Deadly Influence: The Social Media Murders 1x5

1. Stephanie's online world showcased who she was as a person

2. and as an artist.

3. Hey, guys, welcome to my channel.

4. She was a 4'11" firecracker.

5. Party!

6. Because of her personality, she attracted more followers.

7. If you'd like to see how I got this look, please keep watching.

8. The social media exploded.

9. Stephanie had become an influencer online.

10. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.

11. [Ed] But with the Internet, you don't know who's on it.

12. There's so any predators out there.

13. And then, I noticed her social media coverage dropped.

14. And nobody's heard from her.

15. Stephanie Parze had become a ghost.

16. [Ed] Days became weeks, weeks became months.

17. Was she stuck, trapped, being held?

18. We checked every dumpster, any alleyways,

19. waterways.

20. We thought it was as bad as it could get.

21. And then, it just took us down a level we didn't know was there.

22. The day before Halloween 2019,

23. my mom arranged us to have, like, a girls' night out

24. and go see a medium,

25. 'cause we were all interested in that

26. and we'd always talk about it.

27. My sister Steph was always posting on Facebook.

28. That night was like any other evening.

29. We were having so much fun.

30. Talking, laughing,

31. and we even had an interaction with the medium.

32. She told me that I would have a very successful future

33. and then, she kinda, like, switched it up and was like,

34. "But you're gonna experience a very hard heartbreak."

35. And I was very confused in the moment,

36. 'cause I just had no idea what to expect from that.

37. Was trying to figure out, like,

38. what would that be? Would that be a breakup?

39. What else could it be?

40. At the time, I didn't understand it,

41. but, uh...

42. The night after, I did.

43. They have me in the middle, my wife Sharlene,

44. my oldest daughter Stephanie,

45. my second oldest daughter Brianna,

46. my third daughter Karissa,

47. and my baby Hailey.

48. I'm very outnumbered in this picture.

49. That's the happy family right there.

50. We grew up going on many vacations.

51. Whoo! So we had a lot of family time.

52. Hold on. All right, we're live. That's good.

53. Doing our family games.

54. We would all be so competitive against one another,

55. but we would have so much fun with it.

56. Put the hat on! Exactly what I did!

57. Stephanie was a little firecracker.

58. Party!

59. For somebody so small, she was always so loud.

60. Whoo!

61. Anywhere she went, she was the life of the party.

62. Ohh!

63. That's probably why we clicked.

64. Steph always had her heart right on her sleeve.

65. Definitely tells you what she thinks.

66. [Ed] Very strong, very independent girl.

67. And she loved animals, loved children.

68. She was lovin' life.

69. Stephanie's art love and her creativeness came when she was young.

70. She picked up on drawing right away.

71. But then, as she got older,

72. she went to cosmetology school

73. to get her license.

74. At that point, she wanted to eventually have her own business.

75. Hey, guys, welcome to my channel.

76. [Ed] She started doing her own thing on YouTube

77. and Instagram.

78. To see if she could get noticed.

79. She was doing special effects.

80. And makeup.

81. She was very determined

82. to kinda get herself out there.

83. I mean, I remember her getting mad at me.

84. She said, "What the heck's wrong with you? You don't follow my makeup page!"

85. Steph definitely wanted to become an influencer.

86. For today's look, we're gonna be focusing on a cracked galaxy look.

87. Because of her personality, she attracted more followers.

88. And she grew.

89. Started noticing people were recognizing her

90. because they've seen her online.

91. I had so much fun creating this look.

92. It's so different for me.

93. She was so happy that she was being noticed.

94. Stephanie was on the road to kinda be more of an influencer online.

95. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.

96. Steph's dream was eventually to make her living out of it.

97. I'll see you guys next time.

98. Her online world was definitely blossoming.

99. But her offline world wasn't in the place that she wanted to be in.

100. [Ed] One of Stephanie's priorities was definitely to settle down

101. and start a family.

102. She used to tell me all the time, "Dad, I'm getting old."

103. I said, you know, "Don't rush life.

104. You know, when you rush life, sometimes bad things happen.

105. So just be patient."

106. But Stephanie is sometimes a little strongheaded.

107. And she wanted to get out there and jump the gun as fast as she could.

108. So she turned to the Internet.

109. It was on her profile,

110. she was looking for someone

111. who is just as outgoing and creative as she was.

