They call it the case of the "Craigslist killer," and it shined a light on online prostitution. In the aftermath, Craigslist said it was cracking down. Therese from Charlton doesn't buy it. Hundreds of sexually oriented advertisements are still easy to find on Craigslist. Authorities say a lot of those ads are really selling sex, and that one of them may have led to murder. It was last April when police say Boston University Medical student Phillip Markoff responded to a massage ad placed by Julissa Brisman on Craigslist's erotic services section.
Markoff allegedly shot and killed Brisman. He has entered a plea of not guilty. After what happened here in Boston, Craigslist which is in San Francisco, got rid of the "erotic" services section and replaced it with "adult" services. Most people would say that's not much of a change.
It also said it would monitor ads in the new section, but nearly eight months later, it seems like business as usual. Medford Police Detective Lieutenant John Mclean works with a regional computer crime unit and keeps an eye on Craigslist. He says there haven't been any big, overwhelming changes on the web site. When he scrolled through some of the ads in the adult services section he said: "A number of these are consistent with what potentially could lead to a prostitution investigation.
And that's a loophole of sorts. The ads don't spell out prostitution. It's all done with a wink. One of the ads Lt. Mclean looked at said there was "no sex" involved. But when we asked him if he believed that he answered, "No, I don't believe it at all. Craigslist wouldn't talk to us on-camera, saying its people were tied up in an unrelated court case. We wanted to know if the web site had reduced the number of ads that some people think is related to prostitution.
They sent us a statement saying those ads have "migrated to the thousands of alternative venues that have yet to adopt the stringent standards and review process implemented by Craigslist. Boston University professor and communications law expert T.
