In this day and age of catfishing and digital identity theft, in which we are aware that people online may not be who they claim to be, we think that at least we can trust in the identity of the other when it’s a friend with whom we are texting privately.
What if we couldn’t even be sure about that? What if we couldn’t even be sure that the other person is alive? For most of us, that may be an improbable scenario, but improbable never means impossible.
Precisely that is what happened to the friends and family of Jaime Feden, a thirty-three-year-old woman with several physical disabilities, who on September 2019 was murdered by a man she was in a relationship with, forty-year-old John Matthew Chapman, who then proceeded to move into her house and impersonate her through her social networks.
Hop along and stay with us as we review the ten most-striking facts about this bizarre murder.
10 /10 Tragic Background
Not much is known about Jaime, the victim, except that she had a problematic past before meeting and being with Chapman: in addition to having been born with physical disabilities, her mother, brother, and uncle had all died when she was young and needed them most.
Though the cause of their death is unknown, we do know that Jaime considered this a deeply impactful moment in her life, as she tattooed their names (“Keith, Robin, Jason”) on her right lower leg alongside a four-leaf clover.
She couldn’t have known that this tattoo would be the key to identify her body after her murder.
9 /10 VATER Association
The disabilities that Jaime had been known in the medical community by a feared name: VATER association (“association” instead of “syndrome,” as they present themselves without any known underlying cause).
This caused vertebral, cardiovascular, renal, cardiac, limbic malformations and left Jaime confined to a wheelchair.
Chapman probably took advantage of this fact by understanding that she was at a physical disadvantage and couldn’t resist his actions.