112. She wasn't too picky.

113. But she knew she wanted someone to have fun with,

114. she wanted someone that would take care of her

115. and she would take care of them.

116. She just would, like, light up when she got, like, a sweet message.

117. She would run over to me like,

118. "Oh, my God, look what this guy said to me."

119. She would show me her phone

120. and say, "Hey, what do you think of this guy?

121. You think he's cute?"

122. Gave her my honest answer, like, "No. Yes. Maybe."

123. She really was determined to try to find the right guy.

124. And I told that, "You definitely have to be cautious.

125. So look into them. Do your detective work."

126. [Ed] I didn't really like her being on this dating site

127. because I have fears about the Internet.

128. You don't know who's on it.

129. And there's so many predators out there.

130. I was always worried that, dating online,

131. you can have anybody on the other side of the phone messaging you,

132. so you have to definitely be cautious.

133. [Ed] There's so many threats on the Internet.

134. People that are not of good intention,

135. you know, I kept telling her,

136. "Just be careful. Just slow down."

137. I got a little nervous about that

138. 'cause I knew if she showed that weakness out there,

139. then she might open herself up to a predator that is online.

140. Stephanie, as far as her relationships went,

141. I was always kinda that guy that she would kinda ask,

142. and be like, "Hey, so you met him finally. What do you think?"

143. There was a moment in the past

144. where Stephanie was seeing a guy named Alex.

145. That was, like, her world.

146. We had the "next rule",

147. so whenever you had a bad feeling about somebody's significant other,

148. you would tell them, "Next. Move on. That's it."

149. And it wasn't the case for him.

150. But there was one time I started realizing that

151. Stephanie was in a toxic relationship.

152. Stephanie was seeing a guy named Alex

153. and he had hit her.

154. As soon as that happened, she broke it off right away.

155. I was just hoping that we wouldn't see him again.

156. I knew that Steph was moving on

157. and actually going back out and dating

158. because she had pulled out her phone and asked me what I think about this guy,

159. asking if I thought he was cute.

160. And then, she was like, "Okay. Maybe, maybe not."

161. And then she would swipe.

162. And then, Stephanie was telling me that she finally found Mr. Right

163. and she couldn't believe it.

164. Stephanie had met John on a Facebook dating website.

165. [Ed] He was 29 years old, stockbroker in Staten Island.

166. He was making good money

167. and according to Stephanie, he was treating her good,

168. he was a nice guy.

169. John told me to go get him another beer.

170. She said that her relationship with him was like a fairytale

171. and she's never been so in love

172. and had such a perfect guy before.

173. She was head over heels.

174. So it wasn't just her online world blossoming.

175. Don't forget to give it a big thumbs up.

176. Now her offline world was blossoming.

177. She had a line asking her, "Can you please do my makeup?

178. I have a party to go to."

179. She knew this was gonna be, like, her first step

180. makin' a living out of it, doing what she loved.

181. And then, she started to get a few job offers.

182. Remember when Stephanie got the opportunity to do the New York Fashion Week.

183. She came home. She was nearly crying, that's how excited she was.

184. She ran in the house like, "Oh, my God! I got it!"

185. [Ed] Was starting to get her career going.

186. Now she thought that she had found the right guy.

187. Was really starting to come together for her.

188. There was nothing that was gonna get in her way.

189. A few weeks later, I got a call from my mom.

190. She told me that she was on her way to the hospital with Steph.

191. This is a post that Stephanie had written on Instagram.

192. "Woke up, my chest so tight, could barely breathe.

193. Felt like I was being strangled.

194. My body's drained,

195. every ounce of energy I had was gone.

196. I went into the hospital for them to tell me I had gotten severe pneumonia

197. in both lungs."

198. [Ed] She was there for four days.

199. During that time,

200. John would go into the hospital room

201. and he would pretty much take care of whatever she needed.

202. John stayed at the hospital every day taking care of Steph.

203. He was loving her, he was being the perfect guy.

204. That's something she's always wanted.

205. But after she got out of the hospital...

206. Stephanie didn't seem herself.

207. Something was different about Stephanie.

208. That's when I noticed her social media coverage dropped.

209. She wasn't posting as much anywhere.

210. It was weird. It was almost like Stephanie Parze had become a ghost.

211. One day, Stephanie called my mom in a panic

212. saying that the house was haunted or possessed.

