 It was 2007 when Carly Ryan fell head over heels for her boyfriend, Brandon Cain. Investigators say that the two had everything in common, but Brandon had a few dark secrets that Carly was blissfully unaware of. Detectives would learn that Carly and Brandon had been dating for several months leading up to the crime, and everything was going well for the two. But one day in February of 2007, things would take a dark turn when Carly failed to return home from a night out with her friends. She'd been acting somewhat strange in the moments before leaving that day, repeatedly asking her mother for hugs. It seems almost like she knew something was wrong, but she was powerless to stop it. Carly's mother certainly felt that something was a bit off that evening, but she could have never imagined just how terrifying things were about to become. Carly Ryan was born in January of 1992 in Stirling, South Australia. She was raised by her mother, Sonya, for most of her childhood, but there's never been any mention about what happened to her father, so I suppose it can be assumed that he was simply out of the picture. The thing about Carly is that she was growing up in the midst of a social media hurricane. By the time she was a teenager, it seemed like there was a new social media platform coming out every other day of the week, and this was long before Facebook was the goliath that it is today. Most of this case takes place back in 2006 and 2007, so we're talking about the days of Myspace, Zanga, Tumblr, and the countless other online messengers that were around. It was an incredibly interesting time to be on the internet, but it was also a remarkably dangerous time because many of the safeguards that are in place today simply didn't exist back then. Considering Carly was just a teenager at this time, her mother, Sonya, was pretty critical about what Carly got up to online. Carly and Sonya were remarkably close, meaning Sonya knew pretty much every detail of Carly's life. She'd often walk by the computer and take a peek at what Carly was doing, but knowing that her teenage daughter was a smart girl, she trusted that Carly was being safe and cautious. Sonya says that she feels like she knew everything that was going on in Carly's life. She knew all of her friends, kept tabs on what was going on at school, and was an ever-present force in all that Carly did. Not in a helicopter-parent kind of way, but in a pretty healthy mother-daughter relationship kind of way. You've got to remember it was just the two of them, so they were understandably super close. But the main issue here is that at this point in history, the internet was wild to put it lightly. Carly was known to spend a lot of time on a website called RateMyBody.com. For those of you that aren't familiar with this site, it's pretty much exactly what you would think. People post photos of themselves and anonymous users rate that person's body. The big problem with this website is that, as we've already established, there were virtually no safeguards in place. The website prided itself on anonymity, and that means that there was no way of knowing if the images you were looking at even belonged to the person who uploaded them. Worse yet, considering this website was often visited by teenagers, well, I think you'd get the picture I'm painting here. This was not a safe website, and it was a major hotspot for older men who had some rather nefarious intentions. Thankfully, this website has since been shut down. But Carly was often described as a scene girl. This is a bit of a vague term that's most often used when referring to teens or young adults who are super interested in the gothic punk lifestyle. These would have been the kids listening to bands like Blackville Brides, making Alexandria escape the fate, all while reading Twilight or something similar, wearing all black from head to toe, black hoodies, black headphones, so on and so forth. And don't think I'm saying this in a judgey or joke kind of way, I was one of those kids too. Heck, I'd still listen to all of those bands, dying is your latest fashion, one of the greatest punk albums of all time. For Carly, this was a group of people and a lifestyle that gave her a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging. She was known for being pretty active on websites like VampireFreaks.com, which is another goth or emo website in store. But most of all, she would spend hours upon hours on MySpace. Her profile was pretty much everything you would imagine it to be. It was full of gothic selfies, heaps of makeup, links to all of her favorite online forums, quotes from her favorite books, typical MySpace stuff. By sharing her interest in this genre of entertainment, Carly was able to make dozens of online friends. But there was one friend in particular who really caught Carly's interest, an 18-year-old named Brandon Kane. Brandon was a young musician who was born in Texas but had recently moved to Brisbane, Australia, the total opposite side of the country from Carly. The two immediately became friends as soon as they met. They liked all the same bands, had all the same interests. It was almost like they were meant to be. Before too long, their relationship grew into something more. Carly began to share stories of her new online friend with her real-life friends. It wasn't too long after this that Carly stopped referring to him as simply a friend. He was now considered her boyfriend. All of Carly's closest friends knew about Brandon and Sonia knew about him too. It seems that in the