Brandon Clark Fighting For His Life After Murdering #RIPBianca Bianca Devins
Remember Bianca.
Instagram Parents worry when their kids are old enough to start using what we all refer to as "devices." Be it the home computer or a smartphone, kids are being introduced to the world and all its dark corners much faster and much earlier than ever before. You can take all the caution that you want, but can you ever really make sure that your kids are safe?
Bianca Devins was an 18-year-old girl from upstate New York, but on the internet she was someone else. She was Oxychan the e-girl, an emo teen with a following on Tumblr and 4chan. That is, that's who she was until a man she met on the internet decided to kill her. Here's what we know about Brandon Clark and about his relationship with the girl behind the #RIPbianca hashtag. Who is Brandon Clark?
1. The Crime
21-year-old Brandon Clark of upstate New York has been arrested by the police for allegedly murdering Bianca Devins, an 18-year-old established e-girl (a woman with a passion for anime, Tumblr, and usually emo culture, but there are exceptions). Brandon is said to have met Bianca on Instagram, that connection became an IRL connection two months later which led to him cutting her throat so badly her head was nearly removed from her body. Brandon's attrocities didn't stop there either. He is said to have posted images of Bianca's dead body on the inernet before turning the knife on himself when the police (who he called) showed up to the scene to investigate.
2. Meet Bianca
I want you to remember as we go over the facts of this story that Bianca was a real person. Not only that, she was a real girl, who had just turned 18-years-old. She had just graduated from her local high school three weeks before she was murdered. Bianca had plans. She was planning to study psychology when she started school in the fall at the local community college. She was often found on 4chan and had her own Discord server where she spent a lot of time connecting with her friends, most of whom she only knew from the web. On the internet, she was mostly anonymous, though often used the handle "Oxychan". She was a teenager. She should've had her whole life left to gradually unspool at her leisure as she sorted out the business of being an adult. An adult man took that away from her.
3. Brandon Clark
Bianca and Brandon didn't know each other for very long, nor did they know each other very well (no matter what either party managed to convince themselves). After "meeting" on Instagram, they struck up a friendship that was slowly turning into something more. Office Bryan Coromato of the Utica police shared that Brandon lived in Cicerco, New York, just an hour away from Bianca. While the duo weren't dating, they had an intense connection according to those who knew them, like Bianca's own sister who said: “it wasn’t just an ‘internet boyfriend’ this was a close family friend whom we’ve met and trusted so much. I do not want false information being spread around.”
4. What Happened
According to the police who released a statement on Monday night, the events of what happened the night of the crime seem fairly clear. Brandon and Bianca met up and went to see a concert in Manhattan on Saturday night. Together, they returned home very early on Sunday morning. At this point, the police believe that the pair argued and that it was this fight that led to the murder of Bianca. As early as Sunday morning, Brandon started to post very gruesome and very graphic images on his Instagram stories. In one of these images, he was covered in blood. The caption simply said: I'm sorry Bianca. Not long after he started posting these images he updated his bio to make it clear that he planned on killing himself too.
5. Photograhic Evidence
The second most disturbing detail of this crime (the first being that a teenager was killed by a man she met on the internet after her befriend her over a period of months) are all of the photographs and all of the posts Brandon made following his murder of Bianca and up until he was finally in custody. On Dischord, he shared an image of Bianca dead in the car with the knife presumably used to end her life beside her remains. He also shared all of her personal information including her entire name and address. Before long, the photographs were being saved and shared by men, some associated with the Men Rights Movement, who called for continued murders of other women and girls.
6. Remember Bianca
Brandon knew that what he was doing was totally wrong. According to the police, he called them at 7:20 in the morning on Sunday after killing Bianca. He was making suicidal threats on the phone and the police were able to locate him. When they arrived on the scene, Brandon began to stab himself. Then, he laid down on a tarp that was covering up Bianca's body and started taking photographs of himself and of his injuries. He was taken into custody and is currently being held at the hospital. He is expected to survive the damage that he did to himself, which is far more than the victim of his crime can say. Meanwhile, her family is left only with memories. On Facebook her stepmother wrote: “Bianca was a lot of things to so many people. She was young and beautiful and so full of life. She had been through hell and back conquering her own mental illness and she won. She was getting better. Fighting everyday. She was happy.”
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cats, Batman and Margot. She's an experienced generalist with a passion for lifestyle, geek news, pop culture, and true crime.