213. [Ed] Yeah, when she went to the bathroom, she saw a handprint on the mirror.

214. Looked like somebody put their hand on it and dragged their fingers down it

215. like something you see in a horror movie.

216. A few days after the mirror incident,

217. Steph found her parakeet dead on the bottom of the cage,

218. cold as stone.

219. With the handprint, the parakeet,

220. it was very, very strange.

221. When she asked me about the baby monitors,

222. I thought something was going on more than she was telling me.

223. Was like, "I hope this makes you feel more comfortable,

224. sure, take the baby monitors."

225. But unfortunately, she never got them.

226. [Ed] On the night before Halloween,

227. my daughters and my wife had decided to go out to a show

228. and to see a psychic.

229. They saw the show,

230. and then they all came back together to the house.

231. Me and her mother, we says when she leaves the house,

232. "You get home, just text me or give me a call, let me know you got in okay."

233. Stephanie kissed her mother a couple of times goodnight

234. and got in her car and went home.

235. It takes about six minutes to drive from our house to where Stephanie was living.

236. And, uh, we waited, see if she would text us or call us.

237. And she never did.

238. So we looked at each other, and we said, you know,

239. "Maybe she still has her phone on silent

240. because she was at the show and she forgot to turn it back on.

241. And she probably got tired and fell asleep, 'cause it was getting late."

242. But we left it at that and we went to bed.

243. Next morning, we still hadn't heard from Stephanie.

244. Just wasn't like her.

245. She was supposed to be going in to work as a nanny in the morning.

246. [Ed] So we started calling her again

247. knowing that she had to get up for work.

248. There was no answer.

249. So my wife took Karissa over to the house,

250. see if she's there.

251. When we initially pulled up,

252. we were confused but relieved that her car was there.

253. And we were like, "Okay, so she has to be sleeping."

254. [Ed] The first thing they said was the door wasn't locked.

255. All the lights were on in the house.

256. Her coat and shoes are still here next to the couch.

257. But she's nowhere to be found.

258. We knew Stephanie wouldn't leave without her car,

259. and she had to be at work.

260. So things weren't adding up.

261. To have her have a knife literally not even a foot away from her head,

262. there was something that she was worried about or scared of.

263. My mom's next thought was to ping her phone.

264. So my mom started to ping the phone.

265. And we heard it.

266. Phone actually rang. My wife said her heart just dropped.

267. This is big, and this is, like, weird for Steph.

268. "You always have your phone on you. Why isn't it with you?"

269. I then found the phone in the couch.

270. We tried to unlock the phone, and we couldn't get into it.

271. But we did see a message from work

272. and asking her, like, why isn't she here?

273. Like, she was a nanny.

274. She was always, like, very good with that job.

275. Like, she would be there on time.

276. So it was very, like, shocking to us.

277. And a million questions were running through our head.

278. "Why wouldn't she be at work? Why wouldn't she have her phone?

279. Why is her car here?"

280. [Ed] When she tells me that she found the phone,

281. right then and there, I had a feeling that

282. something tragic had happened.

283. My mom and Karissa got back to the house after discovering her phone.

284. I was trying to keep everyone calm,

285. I was like, "No, she's fine.

286. She's just with her friend.

287. We just didn't get ahold of the right friend."

288. [Ed] We started reaching out to friends,

289. and see if they've seen her.

290. I opened the Snapchat, I looked at it.

291. You could almost feel the panic behind the message.

292. Already, I'm thinking, "What happened?"

293. [Ed] We just kept coming up with blanks.

294. Nobody had seen or heard from her.

295. Was like she had fallen off the face of the Earth.

296. So I hacked into Steph's Facebook

297. and started checking to see her last conversations

298. and seeing if there was a clue of where she was.

299. The night before, she had spoken to some people.

300. And the last message...

301. Was from John.

302. And then, the messages got worse.

303. He was very angry and very upset.

304. So I logged into my Facebook and messaged John straightaway.

305. Almost an hour later, he responded...

306. As soon as he said that he had seen her,

307. I was worried due to their relationship

308. and their past.

309. [Ed] Wife and I are sitting in our living room.

310. She answered the phone,

311. and I can hear in the background, there's some kind of commotion going on.

