since he felt that parents were too judgemental. They offered to have Lewis’s dad & Barry meet up, but again, this was declined. Since he wasn’t willing to let them meet in person, they forbade their son from having a relationship with Lewis moving forward.
What Lorin & Barry hadn’t realized was that after they made this decision, Lewis sent their son a secret phone that cost him £600 so they could continue to communicate. They’re not sure when it arrived or where it was delivered. He also sent free software, games & online upgrades to the boys.
Since the police department didn’t recognize the signs of grooming, the case was closed within an hour of Lorin’s phone call without any checks taking place. According to Lorin, prior to Breck meeting Lewis, he had always been an open & honest person, but he was now acting in a secretive way because he was being brainwashed.
During Christmas 2013, the Bednar family had a wonderful time together since Breck no longer had his technology to distract him after it had been taken away for a week at that point. He was present & interacting with his mom & siblings & things started to feel normal again. When he got his technology back & began gaming with his usual group of friends, all was well; he was doing his expected chores, interacting with the family & coming to dinner without arguing. Lorin felt such a sense of relief believing that Lewis was no longer in her son’s life.
In February 2014, Breck traveled to Spain for an exchange trip & as Lorin took photos of her son that day, she felt such a sense of pride at the person he was growing into. She never in her wildest dreams imagined that as he walked away, it would be the last time she would ever see her beloved Breck.
When Breck came home from his trip, Lorin was away so Barry picked him up from the airport & his family could see how confident he seemed. His spirits were high & he told them that he had met a girl in Spain.
On Sunday, February 16, 2014, a few days after Breck came home, he was on a half-term break from school so he asked his dad if he could go visit a friend from school. He said his friend’s name was Tom & they were going to build a new server. What Barry didn’t know at the time was that Breck was planning to meet Lewis for the first time in person. Later, he texted to ask if he could spend the night at his friend’s house & Barry agreed.
The next day, Monday, February 17, a 999 emergency call came through at 11:06 am. The caller told the dispatcher that he needed the police & a forensics team because he & his friend had gotten into an altercation & he was the only one who came out alive. He admitted that he killed his friend & told the dispatcher that his name was Lewis Daynes.
Lorin recalls waking up with a sense of impending doom that Monday morning, a day that just so happened to be her birthday. She later received a phone call from Barry, who explained that Breck had spent the night at a friend’s house & he wasn’t able to get a hold of him. She immediately felt a sense of panic & when Barry called her back a second time, he had the unimaginable task of telling her that their son was dead at the hands of Lewis Daynes.
In that moment, Lorin felt that a large part of herself died & she remembers that she couldn’t stop screaming to the point that she had to be sedated. She’d always known that Lewis was a bad guy, but she never imagined that he was a killer.
Lewis went on to tell the dispatcher that Breck had come over to spend the night the day before & he’d been feeling very down & suicidal. When Lewis woke up Monday morning, he described his friend as a mess & said that although he tried to calm him down, he was unable to do so. He calmly explained that Breck didn’t want to go home & he grabbed a folded pen knife, opened it & lost control. They started to struggle over the knife & in self defense, Lewis tried to stop Breck from stabbing him & when he got the knife, he eventually slashed his friend’s throat. He dropped the knife in the hallway & went to take a shower. It wasn’t until he got out of the shower that he called 999. Investigators believe that he waited this time so that he could come up with a story to cover for what he’d done.
As officers arrived, they placed Lewis under arrest. Breck’s sister, Chloe, recalls coming home to find two officers at their house; they asked her if her brother was home. It wasn’t long before Barry arrived & the kids began to hear their dad screaming in grief. As investigators were breaking the awful news to Barry, the 12-year-old triplets learned of their brother’s murder from people online.
Investigators learned that after Lewis murdered Breck, he took photos of the boy’s body & sent them to other members of the gaming group who went on to spread the message around. According to Lorin, her 12-year-old triplets first learned that their brother was dead when they received a text message from other children at school who had siblings who had gotten word of these horrific images.
