Sharon Lopatka, born Denburg, was born in 1961 in Baltimore, Maryland. She was the oldest of four children. Her parents were devout Orthodox Jews, with her father being a Cantor. Sharon grew up playing sports and singing in the school choir.
In 1991, Sharon married construction worker Victor Lopatka. Sharon’s parents apparently did not approve of the marriage due to Victor being Catholic. Sharon and Victor moved to a small house in Hampstead, Maryland.
Around the time the Internet started to become fully accessible to the general public, Sharon made the decision to start several small businesses from her home in order to make some extra money. One business was “Classified Concepts” where for $50 she would re-write ad copy for businesses. She also had a website selling psychic readings.
Sharon Lopatka also ventured into selling pornographic videos of unconscious women. In an ad she posted online, under the pseudonym Nancy Carlson, she wrote “Just made a video of actual women… willing and unwilling to be… knocked out… drugged… under hypnosis and chloroformed.” Shockingly, Sharon had a lot of customers wanting the videos she was advertising, and whilst people paid for the videos, they never actually received them. It was a smart con by Sharon because the people who ordered her videos couldn’t exactly go to the police or report her.
Sharon also sold used underwear online with ads like “Is there anyone out there interested in buying used panties…”
As well as using the internet for her business ventures, Sharon Lopatka also used it to explore her own sexual fantasies and fetishes. She often found herself on hardcore chat rooms openly discussing a variety of interests like bondage, sadomasochism and necrophilia.
Using her various pseudonyms, Sharon sought to pursue her unusual sexual fantasies. She reportedly posted in a chat room that she had “a fascination with torturing till death.” Sharon posted over 50 messages on various websites expressing her interest in being tortured and killed and even appealing to men to help fulfil her wants. She was often active on websites including fetishfeet.com and sexbondage.com. Tanith, a sex rights activist who was also active in the communities, tried reaching out to Sharon to get her to stop as she was concerned. Sharon reportedly messaged Tanith saying; “I want the real thing. I did not ask for you preaching to me.” Though many men did respond to Sharon’s posts, when they discovered it wasn’t just a fantasy she wanted to talk about and she was serious, they dropped out. That was until she met Robert Glass…
Robert Frederick Glass, known as Bobby, was 45 years old. He lived in North Carolina and worked as a computer analyst for the Catawba County government. Robert Glass was married with three children. His wife Sherri said that Robert was a computer enthusiast who spent hours every day on his computer. Sherri was suspicious of his behaviour and claimed that Robert had lost his attraction to her. Their children had even asked her why their father didn’t love her anymore. One day, having reached her tipping point, Sherri looked on Robert’s computer and found disturbing emails. In an interview, she recounted their “raw, violent and disturbing” nature. The emails had been sent using the pseudonyms ‘Toyman’ and ‘Slowhand’. Sherri confronted her husband and “all the colour had drained out of his face.” She had no idea that her husband had this side to him and so in May 1996, the two separated.
Sharon Lopatka met Robert Glass in a chat room. She wanted to be tortured and he expressed a desire to inflict pain. The two emailed each other for a couple of months, talking in detail about Sharon’s desire to be bound and strangled as she reached orgasm. Robert seemed to be happy to fulfil her wishes. In total, there were nearly 900 pages worth of emails exchanged between the pair. Captain Barlow of North Carolina’s Caldwell County Sheriff’s Department said; “If you put all their messages together, you’d have a very large novel.”
On October 13, 1996, after talking online for months, Sharon went to meet Robert. She told her husband Victor that she was going to Georgia for a few days with friends, but that morning she drove her car to the train station in Baltimore, Maryland, and boarded a train to Charlotte, North Carolina at 9:15 am.
At approximately 8:45 pm that evening, Sharon arrived in Charlotte. Robert was waiting for her at the station, and from there he drove her to his trailer home in Lenoir, 80 miles away.
Back at their marital home, Victor found a note that Sharon had left for him. In it, she told her husband that she would not be coming home and asked Victor to not try and find the person she had gone with. She wrote; “If my body is never retrieved, don’t worry: know that I’m at peace.” After finding the note, Victor called the police.
Investigators searched Sharon Lopatka’s computer which is where they discovered the hundreds of disturbing emails she had exchanged with ‘Slowhand’. It wasn’t long before investigators discovered that ‘Slowhand’ was Robert Glass.
Police carried out surveillance on Robert Glass’s trailer for a number of days, hoping to see Sharon there, but they didn’t. On October 25, 1996, a judge issued a search warrant on the property.
Whilst Robert was at work, investigators arrived at his home to carry out the search. The trailer was dirty and cluttered, filled with rubbish. They found drug and bondage paraphernalia, a pistol, and a huge amount of CDs. They also discovered child pornography. Some of Sharon’s belongings were also found inside, but Sharon wasn’t there.
Just 75 feet from the trailer, officers discovered a fresh mound of soil. Buried 21/2 feet down, they found the decomposing body of Sharon Lopatks. Robert Glass was arrested that same day.
When questioned, Robert Glass claimed that he had accidentally killed Sharon. He said that the two of them had spent a few days together acting out their sexual fantasies. He said that Sharon willingly let him tie her up with rope and probe her with objects from around the house. Robert also said he tied a rope around Sharon’s neck, which she allowed, and tightened it during intercourse. It was during this that he claimed to have accidentally killed Sharon. He said “I don’t know how much I pulled the rope… I never wanted to kill her, but she ended up dead.”
Sharon’s cause of death was confirmed as strangulation by North Carolina’s chief medical examiner, Dr John Butts. He believed Sharon had died just three days after arriving at Robert’s home. There was inconclusive evidence of sexual torture.
Robert’s lawyer, Neil Beach, said “It is hard for me to believe the woman was tortured for three days if the medical examiner of North Carolina couldn’t find any indication of that…”
Robert Glass was charged with first-degree murder and held without bond. Search warrant affidavits released by police stated that Sharon had met Robert specifically with the intention of being killed, and the emails exchanged between the two detailed how Robert was going to kill Sharon. Because of this, Sharon’s death was considered to be deliberate and premeditated.
A gag order was issued by the judge to those directly involved in the case, but that didn’t stop the media from sensationalising the case and it led to calls for censorship of the internet.
After three years, on January 27, 2000, Robert Glass pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and six counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, relating to the pornographic material found on Roberts’s computer. He was sentenced to just over six years in prison. After serving only two years of his sentence, Robert Glass was set to be released from prison in March 2002. On February 20, 2002, two weeks before his release date, Robert had a heart attack and died. He was 51 years old.
Sources:
https://www.crimelibrary.org/notorious_murders/classics/sharon_lopatka/5.html
https://medium.com/@daisyaspencer4/a-fantasy-that-led-to-murder-sharon-lopatka-715faf2cb5dd