312. I hear my wife say, uh, "Who hit you?"

313. I jumped up...

314. Got in my car, I'm heading towards Stephanie's house.

315. She lives only six miles away.

316. - Come around the corner and...

317. I notice out of the corner of my eye

318. Stephanie running through the woods.

319. So I slam on the brakes

320. and I jump out of my car.

321. I yell for her. She hears me.

322. And she immediately turns and starts running towards me.

323. She's still in her nightclothes.

324. She has no shoes or socks on.

325. She's bleeding from the side of her head and her hand.

326. She gets to me and she grabs hold of me.

327. And I said, "Who hit you?" And she said, "John."

328. I pull her away from me.

329. And then, when I pulled her away and I looked at her,

330. I didn't see her.

331. All I saw was black.

332. And, uh...

333. That scared me, because I was, uh...

334. I guess I was in such a rage

335. that I wasn't in control.

336. And I couldn't... I couldn't see her face.

337. I said, "Where is he?"

338. And... You know, she said, "He's still in the house."

339. So I floored the car.

340. I was prepared to take matters into my own hands at that point.

341. [Ed] I'm heading towards Stephanie's house.

342. I was very, very mad.

343. When I got to the driveway, by some miracle,

344. a police car had cut me off,

345. uh, going into her driveway.

346. It turned out my wife had called 9-1-1,

347. uh, before I left the house.

348. They told us to stay by the car and they got him and arrested him.

349. And then, I went to the police station at that point.

350. On the way to the police station,

351. she said to me, "I'm not gonna file charges on him."

352. Um, which kinda caught me off-guard.

353. So we had a major discussion on John.

354. I was as serious as a heart attack.

355. "He's done.

356. No more.

357. You're gonna break up with him immediately.

358. He's not welcome in the house.

359. He's never gonna be welcome in the family."

360. And I said, "You're gonna promise me you're gonna take care of it before I do."

361. She did.

362. She held up her end of the bargain.

363. She broke up with him.

364. Then she said to us, "It's definitely over and I'm moving on."

365. This is a post from Stephanie's Facebook wall

366. on October 5th.

367. "Starting over is okay. Moving on is okay."

368. "What is not okay is..."

369. [Ed] After Brianna had spoken to John

370. and all the stuff that had happened,

371. your mind just starts spinning.

372. The unknown will drive you mad.

373. Where she might be lying, or where she might be stuck trapped,

374. being held.

375. And all that stuff just starts going through your head.

376. You know, with the fear that, if she is alive,

377. what the fear is she's going through.

378. Um, is she cold? Is she under rain?

379. Yeah.

380. Plays on your mind bad.

381. When Ed told me that Stephanie was missing,

382. you could hear in their voices the dread.

383. You know, this was, "Something's wrong."

384. At that point, we were all a little afraid to speculate.

385. I mean, it could have been something random, right?

386. It could have been some random person who broke into her house

387. or some random person who was waiting for her in the bushes.

388. But we had a strong suspicion it was John-related.

389. The question at that point was, is she tied up somewhere and still alive?

390. Or was she buried or dumped somewhere, dead?

391. And if it was this guy John,

392. who's six-foot-whatever...

393. And a roided-out muscle builder...

394. It doesn't matter...

395. How many times you play-fought with your daughter.

396. She doesn't stand a chance.

397. [Ed] At that point, the police served some warrants

398. where they had searched his house and got his cellphone.

399. But they didn't find Stephanie at all.

400. I decided to go on her Facebook page

401. and put a post out for all her Facebook followers.

402. "Hi, everyone, this is Brianna, Steph's sister."

403. "If so, please contact me."

404. The social media exploded.

405. We had the posts saying, "Oh, maybe she ran away."

406. You had posts saying, you know,

407. "She's probably with a friend you can't get ahold of."

408. Then you had people contacting about where you could look.

409. I read every single post, just in case one was right.

410. [Ed] Then the media picked up on it.

411. In the midst of an intense search to help

412. finding a missing YouTube makeup star,

413. family, friends, and her followers

414. are taking to social media

415. to help in the search to track her down.

416. [Ed] And once the media picked up on it, it went national.

