Sam Maloney looks like he could be 21. In photos posted to Facebook, he's smiling, and so are the first-year university students surrounding him. His boyish face doesn't seem at all out of place during the 2015 frosh week celebrations captured in these images, and he looks happy and excited. Everyone does.
But Sam Maloney wasn't 21, despite what he reportedly told his fellow students while living in university residence and enrolled in a first-year computer science course at Western University in London, Ontario, a two-hour drive from Toronto.
In reality, Sam Maloney was a 35-year-old freelance developer and an adept self-taught programmer of encrypted and distributed computer systems. Though he maintained a room in residence, Maloney had a common-law wife, Melissa Facciolo, and a son. The family owned a house about a 15-minute drive from the school.
On December 23, 2016, Maloney, no longer enrolled in university, was shot dead by police in his home after he allegedly fired a crossbow bolt at officers during an early morning raid.
According to Facciolo's lawyer, Phil Millar, the police had a warrant to seize Maloney's computer. The police suspected Maloney of hacking a local cinema's website. The person responsible posted a manifesto called "The Declaration of the Independence of Atlantis" that reportedly railed against race mixing. Days before the hack, Maloney posted a rambling screed with a similar title to his Facebook page. According to Millar, the cinema was a client of Maloney's at the time.
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