Categories
incels misogyny murder

Murderer of 6-year-old girl described by friends as an “incel” who “lived without hope”

Faye Marie Swetlik

Another incel murder. Another very sad story.

Six-year-old Faye Marie Swetlik vanished from her front yard on Feb. 10th 2020; her body was found three days later in a shallow grave not far from her Cayce, S.C. home. Overwhelming DNA and other evidence makes clear that her killer was 30-year-old Coty Scott Taylor, a neighbor who took his own life several days after the murder.

Taylor, the only suspect in her murder, was said by friends to be an incel.

From TheState.com:

The 30-year-old man who killed a 6-year-old Cayce girl was part of an online group known to hate women and have other misogynistic views, one of his friends said. …

A friend who had known Taylor for five years told police Taylor described himself as “asexual” and an “incel” …

Taylor was an online gamer, and the friend often played League of Legends with him. Taylor was “a loner who constantly had a negative outlook on life,” the friend said.

The friend also said Taylor once told him he “lived without hope.” Taylor never talked about women, and the friend said the one time he did show interest in a former co-worker, Taylor was too scared to ever talk to her. …

[A former roommate] said that Taylor was very “weak” and could’ve only “committed a horrible act if he felt he would have had people behind him encouraging him such as a chat room online.”

While the evidence against Taylor is overwhelming; this comment is speculation on his roommate’s part; it’s unknown what site or sites Taylor may have used.

For more details on the case, see here, here, or here.

RIP, Faye.

Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or thoughts or suicide, please get help. If you’re in the US, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or click here for more info.

Follow me on Mastodon.

Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.

We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.

24 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

That’s so horrible. I fear we’re only going to see more of this, as well as more hate crimes in the coming years.

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
3 years ago

“incel” and “asexual” seem mutually exclusive to me no ?

In any case, welcome to more white people terrorism :/

Lumipuna
Lumipuna
3 years ago

Maybe he was using the word asexual in a weird way, or perhaps his friends misinterpreted something he said as referring to asexuality. This whole thing seems like a game of broken telephone.

However, as has been noted before, incels don’t always even pretend to suffer from fundamental sexlessless. It’s more generally a community for men who feel like failures and/or like expressing hatred of women.

TacticalProgressive
TacticalProgressive
3 years ago

@Ohlmann

“Incel” and “Asexual”; are not even remotely synonymous with each other.

Asexuals are people with innately low or nonexistent sexual drives, sexual interests or sexual attractions.

Incels are self-loathing, misogynistic, racist, selfish, cultish, narcissistic, ultra-conservative, sadistic, mildly evangelistic, sociopathic, and resentful, male chauvinist who feel entitled to women, their bodies and sex.

The first is an immutable aspect of a persons sexuality, the other is a couscous and toxic attitude, mindset, ideology and behavior.

rusalka
rusalka
3 years ago

@ Ohlmann: I get what you mean cause the general narrative of incels is that their life’s failures are caused by women not “giving” them sex. But I can very well see an asexual, socially repressed guy being attracted to the movement. Sex is an inescapable topic in society and it’s not uncommon for asexuals to feel frustration about that (as in: constantly being confronted by it and feeling left ostrazised by their lack of interest in something that society seems obsessed by – I’m not asexual myself, but I do count myself into the more demisexual spectrum, so I kinda get the pressure).

Additionally masculinity is equated with a huge sex drive. Ergo: Young man, feeling no sexual attraction ends up questioning his masculinity, finds an incel forum, starts blaming women for his woes.

Incels just offer the ultimate simple answer for every self-doubt: It’s women’s fault.

All that being said. What’s truly frightening and heartbreaking is that a little girl lost her life to the abhorence that this online community is and I bet my ass that it will be downplayed as an isolated case of a psychologically “ill” person. Isn’t it strange how hatred of women is filtered into that category again and again, even when they meet online and spur each other on, till even someone who’d otherwise be incapable of it goes and kills a child. And what’s more sickening is that something tells me he literally chose a child cause he probably thought it would be easier…

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
3 years ago

@rusalka : hatred, the easiest solution to everything. Find a scapegoat who’se in charge of every problem, a proud tradition dating of at least back from the ancient age (-2.400 BC at least)

One of the problem with the “he was just ill” problem is that, even if it was true (dubious at best), then the trigger still need to be examined. Some people are very quick to say some people are powder keys, without asking themselves if they could not, you know, not light their fuse.

Megi Stardust
Megi Stardust
3 years ago

A six year old child is dead. I don’t give a flying fuck about the perp’s
Feelings.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
3 years ago

That poor baby, and her family.

Big Titty Demon
Big Titty Demon
3 years ago

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or thoughts or suicide, please get help.