417. After that, it just went everywhere.

418. Fears are growing for an American makeup artist...

419. Stephanie, know, you know, we're looking for you.

420. We'll do everything we can to find you.

421. I was about six months into my first job after graduating college

422. working in news

423. when I was assigned this story

424. on the disappearance of Stephanie Parze.

425. Twenty-five-year-old Stephanie Parze

426. disappeared from her Freehold Township home,

427. which you can see right behind me

428. where her car was found parked in the driveway.

429. But for me, it wasn't just a story

430. because it was the community that I lived in,

431. the community that I grew up in.

432. And so, it kind of just became a part of my life.

433. At that time,

434. it was about five days after she was initially reported missing.

435. It wasn't just an offline search on the ground.

436. But it also was an online search

437. for more information.

438. [Ed] Finding her became an immense task.

439. We decided that it's time to get involved with people searching.

440. We sat down and we started breaking out maps

441. and it was like a war room.

442. I wrote this post on Facebook

443. saying that we were gonna do a search.

444. The father of missing New Jersey woman Stephanie Parze

445. is taking the search for his daughter into his own hands.

446. Thousands of acres of woodland with nearly 200 volunteers

447. searching for any trace of Stephanie.

448. They came out in the hundreds.

449. They must have put thousands of flyers up all over the place.

450. And not just here. From here through Philadelphia,

451. all the way into New York, all the way down south, they were everywhere.

452. Uh, if you do know something, if you know anything,

453. feel it in your heart and just let us know. Let somebody know.

454. Every day, checked every dumpster,

455. any alleyways, waterways.

456. We had come to a location one day and I'll never forget it.

457. We saw a bunch of black garbage bags all tied together.

458. I really got a cold feeling at that point.

459. And when I put my knife in and cut the bag open...

460. Nothing but blood came out.

461. Um...

462. Kinda jumped back.

463. Scared me to death.

464. Um, my friend reached his hand in the bag and...

465. - Pulled out a deer.

466. Somebody had discarded a deer over the guardrail.

467. And we did things like that every day.

468. You get that brief sigh for a second

469. that you didn't find her.

470. But then again, it's back out there.

471. It's like, where do you go next?

472. Where could she possibly be? Did you miss anything?

473. Did everybody turn every rock over?

474. They look at every shed? Did they look, you know, in every abandoned building?

475. It just, it doesn't ever stop.

476. How do you decide what to do next?

477. You can't!

478. But there's no manual that says what to do.

479. You wanna drive. You wanna drive somewhere, do something.

480. But you don't know where to go and you don't know what to do.

481. We thought it was as bad as it could get,

482. and then, it just took us down a level we didn't know was there.

483. Breaking news. The ex-boyfriend of Stephanie Parze...

484. - ... has been arrested.

485. [Ed] I'm thinking he got arrested because of

486. the investigation for Stephanie.

487. But I was way off.

488. We quickly learned that it had nothing to do with Stephanie.

489. Authorities have now confirmed

490. that during their investigation into 29-year-old John Ozbilgen,

491. they discovered disturbing images

492. of child pornography on his phone.

493. The police stressed that he has been charged for that,

494. and not in relation to the disappearance of Stephanie Parze.

495. They did not have any evidence

496. connecting him to the disappearance of Stephanie.

497. But I thought, "He's arrested. They're gonna hold him.

498. They're gonna be able to get more information out of him."

499. But that ultimately didn't happen.

500. After 11 days in police custody,

501. John Ozbilgen has been released.

502. The judge says that the single charge he faces

503. is not enough to keep him detained until trial.

504. In that time, we were thinking,

505. if the police don't have enough evidence to connect him to Stephanie's disappearance,

506. then did something else happen to her?

507. Was there somebody else involved?

508. [Ed] I got a phone call from our detectives.

509. And they said, "We got some news for you."

510. I said to 'em, I said, "What did you find? Did you find a body?"

511. They said, "Yeah."

512. But then, in the same breath, they said...

513. "It's not Stephanie."

514. The Monmouth prosecutor put out this message on social media.

515. We found out that John had hung himself in his parents' garage.

516. [Ed] When they told us that he hung himself,

517. I immediately went into a nervous breakdown.

518. Because in my heart...

519. Uh, in my mind, he's the only one... Which is...

520. So I said, "Did he leave any notes?"

521. Among other items recovered from his home

522. after his suicide

523. was a note that John Ozbilgen left for his parents.

