​BC Man’s Revenge Website Muses About Killing His Ex, But Law OK with It

The website Patrick Fox set up about his ex. Screenshot via website

If it wasn’t against the law, Patrick Fox says he would kill his ex-wife.

Fox (formerly called Richard Riess), a Burnaby, BC, resident, has been running a website dedicated to smearing his ex Desiree Capuano since 2014. It includes intimate photographs of her with friends and family, her personal information, and emails exchanges in which he admits to their son he’d have “no qalms” (sic) shooting her if doing so wouldn’t result in a lifetime prison sentence.

Capuano, 35, who is American and lives in Tuscon, Arizona, told VICE she has a court order, issued by an Arizona judge December 2015, prohibiting Fox from harassing her but because he lives in Canada he’s immune to it. She said the RCMP arrested him for criminal harassment in July 2015 but the Crown dropped the charges because there was no evidence he was a threat to her.

“Freedom of speech should not cover this and the fact that he’s in another country should not give him amnesty to do whatever he wants,” she said. “Unless he was in front of me with a gun, the Crown wouldn’t consider him to be a threat to me.”

Fox did not respond to request for comment from VICE but admitted to the CBC he’s behind the site.

He told the CBC he won’t take down the site until Capuano is “destitute and homeless.”

The pair, who met in Arizona, broke up in 2001, about a year and a half after their son was born. After years of custody battles and back-and-forth—the boy spent a 10-year stretch with Fox during which time Capuano said he cut off all contact with her—Capuano ended up with the child in 2011. Fox was deported back to Canada for a third time in 2013 (his ex said he’d been living in the US illegally).

Their relationship has always been tumultuous, Capuano told VICE, but has become increasingly hostile in the last few years.

Fox’s incredibly amateur website (seriously, it looks like it was made using clipart), features photographs of Capuano with headings like “My bedroom: This is where I get nasty, naked, and fuck my brains out…what little I have left, anyway, after all the weed” and “My bathroom.. where I shit and shower.” Many of the photos, which Capuano said were taken from Facebook and from their son, are innocuous household shots with no people in them; others feature Capuano kissing her boyfriend, or are of her younger son.

Intimate details about Capuano, including her medical marijuana ID card and police reports are also posted on the site.

Capuano said her ex’s obsession with her is “scary.”

In an email exchange obtained by VICE, Fox explains to Capuano that he wants to drive her to kill herself.

“My intention was to do everything in my power and capabilities to make your life as miserable as possible, and, if possible, to the point that you ultimately commit suicide. That would be my ultimate desire,” he wrote.

In the same thread, Fox refers to an exchange with their son, in which the teen ask his dad if he would shoot Capuano.

“I told him that murder is illegal and immoral and can result in spending the rest of one’s life in prison. And that the rest of my life in prison is not a risk I’m willing to take. But otherwise, no, I would have no qalms about it; that that is how much I despise you for the things you’ve done,” he wrote, adding “There is nothing illegal or threatening about wanting to harm someone—as long as you don’t act on it.” In yet another email, on which he copied their son, Fox said he would consider hiring someone to have sex with Capuano just to obtain pornographic photos of her.

Capuano told VICE her ex has claimed he’s crossed the Canada-US border illegally.

“The whole reason I’m doing this is because there are no laws preventing what he’s doing,” she said.

Toronto lawyer Gil Zvulony told VICE online smearing is fairly common and crosses both sides of the border. If Capuano wants to have the court order enforced in Canada, he said she’d have to hire a lawyer or contact local authorities—but they would have to assess what crimes are being committed.

“When you’re looking at criminal harassment, you have to look at the whole picture the whole context of how it was said,” he said. “To express hate for someone is not a crime.”

There’s also a possibility that Fox is breaching copyright laws by using her photos or committing defamation so there could be a civil case, however Capuano says she can’t afford an attorney.

Cheaper options could include contacting the server hosting the website to have it taken down or even asking Google them to remove the site from turning up during searches of her name, said Zvulony.

“She could also create her own website that would rank her higher than his.”

Capuano told VICE she’s speaking out because she thinks online harassment laws need to catch up.

“Just because he’s not here in person it doesn’t mean it’s not abuse.”

Fox told CBC he “doesn’t look good,” but thinks his side of the story “mitigates some of the nastiness.”

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.