TRUE CRIME EXCLUSIVE: The dark world of ‘Influencers Who Kill’ with author Madison Salters

**Lauren Barry** (0:02)
This is a True Crime Exclusive Interview from The On Deadline Podcast. We're talking to author and journalist Madison Salters, author of Influencers Who Kill, a true crime collection, real stories of online fame and fatal consequences.
I'm your host, Lauren Barry.
Have you ever been scrolling on TikTok or Instagram and found yourself fascinated by an influencer? Maybe their life seems absurd or chaotic, or maybe it seems too perfect to be true. Well, it just might be. In her book, Salters details nine horrifying true crime cases linked to the flashy and sometimes captivating world of influencers over the past two decades.
These cases include Yuka Takaoka, a Japanese bar hostess who went to prison for a non-fatal stabbing. Naseem Ogdom, the YouTube headquarters shooter. Snow the Salt Queen, a cosplay shooter who maintains their innocence. David Katz, a shooter who targeted a sports video game tournament. Samantha Walford, a mommy vlogger who was convicted of kidnapping and murder. Randy Stair, also known on YouTube as Andrew Blaze, who shot and killed his supermarket coworkers. Trey Sessler, known on YouTube as MrAnime, who pled guilty to murdering his family members. Pika Erik-Ovinen, a YouTuber from the early aughts and perpetrator of one of Finland's few school shootings. And Abigail White, an OnlyFans model who was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing the father of her children to death. In my interview with Salters, we focused on the Yuka Takaoka, Snow the Salt Queen and Samantha Walford cases. We also discussed the growing impact of social media on all of our lives. Here's my talk with Madison Salters, author of Influencers Who Kill.

**Lauren Barry** (2:31)
Now, this concept is so great and interesting. And every time I've brought up that I'm doing this interview, people are like, oh my gosh, yes, what about Influencers Who Kill?
But you're one of the first people that I've seen at least really compiling information about this. And I wanted to know what piqued your interest in this. Was it a specific case or just the concept overall?

**Madison Salters** (2:55)
What was really interesting, I should start by saying thank you. Thank you so much for having me and for your curiosity on this topic.
I am a big True Crime fan myself. I watch and read a lot of it. And Influencers Who Kill is my third book with Ulysses Press. And in fact, Ulysses reached out to me with about 21 names. And this idea, they're saying that SEO, GEO is showing that people are really interested in this. Here are 21 names, can you research them and sort of decide on a direction for an Influencers book?
They have a lot of names they definitely wanted me to go with. And Yuka Takaoka was actually the only case I decided on for myself because I thought it tied into the other eight cases I picked really well. And what piqued my interest in these specific nine cases were two things. One, the element of parasociality, that's such a catchphrase these days, I feel like. But these parasocial relationships that we're creating as life moves more and more on line where social media, which was previously used even in the early aughts, to really connect with our friends, our family members. Now we're connecting with strangers more than ever. And we are kind of having one-sided relationships in a way with strangers, which is very typical for the human brain, but very atypical for being a big part of our day. So there was that element. And then there was also the shifting idea of what Influencer means. An Influencer used to be a lot more of a grassroots niche, kind of an expert that you really trusted because they were there week after week, sort of speaking to you almost on a personal level. And now it's almost like a job. So it feels like there was this 20-year period where influencers and murder were really on a much more personal level. You could see these parasocial relationships and this being forced into becoming a persona was really morphing people sometimes into their worst selves in a way that shifted these days. And I thought that was very interesting.

**Lauren Barry** (5:10)
Absolutely. And I noted that time frame as well in the cases that you had. The earliest one I think goes back to 2007, which that's like around 20 years ago now.
And I wanted you to explain a little bit more about that. You already touched on it a little bit. But in your research, how did you find that these cases reflected are growing like symbiotic attachment to influencers and online culture in those two decades?

**Madison Salters** (5:41)
Yeah. So I think what's interesting with the cases as they get closer to the modern day is you just sort of see them happening faster. And I will explain what that means. It's essentially when social media was still a little bit of the wild west, and people were still figuring out how to use it, I think it didn't bruise egos quite so much when somebody unfollowed you, or you didn't get the amount of likes, it didn't have that same kind of tag on it where people are really counting, how many people bookmark this? How many people like this? How many people commented on it? Is it getting boosted? There wasn't that so much. People who were doing this more towards 2007, it was really a slow roll for some of these people who ended up being the villains of their own story into this madness or this evil that they got plunged into. It was the shift of social media itself was really responsible for a lot of this, feeling like they were getting lost. They didn't have an audience, they didn't have the look or the vibe or persona to keep up with the shifts that were happening to something that was so integral in their life that it had taken over their life. But on the other side of that, on the other half of things, with the modern day and people who are a little bit closer to 2026 when they were actually committing their crimes, we see it happen a lot more quickly. Like as soon as there's a dip in numbers or interests, we see them going, well, I need to do something more extreme, more to gain attention. And I need that attention immediately, especially for those influencers who are monetizing their streams.