Virtual Relationship Leads to Criminal Charges

Aug. 26, 2008— -- What began as a virtual relationship -- she as a female avatar and he as a lion -- led to a real-life crime, according to police.

Kimberly Jernigan, 33, was arrested for allegedly attempting to abduct her virtual ex-boyfriend, whom she'd originally met in the online game Second Life, for the second time in several weeks.

New Castle County, Del., police say Jernigan hid inside her former boyfriend's home in Claymont, Del., with a Taser and planned to kidnap him so the pair could start a new life together.

"She started this virtual relationship and she wasn't ready to break it off," said Cpl. Trinidad Navarro, a spokesman for the New Castle police. "She had difficulty distinguishing between the virtual relationship and a real-life relationship."

Jernigan was being held on $65,000 bond, and police would not release the name of her alleged victim. It was unclear if Jernigan had a lawyer as of Monday afternoon.

Her husband, Michael Jernigan, in Durham, N.C., said both he and his wife had become involved in online relationships through Second Life. What began as online fun turned into an obsession for his wife, he said.

"We had an agreement to have a somewhat open relationship and actually being involved in [a] game online was a very safe way to do that," said Jernigan, who added that he recently separated from his wife. "Or so I thought when we both got started."

But, he said, Kimberly soon spent all her free time playing the game. "I always knew that she could be obsessive, and that type of thing, but I never thought it would go as far as this," he said.

Kimberly Jernigan is not the first person to allegedly blur their virtual and real lives, and her case presents one of the myriad problems that can arise when the two worlds collide.

Last year, a 48-year-old man in upstate New York was sentenced to 20 years in prison for killing a rival for the affections of a woman he'd never met. Thomas Montgomery reportedly posed online as an 18-year-old Marine and started an Internet relationship with a middle-aged woman from West Virginia, who was, herself, posing as an 18-year-old student.

Montgomery was convicted of killing Brian Barrett, a co-worker who had also become involved virtually with the woman. "One blurred into the other," Montgomery's attorney, John Nuchereno, said of his client's real and fantasy lives.