When Clifton Pell, a digital forensics analyst, arrived at Lewis’s flat in Essex, he saw that it was tidy & he could see his laptop in the family room on the couch. When he went into Lewis’s bedroom to take his computer, Breck’s body was still lying on the floor, covered in blood as was the bed & the laptop. There were three cell phones & a couple of hard drives in the bathroom sink that were submerged in water.
Evidence found at Lewis’ flat was not at all consistent with what he told the dispatcher. Investigators found duct tape in a garbage can in the bedroom as well as in a garbage can outside. Evidence suggested that there had been some kind of sexual activity between Breck & Lewis at some point. DNA on the tape matched the hairs on Breck’s legs & they found a tube of lubricant with blood on it as well as bloodied clothing. The evidence painted a picture of Breck being restrained & assaulted rather than uncontrollable with emotion as Lewis claimed.
The last activity on Breck’s laptop was at 9:15 on Monday morning, less than two hours before Lewis called 999. Evidence suggested that Breck had been lured to Lewis’s flat & the crime had been premeditated. He was promised a good time with gaming & pizza, a food that Breck loved. When they found a bag of Breck’s belongings, investigators saw that all of his devices had been destroyed except for one that was still intact & inside his bag. This allowed investigators to get evidence they wouldn’t have been otherwise able to.
Investigators saw that one of the hard drives that was submerged in water in the bathroom sink had been opened up & slashed, which stopped it from working. They were able to gain access into Breck’s tablet where they saw much of the communication between Breck & Lewis. Review of Breck’s devices proved that during his relationship with Lewis, there was never any discussion about sex so Breck was under the impression that their relationship was based on their shared love of technology & computers.
In January 2014, six weeks before Breck was murdered, communication on Breck’s devices discussed his upcoming trip to Spain. Based on their conversations, this was clearly something that seemed to concern Lewis since Breck would be with another group of friends. He often messaged Breck, asking what he was doing, why he wasn’t contacting him; it was clear he was fearful of losing control.
Lewis started messaging Breck about an opportunity that could pay him £85 million; he alluded that he was sick or dying & Breck would take over his company. He told him, You are in a man’s world now, so you need to step up.
Since Breck would be taking over his business, Lewis told him that they had to speak in person about the arrangements. He explained that he would send a taxi over to his house to bring him to his flat & the sensitive details about their arrangement would be explained once they were in person together. Breck was a 14-year-old that saw an exciting opportunity & wouldn’t have recognized what was happening was actually coercive control.
Lewis instructed Breck to tell his dad that he was going to be meeting a friend who was also 14-years-old & they would be going over to the boy’s dad’s house. Barry was under the impression that his son was at a house only a couple of streets away from their own rather than 30 miles away in Essex.
Exactly what happened inside Lewis’s flat is unknown, but Lorin knows that at some point, her son realized that he was in grave danger & her heart breaks to imagine how scared he must have been to be tied up, gagged & stabbed by someone he trusted & considered a close friend.
Breck was laid to rest on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2014, a day that would have been his 15th birthday. The family was then left to learn how to live in a world without their beloved Breck. Lorin recalls the year after her son’s death as a time when she felt like a zombie & only managed to crawl out of bed for the triplet’s school events or things that had to do with Breck. She recognizes that her 12-year-olds not only lost their brother, but they also lost a normally functioning mother.
On November 25, 2014, Lewis appeared in court & Lorin was stunned at how young he appeared despite being 19-years-old. She couldn’t understand why her son had ended up dead when they would have welcomed him into their home & their son’s life had he just presented himself as a friend.
Lewis maintained the story of self-defense until he shocked everyone & suddenly changed his plea to guilty. This saved Breck’s family from going through the ordeal of a trial. On January 12, 2015, Lewis Daynes was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 25 years.
