An Oregon man has been accused of harassing at least a dozen families of the victims of the mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., telling them the killings didn’t happen or the caskets of victims were empty.
Kevin Purfield, 45, of Portland pleaded not guilty at Thursday’s arraignment on charges of telephone harassment and stalking counts, both misdemeanors. Multnomah County Judge Adrienne Nelson increased Purfield’s bail from $10,000 to $100,000 at the prosecution’s request and appointed Cate Wollam as his attorney.
Aurora police spokesman Frank Fania said Purfield was adept online at finding ways to make contact with the family members, and used email, social media and phone calls to get to them.
Then Purfield spun fantastic theories, Fania said.
“It starts out that the shootings didn’t really happen,” Fania said. “It goes into things such as that at the funeral, your relative’s body wasn’t in the casket.”
Sometimes, if he didn’t get a rise out of a relative, he dropped the communication, Fania said. In other cases, and particularly if the relative responded, Purfield launched into vile, obscene “flat-out attacks,” Fania said.