early days of their relationship, Sonia was happy that her daughter had met someone that she could be so open with. Even though Brandon was a few years older, Sonia didn't find this too concerning. She mentioned that she would look over Carly's shoulder from time to time to see what the two were chatting about, but she never noticed anything suspicious or anything that concerned her in any way. Before long, the two started video chatting with one another. And by all means, Brandon appeared to be the guy that he claimed to be. Carly couldn't have been happier. Even though her boyfriend lived over 20 hours away, she was just ecstatic to have someone that she could be close with. But it didn't take long before things started to get, well, a bit unusual. Brandon was quickly becoming the main focus of Carly's life. Whatever the two were up to, the other person was immediately informed about it. They shared everything with one another. What I found particularly fascinating is that, as we all know, most teenage relationships don't last too terribly long, especially online relationships. But Carly and Brandon managed to keep their relationship going for more than 18 months, even though they'd never even met in person. After they'd been chatting for about a year or so, Brandon wanted to introduce Carly to his father, Shane, and he did this over a video call. As time rolled on, Carly started talking more and more about Shane. In fact, it didn't take long before Carly was talking about Shane just as much as she was talking about Brandon. This is when Sonia started to get a little bit concerned. She asked Carly why she suddenly had such an interest in Shane, and she explained that Brandon and Shane were incredibly close, much like Sonia and Carly were. Sonia reminded Carly to be careful, and Carly made it very clear that if anything started to get weird or uncomfortable, she would tell her mother right away, and for Sonia, this was enough to calm her fears, so she dropped it and let it be. Sonia would later learn that Shane had a job as a security guard, and this job caused him to travel for work events every so often. In February of 2007, he was traveling across Australia for one of these events, and on his way back home to Brisbane, he offered to stop by Carly and Sonia's home to drop off a few birthday gifts that he and Brandon had purchased for Carly the previous month. At first, Sonia thought this was a little bit strange, but when Shane showed up at the family's home, he was wearing his security guard outfit, so the story seemed to check out. Shane seemed to be exactly the man that he claimed to be. He was clean-cut, professional, and nothing seemed unusual about him. In fact, Carly and Sonia felt so safe around him that they offered to let him spend the night at their home, inviting him to Carly's birthday party the following day. But while Shane was in town, he offered to take Carly shopping. Now, this, in my book, is definitely a bit strange. What would a 50-year-old man be doing taking a teenage girl shopping? Even if he was the father of her boyfriend, this seems a bit strange, considering the two had only just met, and there's been no indication that Carly's mother was even present during their trip. But the following day, at Carly's birthday party, that's when things started to get really bizarre. When Shane showed up at Carly's birthday party, it was immediately clear that something strange was happening. When Carly's friends and family members started showing up, Shane started to get visibly uncomfortable. There wasn't any particular moment where you could point to and say, see that? That's weird. But Sonya started to notice that Shane, for lack of a better word, seemed possessive over Carly. It seemed almost as if Shane and Carly were glued at the hip. He didn't let her wander off too terribly far, and he hung around Carly throughout the entire party, rarely ever speaking to anyone other than her for more than a few simple sentences. But the following morning, that's when things really started to get weird. As soon as Sonya passed by Carly's bedroom, she noticed Shane and Carly were lying on Carly's bed. In one report, it was claimed that Shane was actually lying on top of Carly, and Carly was visibly uncomfortable. Sonya immediately sprang into action and told Shane that he needed to leave immediately. It doesn't seem like he put up too much of a fight either. He knew he'd been caught. He grabbed his things and left. As soon as he was gone, Carly revealed that he'd made a few passes at her and that she had repeatedly rejected his advances, insisting that she was in love with his son, not him. Carly then told her mother about the birthday presents that Shane had shown up with. Now, because of YouTube's terms of service, I can't really explain the full extent of these gifts, but let me just say, one of them was an outfit that no 50-year-old man had any business gifting to the girlfriend of his son. This was the moment that Sonya truly understood what was happening here. She made all the right moves in the coming days, taking away Carly's access to social media, banning her from using her cell phone, keeping a much closer eye on her online activity, and calling Shane and telling him that he was never allowed to speak to her daughter again or she'd report him to the police. Mind you, this all may sound a bit harsh, but this wasn't done as a way to punish Carly in any way. This was all done in a bid to keep Carly safe, and based on Sonya's statements since then, it seems like