Sharon Rina Lopatka (née Denburg; September 20, 1961 – October 16, 1996) was an Internet entrepreneur in Hampstead, Maryland, United States, who was killed in a case of apparent consensual homicide.
Lopatka was tortured and strangled to death on October 16, 1996, by Robert "Bobby" Frederick Glass, a computer analyst from North Carolina.
[2] Raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Sharon was allegedly considered by her classmates "as normal as you can get", wrote The News & Observer, and was a part of sport teams and her school's choir club.
[2] In addition to her advertising and psychic reading business, Lopatka marketed pornographic content, using the alias Nancy Carlson, which depicted women who were unconscious from being drugged, hypnotized or chloroformed engaging in sex acts with each other.
She sold her undergarments, an advertisement for them reading, "Is there anyone out there interested in buying my worn panties..."[2] She also used the Internet to fulfill her own sexual desires that were often considered irregular to society.
[2] Lopatka used other pseudonyms and personas when using pornographic chat rooms of sites like fetishfeet.com and sexbondage.com that had members with fetishes such as necrophilia, bondage and sadomasochism.
"[6] Robert "Bobby" Frederick Glass worked as a computer analyst for the government of Catawba County, North Carolina, for nearly 16 years.
[7] Sherri logged on to Glass's email account and found several "raw, violent and disturbing" messages that he sent using the pseudonyms Toyman and Slowhand.
"[1] That morning, Lopatka drove her blue Honda Civic to Baltimore's Pennsylvania Station (a 45-minute drive)[5] and arrived on an Amtrak train in Charlotte, North Carolina, by 8:45 p.m.[5][1] Glass drove with Lopatka in his pickup truck to his rural Lenoir, North Carolina, mobile home, 80 miles (130 km) from Charlotte.
On October 25, 1996, Judge Beverly T. Beal issued a search warrant on the home; inside the house, investigators discovered items belonging to Lopatka.
[1] In addition, they found drug and bondage equipment, magazines containing child sexual exploitation material, a .357 Magnum handgun, and several computer disks.
[1] Glass pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and sexual exploitation charges on January 27, 2000, and was sentenced to 36–53 months in the Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution.
[1] Writers have labeled the situation one of the earliest examples of what psychologists called the Mardi Gras phenomenon, where one uses various personalities to decrease chances of consequences for his or her actions.
[1] Because of the case's popularity, a number of psychologists developed a greater interest in atypical sexual desires, such as sadism, masochism, and asphyxia.