Finnish school shooter, Pa. teen texted

NORRISTOWN, Pa., Nov. 13 (UPI) -- A troubled American teenager communicated online with the Finnish teen responsible for shooting eight people at his school, a prosecutor confirmed Tuesday.

But Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said Dillon Cossey, 14, of Plymouth Township, Pa., and Pekka-Eric Auvinen corresponded by instant messages, so the content cannot be retrieved, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Cossey pleaded guilty to planning a shootout at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in an agreement requiring him to get psychiatric treatment.

Cossey told his attorney he had been in touch with the Finnish teen, discussing video games and the 1999 Columbine school shootings in Colorado.

Also Tuesday, the Internet teen networking site MySpace.com said it is cooperating with Finnish authorities investigating the recent school massacre. But the company said in a statement that it knows of no connection to Auvinen because a MySpace page, which has been taken down, proved to have been put up by an imposter.

Auvinen fatally shot himself himself Nov. 7 after killing eight others at Tuusula High School in Jokela, Finland.

He plotted with US youth on Internet 

HELSINKI, Finland, Nov. 10 Police believe a teenager in Finland who killed eight classmates had contact over the Internet with a youth planning a similar event in the United States.

A spokesman for Helsinki's cyber crime department says Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, and Dillon Cossey of Pennsylvania probably were in contact over two MySpace groups, The Times of London reported Saturday.

Cossey, 14, was arrested on charges of planning an attack at a Philadelphia high school less than two weeks before Auvinen bought a gun to carry out his murder-suicide at his high school in Finland

Police say it seems the teens may have shared information on two MySpace groups devoted to the 1999 rampage at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Investigators are now trying to determine whether the massacre in Finland was in some way a copycat event or whether it resulted from an exchange of tips across the Internet.

Cyber-crime experts are worried that some of the abuses on the net committed by Islamic fanatics could become a model for other marginalized groups, The Times says.

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