she likely did a good job explaining this to Carly. It's awful that Carly lost so many of her freedoms because of this guy, but when it comes to the safety of your child, all bets are off, you do what you have to do. But the problem is that, well, we've all been teenagers at some point. We all know that regardless of what your parents tell you to do, if you want to do something, you'll find a way to do it, and Carly wasn't willing to let Brandon go. She admitted that what happened with Shane was pretty insane, but Brandon wasn't to blame for this. No sooner than her mother forbade her from speaking with Brandon, Carly was right back up to her old antics, speaking to Brandon every chance she could get. Only this time, she was keeping it a secret and her mother had no idea. A few weeks passed by, and it was February 19th, 2007, when Carly told her mother that she was going to be spending a night out with a group of her friends. She got dressed up in her best outfit then headed for the front door. But strangely, Sonya says that it was at this moment that Carly's behavior began to change. She turned to her mother and asked her for a hug, then another, then another, and another. It was almost as if she was afraid to leave. Her demeanor had changed without any rhyme or reason. Sonya didn't really know what this was all about, but what kind of mother would turn away hugs from her daughter? Carly's last words to her mother before she left were simply, love you mom. The door closed and Carly was never seen again. Carly never returned home from her outing with her friends that evening. When she still hadn't shown up by the following morning, Sonya knew something had gone terribly wrong and that's when she called the police to report her daughter missing, every parent's worst nightmare. But for Sonya, her nightmare was about to get far, far worse. Sonya would be subjected to something that no parent should ever have to face. As she was pacing around her home, pleading for some sort of news about her daughter, she heard a knock at the door, followed by two police officers with sullen expressions. As we all know, this never means anything good. Carly had been found, but not the way her mother had hoped. Investigators revealed that early that morning, detectives had come across a victim who'd been floating in Horseshoe Bay. That victim was identified as Carly Ryan. When she was taken in for further forensic analysis, it was determined that Carly had endured at least 19 injuries before she lost her life, each of which was more haunting, heartbreaking and heinous than the last. Security cameras and witness reports would soon reveal that Carly was last seen on the beach in the Horseshoe Bay area at around 9.30 the previous evening. She was in the company of what appeared to be two men, but it would later come to light that this had been one man and a teenage boy. They had arrived in the area in a blue vehicle, and it was this vehicle description that was used to track them down later on. As it would turn out, the two males who were seen in the CCTV security footage were none other than Shane and Brandon. Except that's not entirely true. See, that's because Shane and Brandon, they didn't exist. 11 days after Carly was discovered in Horseshoe Bay, police closed in on Gary Francis Newman, as well as his teenage son. His teenage son has never been named due to laws in Australia that prevent the names of young offenders from being revealed. It would quickly become clear though that Gary was in fact both Shane and Brandon. He'd created an alter ego online to lure teenage girls and cause them to fall in love with him, faking interest in everything they loved and stalking them both online and in the real world. What makes this situation so much worse is that Gary had either convinced or forced his teenage son to play a part in the scheme as well. Considering there's virtually zero information available about Gary's son, we don't know if he was a willing accomplice or just as much a victim as Carly was. Basically, Gary was the one who was chatting with Carly for more than a year online, but anytime he needed to schedule a video call with Carly, he would ask his son to step in to make things more realistic. All the photos that have been shared between the two were also of his own son. When Shane or Gary was forced to leave Carly's home after being caught lying in her bed, he was understandably upset. After all, he'd been concocting this plan for more than a year and a half and in the blink of an eye, it was all over. But he couldn't let this be the end. He needed to see Carly one final time and this time he would bring his teenage son along to help finish the job. Carly was lured out of her home that evening under the promise of finally being able to meet her online boyfriend in person for the first time. She lied to her mother and explained that she would be going out with friends, but in reality, she was due to hang out with her boyfriend, or so she thought. The thing is, Carly knew that something was fishy about this situation. She had seen all the red flags, her mother had warned her about both Shane and Brandon, but she chose to risk it all anyway. We know that Carly knew about the potential dangers because of how apprehensive she was to leave her home that evening. Her mother knew something was a bit off too, but considering Carly lied about her intentions that evening, there was little her mother could do. As she was blissfully unaware of the level of danger her daughter was about to place