Life can be stranger than fiction

For anyone in that case, there’s the computer game “Second Life”. However, stories involving “Second Life” always tend to be more surreal than normal. This one is no exception.

A woman wanted for the attempted kidnap of her ex-Second Life boyfriend has been caught after a search that spread across several states. 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan had an online affair with a 52-year-old man via Second Life, and when he ended the relationship, she became quite distressed … as well as demented. It always works out that way, right?

The relationship ended after the pair had met in real life (likely meaning she didn’t resemble her Second Life avatar enough), and in the beginning of August, Kimberly allegedly drove to her ex-boyfriend’s Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap the man at gunpoint. Apparently she couldn’t even manage that successfully, and had to come back two weeks later and track him down to his Delaware home, posing as a postal worker to find his address. After cutting and removing a screened window to gain entry to the man’s house, she lay in wait for him with a set of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a taser, a BB gun and her dog Gogi.

Her foolproof scheme failed after the man simply ran away, having entered to find a laser beam pointed at his chest. Kimberley had fled soon after, but her dog was discovered bound in duct tape and abandoned in the bathroom to stop him making noise. She was found an hour later in Maryland and taken into custody after a “brief struggle” at a rest stop. For all we know, being bound in duct tape like a dog may be something possible in the Second Life world.