Internet Info Brokers Under Fire

In the days after his stepdaughter's murder, Tim Remsburg funneled his fury into phone calls to anyone he thought might help explain her death.

"At two o'clock in the morning, I was trying to get President Clinton's number. I couldn't sleep. I just wanted to rattle everyone's cages and get some answers," he said.

His stepdaughter, Amy Boyer, was 20 when she was shot to death Oct. 15, 1999, by a former high school classmate, Liam Youens, who had paid an Internet information broker to track her down.

For the three years since the murder, her parents have fought to protect other potential victims, most recently by suing the broker for negligence and invasion of privacy.

The battle has worn them out, but the couple isn't giving up.

"If this had happened to one of her friends, I know she would've come to us wanting us to do something," Helen Remsburg said.

Boyer and Youens graduated from Nashua High School in 1997. Though her family says she never knew him, Youens had an obsession for Boyer that went back to junior high.

The infatuation was chronicled on a Web site where Youens described his murder plot in gruesome detail.

"I don't love her anymore, I wish I did but I don't," he wrote. "I wish I could have killed her in Highschool (sic). I need to kill her so I can transport myself back into highschool. I need to stop her from having a life."

Youens paid Docusearch Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla., about $150 to get Boyer's Social Security number and other information, including her work address.

"Docusearch pulled through (amazingly) it's like a dream," Youens wrote on his Web site.

A few weeks later, Youens pulled alongside Boyer's car after she left her job at a dental office and shot her 11 times before killing himself.

The pain that engulfed Boyer's family was no different from that of other parents who lose a child, Tim Remsburg said. But the questions that kept them awake were unique.

Why didn't anyone who saw Youens' Web site tell the police or Boyer? Why didn't his family see the arsenal of guns he kept in his room?

Soon after the murder, Boyer's 11-year-old sister wrote a letter to the Youens family.

I'm not blaming you, she wrote, but, "How come you never asked him, 'How was your day?' Why didn't you play games with him?"

Since Boyer's death, the Remsburgs have appeared on news programs around the country. They've urged parents to plug their children's names into Internet search engines to flush out potential stalkers. They've testified before Congress to support new laws on Internet privacy.

"Not a minute goes by that your thoughts don't revert back to it. You can get engrossed in a project, but as soon as you're done you think of Amy and how mad it makes you," Tim Remsburg said during a recent interview.

The Remsburgs filed a federal lawsuit against Docusearch in April 2000. The case is on hold while the state Supreme Court clears up several legal questions, including whether private investigators or information brokers have any legal obligations to the people whose information they sell.

The Remsburgs argue Docusearch should have notified Boyer that Youens was requesting the information, and made sure he had a legitimate reason.

But a Docusearch lawyer said the company has such a duty only if it knows the sale would significantly increase the risk of a violent attack. In this case, Youens already knew Boyer's home address and didn't need her work address to kill her, Andrew Schulman said at a hearing last month.

The court also is deciding whether someone whose Social Security number was obtained without permission can argue invasion of privacy, and whether the same argument can be made about a work address.

Schulman did not immediately return calls seeking comment, but at the hearing, he argued that none of the information Docusearch provided was private. Docusearch had hired a woman who called Boyer and her family to get her work address without revealing why she was calling, a technique known as "pretexting."

Depending on the state Supreme Court's answers, the federal judge could dismiss the lawsuit. Even if that happens, Helen Remsburg said she is thankful that the danger is at least being discussed.

Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington said the outcome of the case could have national implications.

"One of the important aspects of this case is that the private investigators were licensed in Florida but they were providing services to people across the country," he said.

By Holly Ramer