herself in. Now, don't think for one second that I'm blaming this on Carly. She was never anything more than a victim of this awful, heartless monster. I merely bring up the fact that she ignored all the obvious signs of danger as a warning to parents or teenagers that when your gut tells you something's unsafe, it's probably because it's unsafe. If you smell smoke, there's probably a fire. We've been given the gift of gut feelings for a reason and you should pretty much always trust them. But if you could imagine, this story is about to get a whole lot worse. If you remember, it was nearly two weeks after Carly was found in Horseshoe Bay that Gary's home was finally raided by the police. When detectives showed up at his home, Gary was actually in the middle of chatting up another teenage girl online. When his home was searched and investigators combed through every square inch of his place, they found a notebook that had documented at least 200 different aliases that Gary had been using online. From what I can tell, he used this notebook to help keep his story straight so that his victims wouldn't see right through his charade. Brandon and Shane had been just two of the names, less than 1% of his total list of characters. In his notebook, investigators found names, ages, occupations, interests, everything that related to each and every one of these characters that he'd created. If you consider that Gary used two aliases when speaking with Carly, that means that he could have had another 100 victims, assuming he pulled the whole father's son card for each of them. In reality, this number of victims could be substantially higher. There's just no way to know for sure. This notebook was also a goldmine for investigators because it even documented user names and passwords for each of his fake online profiles, giving them every last piece of evidence that they needed to get this man behind bars. But we have to remember that putting someone behind bars does little to help calm the pain of the family who are now left with one less person at the dinner table each night. Whereas yet, in Sonia's case, she's now left with no one at her dinner table each night. Sonia's world ended the day that she lost her daughter. Her purpose, her goals, her ambitions, they're gone and she can never get them back. Thankfully, Gary was sentenced to life in prison. Unfortunately though, he still will be eligible for parole after 29 years, but considering he was 50 when this crime took place, the man will likely be 80 before he ever has the slightest chance of seeing natural sunlight again, though we can all hope that this day never comes for Gary. In the wake of Gary sentencing, Gary's ex-wife came out and explained why the two had gotten divorced many years before this. She explained that Gary had been shockingly aggressive towards her, assaulting her multiple times, forcing her against her will on many occasions. When he then started turning his attention towards their own teenage daughter, that's when she knew that she needed to get herself and their three children out of there. Unfortunately, this wasn't even a wake-up call for Gary. He would later adopt a son of his own, the one that he used in his online schemes and he simply repeated the cycle. After all was said and done, Gary's son was cleared of all charges which pretty much secures the idea that his son was likely just as much a victim as Carly was. In the aftermath of such a tragedy, Sonia felt that she needed to do something, anything to help parents whose children may end up in similar situations. This led her to form the Carly Ryan Foundation, a foundation that offers certified online safety programs and conducts regular seminars to help educate children and parents about the dangers of online predators. If this wasn't enough, Sonia was also able to establish Carly's law, an Australian law that allows prosecutors to both charge and convict online predators before they ever lay a hand on a child. They can do this by establishing intent based on chat logs as well as convict an adult who misrepresents their age to a minor. This law has already saved so many lives and Sonia was the driving force behind this law every step of the way. If not for her, there's no telling how many other children may have ended up just like Carly. If you're a parent or even if you're a teenager, I would strongly urge you to visit CarlyRyanFoundation.com to better understand everything that the foundation has to offer. The resources page has heaps of valuable information that's been updated for modern times to help keep kids safe on more modern platforms such as Roblox, Fortnite, and the various other social media or gaming platforms that are predominantly aimed towards children. There's nothing that any of us can do to bring Carly back. But if Sonia has it her way, every child across the globe will become better educated about internet safety so that stories like this will one day be a thing of the past. No one should ever have to go through what Carly and Sonia dealt with. And it's our job, you and me. It's our job to keep these kids safe. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of True Crime Stories. If you enjoyed this video, check out this other interesting case I covered and don't forget to subscribe. It's totally free and keeps you up to date with all of my future videos. You can also click that join button below to support the channel and see new videos long before everyone else does. But my name is Ty Knots and I'll catch you guys in the next video.