Kristin Helms was 14 when the ponytailed Texas man nearly twice her age began slipping through cyberspace and into the computer in her Lake Forest bedroom.
When her parents found his picture on Kristin's computer, they shut down her MySpace account, pulled her Internet privileges for months and warned her about online predators.
But Kiley Ryan Bowers had their daughter in his grip. Kristin, thinking this could be her first true love, used computers outside the house to stay in touch with him. Eventually, he came to Orange County to have sex with her, knowing he could get in trouble because she was a minor.
After their relationship ended, Kristin told her mother everything, and Bowers was later arrested. Kristin decided she couldn't go on. So she didn't.
On a Sunday morning last summer, while her parents were at church, Kristin climbed into the rafters of the family's garage, slipped a noose around her neck and stepped off.
In an age when Internet sex crimes involving minors are becoming a serious concern in the United States, more and more teenagers are bypassing old-fashioned dating rituals and awkward "meet-the-parents" introductions with a few strokes of the keyboard.
Kristin's parents, Danielle and Robin Helms, hope their daughter's story, and their incurable pain over their loss, will convince other children to beware of the online company they keep and show their parents that unyielding vigilance is a must.
"It may seem like fun and games, and a lot of kids may think that they're too smart to fall for it. But that's not the case," Danielle Helms said. "You can't be too careful. Very scary and serious things can happen."
Bowers, 29, is expected to be sentenced today to nine years in prison in exchange for pleading guilty to traveling across state lines to have sex with Kristin and causing pictures of her to be sent over the Internet.
Kristin, "Krissy" to her parents, met him online in 2005, during the summer before her freshman year at El Toro High School in Lake Forest. She was surfing the Internet on a computer in her bedroom when she came across his profile.
Bowers, a graduate of the University of North Texas, was 27 at the time and quite Internet savvy. He had profiles on MySpace, GeoCities, FaceTheJury and other websites, where he called himself "Lychor" or "The Great Lychor."
