EvilEmpire registered in Denmark. No surprise there.
Just when you thought Lacey and Larkin couldn’t get more evil. Do you know how many kids that are Star Wars fans Google “Evil Empire”?
The content creators of bigcity.com and evilempire.com are Mike Lacey and James Larkin. Owners of Backpage.
Worldwide revenue from sex ads topped $3.1 million in just one week in 2015, according to a court affidavit. It says Ferrer (The C.E.O. for Lacey and Larkin) expanded Backpage’s share of online sex marketing by creating affiliated sites including EvilEmpire.com and BigCity.com with related content.
Their big hit was Backpage, the classified section of the Village Voice they put on the Internet and floated around the world. It turns out Big City . com which has been registered since 1998, links into Backpage. As well as EvilEmpire.com. So people are linked onto Backpage when they Google those sites.
Big City. com is a tool for pimps to sell women and children. As the domain states: ADVERTISING FOR OTHERS VIA ON-LINE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK.
Backpage also sponsors Big City.com. The “security and vetting” is a button you push for terms of use. Like anyone lurking there is going to call the police to report a minor being sold on it?
Photo from 2011 press conference on Village Voice Classifieds section – Backpage Briefing on Backpage Murders
Murders
In 2011 The bad news just kept on coming for Village Voice’s Classifieds Backpage.com—already the target of an anti-sex trafficking campaign in 45 states. In one week. Two car trunks. Four women dead. Backpage clients. A serial killer, a fan of Backpage.
No problem. The owners of the Village Voice and editor in chief took it all in stride. Collateral damage. As bodies of young women dropped in Detroit, The Village Voice ran a special called: “The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011.” One of them, “Bitch suck dick”. It was front page headline when you logged onto the site, right next to the link for Backpage.com classifieds. “Bitch suck dick”.
Huh? Guess I wasn’t listening to the same radio station. Anyway, apparently the dead bodies were not the main issue, it was poorly arranged music. Or, headlines prompting you to click on the Backpage link? With a serial killer on the loose.
It was front page news all over the nation. “Backpage murders”. A serial killer was killing women he found on Backpage. In fact, I just Googled, “Backpage murders” and more than five years later, About 182,000 results (0.52 seconds).
The editor in chief at the Village Voice, Tony Ortega, didn’t have the decency to put an alert on Village Voice site or their classifieds Backpage website about it, warning others that a Backpage serial killer was on the loose.
Nah….that would have been bad for “the brand”.
Some part of me wonders if owners and staff at the Voice were not celebrating the press coverage and free publicity for further advertisers. Nobody from the Village Voice bothered to send a card to any of the families, as the bodies floated to view.
A film expose was released in January 2017 about the Backpage murders which totaled 13 as of 2016. “Black Girls Die Too”.