Biggs even cut and pasted a long suicide note to the board. Forum moderators and other board members didn’t take him seriously and some even encouraged him to commit suicide. Biggs overdosed on drugs and was seen lying motionless for several hours before police and paramedics finally arrived.
At approximately 5 AM Wednesday, November 19th, 2008, Biggs, known as “candyman” on the bodybuilding.com forums, posted his intention to commit suicide in the miscellaneous section of the forum. Titled, “I’m gonna have 40 2mg bars of Xanax Tonight!” He also cut and pasted a long suicide note that started with, “I am going to leave this for whoever stumbles across my bookmarks later on. I hate myself and I hate living.”
You can read the initial thread here.
Moderators and other forum members brushed off Biggs by replying, “Cool” and “Have fun” and some even dared him to kill himself. A few hours later, Biggs started a justin.tv live stream channel and downed several pills in front of his webcam.
For the next several hours, people watched the man slowly die. Biggs eventually stopped breathing and lay motionless on his bed. At times, viewership swelled to approximately 1500 people and many people continued taunting Biggs. Some even believed the whole situation was a prank.
One of the viewers eventually called the Broward County Sheriff’s Department. Late in the afternoon, a horrified audience saw a red laser sight on the body and then a deputy sheriff appearing on camera with his gun drawn. Shortly afterward a paramedic arrived and covered up the webcam.
Michael Seibel, CEO of justin.tv, has released a statement saying that he regrets that the suicide had to occur. He adds, “we have policies in place to discourage the distribution of distressing content and our community monitors the site accordingly. This content was flagged by our community, reviewed, and removed according to our Terms of Service.”