Breck’s family felt that 25 years was not enough for what he had done to their brother & son. They were shocked that someone so young could have been capable of such control & evil. Lorin learned that Lewis had a record & had previously groomed a boy from the United States as well as boys in the UK. He’d also sexually assaulted a boy his own age when he was 15 & claimed it had been a consensual relationship. He was also known to have indecent images of young boys on his computer.
After Lewis was abandoned by his mom when he was 11, he went into the foster care system. He lived with his grandma part-time & when he turned 18, he got his own flat where his neighbors described him as reclusive.
Through her pain & grief, Lorin wanted to do something to honor her precious son’s life & went on to create The Breck Foundation in 2014. The organization raises awareness of the risks of online grooming, exploitation & digital abuse of children. It was her goal that what happened to her son doesn’t happen to anyone else.
She educates young people to recognize the risks so they can potentially see what might be happening to themselves, a friend or sibling since oftentimes, parents are unaware of the extent of their child’s online habits & activities. When a person is being groomed, they are most likely unable to recognize what is happening.
When Breck was murdered, Lorin had been working in a school, a place where no one was talking about the issue of online grooming. Since there was a lack of training, she felt that it wasn’t being taken seriously. Students were instructed to avoid talking to strangers online, to not give out personal information or show images with their school uniform visible, but they weren’t given real information to understand what a safe relationship looks like. They weren’t told what grooming, control & manipulation looked like. These were signs that Breck had been unable to see since he simply saw Lewis as a friend.
After her son’s death, when Lorin spoke with Breck’s teachers, they admitted that they’d noticed changes in her son’s personality & the fact that he’d pulled away from school & stopped participating in classroom discussions. When she spoke with the parents of her son’s gaming group, they weren’t sure who their children spoke with online & they didn’t seem concerned.
On top of educating children & teachers to recognize the signs of grooming, Lorin also educates the police as well as anyone else who works with children, speaking at many conferences & events. Breck’s case ended in the most unimaginable tragedy of murder, but many children will also be exposed to things online that can lead to mental health issues; sharing of sexual images, abuse, blackmail & lack of self-esteem after they’d been manipulated & controlled.
Although Lorin’s triplets aren’t into online gaming as their big brother was, one of her daughters has experienced issues through social media when she was contacted by wannabe predators who are copycats of Breck’s killer. They’ve had to go through a court case to address their issues.
Even though what happened to their family has been anyone’s worst nightmare, Lorin would never wish for social media or online gaming to disappear since it was one of Breck’s favorite things. She understands that technology is a natural part of a teen’s life, but she wants children who are exposed to the internet to be educated & to find a balance.
The Breck Foundation focuses on empowerment & encourages proactive behavior. They encourage that if a child sees something, they say something to a trusted adult.
In 2016, the docudrama, Murder Games: The Life & Death of Breck Bednar was released about Breck’s story. Breck’s friends & family tell their story about the manipulation that engulfed Breck when he met Lewis Daynes online.
Since her son was such an exceptional human, Lorin is left to wonder what Breck might have achieved in life. Breck’s story is a reminder that even when your children are within the safety of their home, they could be at risk by a person hiding behind a screen, disguising themselves as a friend. Breck was a highly intelligent young boy who simply loved gaming as so many other teens his age do. His story highlights how predators can be lurking in the most ordinary corners of everyday life, able to manipulate even the most careful families.
If you’re concerned that a child or young person is being groomed online, you can contact the Known2Protect tipline at 833-591-KNOW (5669) or submit a CyberTipline Report at report.cybertip.org.
References:
- YouTube: FilmRise True Crime: Online Stranger Danger: Breck’s story – Murdered a first sight
- The Crime Talk: The murder of Breck Bednar
- Irish Independent: Killer posted photos of teen victim online & send them to pals
- BBC: Murder Games: The Life & Death of Breck Bednar
- Find a Grave: Breck David Lafave Bednar
- Breck Foundation
- Hello! My son was murdered by an online groomer – our family will never be the same