You know, how, though? Someone I know is definitely struggling that way, but he keeps going back to the person who makes it worse, self-medicating (which inevitably makes it much worse), and refusing all professional help.

I can’t be his off-brand therapist, because I have my own problems towards that direction and I will never again put someone else’s well-being above my own. Every offer of trying to hook him up with professional help or even just known therapies (anxiety control techniques, getting an emotional support animal, etc) that help is shot down. How, then, do we help?

rusalka
rusalka
3 years ago

@Ohlmann: This makes me think about how hating women is a proven entryway to extremism, yet it’s barely spoken about. The last two racist terrorist attacks in Germany have been done by two men who were both “incels” and expressed their hate of women online and in manifests, yet it was barely mentioned other than in sidenotes about their respective mental states…

On that note: In both cases “psychological” issues were discussed A LOT, whereas just two weeks ago a young man killed three women in a shopping mall, wounding several more and the only issue that’s being discussed is Islamism as a motive… Even though that guy had been coming straight from the psychatric ward and not a word is being issued on how he specifically targeted women…

It just feels to me like this little girl won’t get any real justice since the murderers potential involvement in incel culture doesn’t seem to be investigated. He’s dead, can’t hurt anyone else. Case closed. But I think everyone who reads this page has several ideas what the exchange between this guy and his “community” might have looked like. It pains me that out there some people may possibly have instigated the murder of this child and get to go on with their lives like it’s no big deal…

Cygnia
3 years ago

I’m asexual and I’m very much not a murdering scumbag.

Of course, I’m also a woman, so that probably doesn’t count in these incel assholes’ eyes

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
3 years ago

@Big Titty Demon : you cannot psychologically help someone who don’t want the help. Which is an extremely hard pill to swallow.

I hope that the general living condition of your friend will improve. People are more receptive to admitting they have a problem when things are well otherwise.

Else, I hope you will be here to stop your friend in case of an attempt 🙁

Elaine The Witch
Elaine The Witch
3 years ago

Please tell me this sick fuck didn’t rape that little girl before he killed her.

Dormousing_it
Dormousing_it
3 years ago

On the issue of getting help with psychological problems: I can’t help but think of Adam Lanza, who perpetrated the Sandy Hook school shooting. His mother tried to get him help for years. Then, when his doctors prescribed medication, he didn’t want to take it, and his mother acquiesced to him. It’s just so tragic and ironic – he came from an affluent family, and had plenty of resources at his disposal, but it didn’t matter in the end.

I know this is a different situation, but maybe this guy was one of those people who are resistant to the suggestion of getting help. After all, one of the tenets of toxic masculinity is that real men don’t need help with their feelings – if they even have any. They’re rugged individualists, and all that.

Masse_Mysteria
Masse_Mysteria
3 years ago

This is so horrible that my brain just kind of skipped all of that and focused on why asexuals have to be brought into this. But him having been a neighbour is a touch I’ll be thinking every time people pretend all the threats come from outside whatever community they themselves live in.

@Lumipuna & re: incels and asexuality in general

However, as has been noted before, incels don’t always even pretend to suffer from fundamental sexlessless. It’s more generally a community for men who feel like failures and/or like expressing hatred of women.

Considering that being asexual doesn’t mean you can’t have sex or can’t enjoy it, I can’t see why one couldn’t be an asexual incel. It would seem more likely that he’ used the term to mean something else (e.g. low libido, sexual inexperience) or thought that his asexuality was a result of women being terrible (if they were better, he’d be attracted to them!) or some such.

Surplus to Requirements
Surplus to Requirements
3 years ago

Keep these things in mind as well:

  1. The US is a sexist, misogynistic, patriarchal society steeped in toxic masculinity, in which having a wife or girlfriend confers status.
  2. Being ace wouldn’t affect the desire for a girlfriend as a status symbol one whit.
  3. Incels’ complaints, though they rarely explicitly articulate this, seem to stem to a great degree from their inability to acquire this status symbol, as much or more than they stem from an actual starvation for intimacy.

So, an ace incel being angry enough to get violent is entirely plausible. He was denied access to a status accoutrement that “everyone else”, or near to it, gets to have.

Of course, the real solution to this isn’t going to be playing whack-a-mole with one more online incel forum; it’s going to require changing the norms of society to where people aren’t other people’s status symbols. But I don’t see any way this happens fast, or easily …

Chris Oakley
Chris Oakley
3 years ago

If the bastard wasn’t already dead I’d say we should lock him up and throw away the key.

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
3 years ago

@Surplus : there’s also the more general issue that white males, especially americans, feel that confrontation, then violence is a legitimate answer to ridiculously minor stuff. In the end, I don’t really give a fuck if that specific moronic killer killed her because he wanted a girlfriend, or because he thought she was african, or because he thought she was a democrat ; all three are sadly realistic reasons to die in the USA, and you probably can find even more stupid reason for that.