524. In the note, Ozbilgen stated that he had had enough,

525. and that he could not do life in prison.

526. He also admitted what his parents would hear in the news was true,

527. except child pornography.

528. We saw that as an admittance that he was responsible

529. for whatever happened to Stephanie.

530. I was still not giving up.

531. And, uh, I wasn't never gonna give up.

532. And we were gonna keep searching,

533. keep doing whatever we had to do.

534. We got the alert.

535. We jumped in the car and headed over there

536. and immediately saw a huge, huge police presence.

537. I hesitated because I got a very, very bad gut feeling.

538. There is a lot of police activity down here.

539. A body has been found, but an identification has not been made.

540. We knew it was her.

541. They didn't even have to confirm it.

542. I already knew it was her.

543. In New Jersey tonight,

544. investigators have confirmed they have found the body of Stephanie Parze.

545. The remains of 25-year-old daughter Stephanie found along route nine in Old Bridge.

546. She'd been outside for three months.

547. Fifteen feet from the highway

548. that we had driven up and back and forth

549. looking for her body countless times.

550. Thousands of people drive by it every single day.

551. But because of the slope...

552. And there being a tree right there that stopped

553. her body from rolling further...

554. She was, like, 15 feet off the highway.

555. Of course, this is an extremely somber day for us.

556. Um, goes without saying that our family is devastated.

557. Our friends, our community...

558. And our lives are never gonna be the same.

559. They found the body very close to The Grand Marquis reception hall.

560. My wife and I were married there 32 years ago.

561. Stephanie had her prom there.

562. We had some closure by finding her.

563. Of course, we'll never know the full story of what happened to her.

564. When you look back at everything in their relationship,

565. I think that she was veering away from him.

566. But then, he was scaring her with the handprint,

567. the parakeet, back into his arms.

568. [Ed] When she finally broke up with him,

569. she had no idea that she was in danger of her life.

570. What we suspect and what we think happened...

571. She was at the psychic's show the night before Halloween.

572. He was blowing her phone up trying to reach her.

573. And one of his triggers was to be ignored.

574. Since he didn't get in touch with her, he became enraged.

575. And he wound up going to her house shortly after she got home.

576. Located Stephanie, we believe, in the bedroom.

577. He strangled her

578. and proceeded to carry her body through the house,

579. and put her in the trunk.

580. And then he, uh, pulled out to the side of the guardrail

581. and heaved her over the guardrail

582. like she was a piece of garbage.

583. That was where she was dropped, and that was where she stayed

584. for 87 days.

585. "It rushed through my body like nothing before.

586. There was no holding back.

587. I found myself sitting in the car screaming,

588. crying at the world and God.

589. I screamed, 'Why? Why her? Why Steph?

590. She doesn't deserve this.'"

591. Your daughter gets killed...

592. And you know you had a chance to stop it.

593. Even if it meant...

594. You went to jail.

595. And how do you live with that?

596. But you have a wife and three other daughters, so you have to.

597. And then...

598. I have to tell 'em it's okay.

599. And it's not.

600. It's just not.

601. If you look back at this whole thing and, you know,

602. and think about what could we have done

603. or is there anything we could have done different,

604. I, myself personally,

605. I have to go back to the conversation I had with Stephanie in her house.

606. I would go back, definitely, and I would have took matters into my own hands

607. at that point. And, uh...

608. One way or the other, you know, we would have...

609. Got John out of the picture

610. as far as leaving Stephanie alone.

611. That's one of my biggest regrets.

612. And, uh, obviously, I have to live with that.

613. A Freehold family is turning the tragic loss of their daughter

614. into a foundation to help others.

615. The more we started learning about how many people

616. are actually going missing

617. and how bad domestic violence actually was,

618. 'cause we decided that,

619. we have to try to do something to not let this happen to somebody else.

620. And, in the same moment,

621. we don't want anyone to forget Stephanie.

622. Keep her name out there by doing good to others.

623. So we all decide to start the foundation.

624. The foundation will undergo extensive training

625. to learn how to respond to calls regarding domestic violence,

626. sexual assault, and missing children.

627. When I give advice to people, to families out there,

628. to parents, um, I always say, you know,

629. "Don't hesitate. If you hesitate,

630. it could be the difference between life and death."