March 8, 2021
AUSTRALIA—Adam Margolis, 41, has been found guilty of murdering his girlfriend seven days after she moved into his house and one month after they first began talking online, according to News.com.au.
A jury of his peers rejected Margolis’s argument that he should not be held responsible for fatally strangling Mai-Yia Vang on the night of February 24, 2018.
As the verdict was announced, the 41-year-old put his head into his hands, keeping it there for several minutes as judge Christopher Beale thanked the jury for their attentiveness and adjourned the court, reported News.com.au.
Vang and Margolis first matched on the chat website Omegle in late January while Vang was staying with her parents in Queensland and he was living alone in Bendigo.
She uprooted her life to be with him, moving into his home: “I want to achieve my goals with you, I want everything and more with you,” she wrote to him in Skype messages tendered to the court, reported News.com.au.
Margolis left her body lying on his floor for two days while he sent messages from her Facebook account to her sisters.
While pretending to be her, he claimed to her two sisters Pa Vang and Mai-Seng Vang that she was sick and sent them ‘thumbs up’ emojis.
He then attempted to kill himself.
The programmer sent an emailed suicide note and murder confession to three acquaintances, asking them to look after his cats when he was gone — with one of the recipients immediately calling the police.
The email said Margolis had gone into a PTSD-related flashback to his abusive childhood and returned to consciousness with Ms. Vang in a chokehold, according to News.com.au.
Ms. Vang was a former chemical engineering student that was recovering from a broken heart when she met Mr. Margolis, the jury had heard.
In her messages to Margolis, left behind after her murder, she talked about wanting to move to Melbourne and talked lovingly about her “kind and honest” parents who “only wanted to protect us”.
Feature Images via News.com.au & Bendigo Advertiser News