Now, a lot of people think that actual gun control would fix that. But it won’t ; if that category of asshole want to kill someone and don’t have an easy way to get an assault rifle, they will use a car, a knife, an old pistol, or rat poison to do the deed.

The core of the problem is that white peoples are (A) very, very entitled and (B) don’t have a good scale of what you should use violence for. And fixing (B) is absolutely vital.

GSS ex-noob
GSS ex-noob
3 years ago

Lots of people are lonely, depressed, and not having sex.

Most of them manage not to murder a small child.

All my sympathy goes to Faye’s family and friends. None of it for the murderer.

White People: Screwing Things Up For All Of Recorded History.

Katherine the Adequate
Katherine the Adequate
3 years ago

I usually come here for a laugh at misogynists’ expense. There’s nothing to laugh at today.

RIP, Sweet Little One.

ribblefizz
ribblefizz
3 years ago

@dormousing it:
Somewhat different situation, but my family has struggled with a seriously mentally ill member for decades. Getting him help was almost impossible, primarily because he didn’t want it. Maintaining his eligibility for disability (and thus insurance) was another hurdle. The antipsychotics that worked the best for him also caused tardive dyskinesia, which made people “look at him,” which exacerbated his lingering feelings of paranoia.

The closest we ever got to success was when he was in a medical penal unit after stabbing someone in the throat due to his delusions/hallucinations. He was found incompetent to stand trial, so he went to a state facility where he stayed for seven years. He was eventually stabilized through a combination of meticulous routine, regular therapy, and daily medications, which were given by injection if he wouldn’t take them voluntarily. After seven years he was improved enough to be considered competent so he was transferred back to the local jail facility to await his final “trial”/hearing/whatever… with no medical follow up, no meds, no force-meds order, no routine, no nothing. By the time his court date came around he was right back where he’d started from. (And he did go on to stab another person, and went back to prison for four years – no medical intervention this time, though.)

It’s Sisyphean, and the more time I spend watching it play out, the more convinced I am that it’s intentionally designed that way. It just doesn’t seem possible for one system to fail so comprehensively in so many different situations, and to fail REDUNDANTLY (where even if you accidentally get help in one place, there’s another hurdle lined up that will effectively prevent you from maximizing any resources) without it being deliberate.

The shadow of mental illness is bad enough by itself, but in the US we seem determined not to do a damn thing about it – because ‘muh freedom’ – unless and until someone gets killed or seriously injured. (Or, of course, a wealthy and/or powerful person is bothered.) And the people like my family member, this guy, Adam Lanza, Elliot Rogers, all the rest of them – the longer they go unfettered, the more people they reach with their poison. Feels hopeless.

oncewasmagnificent
oncewasmagnificent
3 years ago

I read an Ex Cell Ent book on how men from a background of family violence can move through more sexual and family violence right into downright overt terrorism.

Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists by Joan Smith. She’s a reporter who’s had direct experience of terrorist bombings. Reading her step by step descriptions of both their lives and their crimes is a real slog, quite distressing at times. But she makes a pretty good argument for her thesis … that (1) there are far too many people worthy of police/security watchfulness so many are incorrectly overlooked or incorrectly risk-assessed. Their online activities in radical terrorist discussions and/or misogynist ramblings are not rated according to their existing level of danger to others. (2) given (1), one way to reduce the burden and increase the chances of successfully diverting or preempting many kinds of attacks is to identify who on the terrorist watch lists is a victim and/or perpetrator of domestic & sexual violence.
Which brings us to …

(3) the only way this can work is that police and courts must take reports of sexual and domestic violence seriously enough that there is a record of that behaviour. (One of the most distressing things in reading the book is seeing how many of these men (and a couple of women) were overlooked by specialist police forces partly because reports of their domestic criminality was the _only_ serious behaviour, so, naturally there was no report, no warning, no indication at all, in public records.

Ana
Ana
3 years ago

So now I’m a terrorist and maybe a child killer because I’m asexual? Got it.
 
“Normal” people commit acts of violence (kidnapping, rape, sexual assault) for sex, but the problem is someone being asexual. Yep, I really got it.
 
Being a fucking Incel =/= asexuality. These weirdos want to have sex, but they don’t how to have it. They want to be in action. Aces, demi and grey sexuality people kind of not, and we won’t murder anyone because of that.

Elaine The Witch
Elaine The Witch
3 years ago

@Ana

everyone here knows your not evil or broken or weird for being asexual. Your identity is valid and beautiful. Just because so many people don’t understand it doesn’t change the fact. You are normal and there is nothing wrong with you.