15-year-old Raistlin Martin killed grandfather house
© Nancy McCleary
On a Sunday in early August, 15-year-old Raistlin Martin discussed killing his grandfather with a still unidentified person on a secretive cellphone app called Kik.

The next night, the boy sent the same person - who used the identity Sporkus_the_wise - pictures that included a hatchet and a pair of black gloves.

About 20 minutes after the last message was sent, Cumberland County dispatchers received a 911 call about a homicide on Elgin Drive, according to an affidavit for a search warrant.

The affidavit says deputies who responded found Martin wearing black gloves and covered in blood. The mutilated body of his grandfather, 63-year-old Joseph Emmett Naulty, was found in his bed, a hatchet on the floor nearby.

In his cellphone messages, the affidavit says, Martin listed a reason for the murder: He found his grandfather "just kinda inconvenient."

A neighbor said Naulty moved into his son's home, off Tom Starling Road, after his wife died in Alabama in February.

According to the affidavit, Martin and the person he had sent the pictures "discussed the reason, planning and method of murdering Martin's 'Granda.'" Martin used the name EtherealSkull on the Kik app.

Now Martin, who turned 16 on Nov. 2, is charged as a juvenile with first-degree murder. Prosecutors are deciding whether to seek to try him as an adult. His next court date is scheduled for Dec. 12 in Cumberland County Juvenile Court.

Meanwhile, sheriff's investigators are trying to track down the identity of the person Martin had been messaging on the Kik app.

Sgt. Sean Swain, a sheriff's spokesman, said Kik representatives have been working with the Sheriff's Office in an effort to identify the person.

"We are making progress, but it is slow due to the procedures we have to follow," Swain said.

The Kik app has become wildly popular among teenagers and a growing concern to law enforcement across the country because of its link to crimes, many involving child predators.

Those include a highly publicized murder in January. Authorities say 13-year-old Nicole Madison Lovell sneaked out of her bedroom window in Blacksburg, Virginia, to meet someone she had been messaging on the Kik app.

The girl's body was found three days later. Two Virginia Tech students have been charged in her death. Authorities say the students had planned the murder, going so far as to buy cleaning supplies and a shovel before the girl was lured from her home.

Authorities say other crimes have been linked this year to the Kik app, including:

A registered sex offender living in St. Louis ran a child pornography group called "youngtorture," on the app. Police said the man, who was arrested in February, had downloaded thousands of images containing child pornography.

In January, a 41-year-old New York man was arrested after posing as a teenager while sending sexually explicit messages to a 14-year-old girl using the app. The man tried to lure the girl into a face-to-face meeting.

Also in January, a convicted felon in Alabama was arrested after trying to lure a girl he had met on the Kik app from her school. The student had met with the man two weeks earlier and had sex with him in a park.

Unlike Facebook and other popular social media services, Kik users don't need to link their account to a phone number, and they don't need to use their real names. Users are provided almost complete anonymity.

According to the Canadian company's website, Kik Interactive has more than 300 million users, including about 40 percent of all American teenagers.

Law enforcement officials say the Kik app's allowance of anonymity and its popularity among teens makes it especially concerning.

But it's far from alone in its use by sexual predators, said Alan Flora, special agent in charge of the State Bureau of Investigation and commander of the N.C. Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

"Members of our task force statewide receive multiple complaints each week regarding inappropriate communications received and/or sent by minors via Kik," Flora said. "We receive complaints about the misuse of many other apps as well."

Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, called apps that allow anonymity a double-edged sword.

On one hand, he said, the apps provide a valuable service to people who need the privacy, such as an activist in a dangerous country.

"On the other hand," he said, "you do see these kinds of cases where people use them to conspire to commit crimes, and they can do so with a certain level of protection to find out who these people are and where they are."

In August, the alliance released results of a survey it conducted with Microsoft of 804 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 who use the internet and a separate sample of 810 internet-savvy parents.

The study found that 60 percent of the teens had created online accounts that their parents were unaware of, more than double the 28 percent of parents who suspected their children had created secret accounts. The study also found that 43 percent of the teens surveyed had sought peer support because of issues they had encountered online.

Kik spokesman Rod McLeod said his company is continually trying to improve its app to keep users safe.

He said the company recently launched a proprietary SafePhoto technology that detects, reports and deletes known child exploitation images. McLeod said Kik has also upgraded its users' ability to filter unknown senders and report content.

"We take online safety very seriously, and we're constantly assessing and improving our trust and safety measures," McLeod said. "We will continue to invest in those types of tools, provide resources to parents and strengthen relationships with law enforcement and safety-focused organizations."

Swain and Flora said Kik isn't the problem. They said parents need to monitor their children's use of all private messaging apps.

Flora said parents should know and understand all of the apps on their children's devices and how those apps are being used. He said parents should frequently remind their children that not everyone online is who they claim to be.

"Kik isn't the problem - it's the way that it is being used that puts children at risk," Flora said. "Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat or even the iMessage feature that comes standard on iPhones can be used improperly. The apps don't create the inappropriate content - the users do."