Imagine for a moment that you are twelve years old. Things in your life are in a constant flux. Money isn’t easy to come by, not for you and not for your parents, and the problems this causes in your young life are just starting to register. Add to that a mix of hormones and social pressure, and what you end up with is a cocktail of adolescent angst. So, you seek an escape. You go online and start playing a game, meet some new friends. What should have just been a fun way to spend an afternoon, maybe forget real life for a while, would end up opening the door for murder.
Gabriel cheated and I will make him pay for all his actions; as he said that there is Heaven and Hell, there in Hell is he; I will find him there and take revenge again.
-Alleged last communication of Daniel Petry
Daniel Petry was by all accounts a messed up kid. Even at 16 he had a history of violent outbursts so bad that his parents had sent him to several psychiatrists throughout Brazil. These sessions didn’t go well and Daniel eventually stopped going to them as well as school. (There is some speculation that he was also institutionalized for a brief period around this time, however these claims haven’t been substantiated.)
No longer in school and unemployed, Petry spent most of his time playing the online multiplayer game Tibia. There he would spend hours upon hours grinding levels against monsters, making trades and interacting with other players. One of these players was a local boy named Gabriel Kuhn. Gabriel was 12 and an avid player. While Tibia was considered a “free to play” game, meaning it didn’t cost anything to initially play, it was loaded with micro-transactions and its own in-game currency. The currency, “coins”, was used to buy anything from full characters to in game pets.
Kuhn and Petry would play together on a private server set up by Kuhn. After one of their gaming sessions, Gabriel explained that he wanted to buy an item from Tibia’s shop but he didn’t have the coins. He asked Daniel to borrow 20,000 coins, the equivalent of 1.75 USD or around 8.79 BRL, with the promise to pay him back in a few days. Petry agreed but when it came time for Gabriel to pay him back, instead he banned Daniel from the server.
This act filled Daniel Petry with a murderous rage. That history of violence came rushing back into his present day and he found himself at Gabriel Kuhn’s door. The boy was alone but Daniel was able to convince him to open the door and let him in so they could patch things up. Instead, Petry began beating Kuhn and violently sodomized the young boy. As he lay bleeding and sobbing on his bed, Daniel mocked him. Assaulted and ridiculed, the child’s mind ran to the only protection it had known. Kuhn stated he would tell his mother what Petry had done.
This incited Daniel again who unplugged Gabriel’s computer and began to choke the boy with it while sexually abusing him again. Once he thought Khun was dead, he realized that he would have to hide the body. Petry tried to force Gabriel into a crawlspace but the door wasn’t wide enough. Thinking quickly, Daniel found a hacksaw and began to cut at Khun’s torso.
Then Gabriel regained consciousness and began to scream from the pain. Mutilating his victim’s body excited Petry and he sawed Gabriel in half while still alive. He also carved symbols from Tibia into Gabriel’s body. Still unable to fit the body into the crawlspace, he left it there in the hall for Gabriel’s brother to find later that day.
It didn’t take the police long to track down Petry, they uncovered his argument with Gabriel on Tibia. Daniel didn’t show remorse, or any emotion really, as he recounted in detail to the horrified police just what he did. The only time Petry reacted with anything other than contempt for Kuhn was when the police brought up the sexual assault, at which point he angrily lashed out at the insinuation of homosexuality.
In a gross miscarriage of justice, the Brazilian court only sentenced Daniel Petry to 3 years in a juvenile detention facility. He was released in 2010 and from then on all reports indicate he just disappeared. No online presence, no lasting consequences for murdering a child.
Petry, was by many indicators, a sexual sadist. He was aroused at the act of beating Gabriel, sawing into him while he was still alive. A sadist enjoys hurting others, not always in a physical way. But the fact that Petry raped his victim twice indicates it was the suffering that turned him on. His past history of explosive outbursts may also indicate psychopathy, as would him escalating a small slight to the point of murder. If Petry is still alive today, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to find he has other victims.
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(If you enjoyed reading about the Daniel Petry feel free to check out other killers in my Human Monsters category.)
CONTENT WARNING!!
Some of the listed sources contain full crime scene photos that have not been obscured. Another word of warning, should you choose to search out more about Gabriel Kuhn’s death or Daniel Petry himself, you will come across these grisly photos. I know some people cannot handle these things in such detail, so google at your own risk.
Sources
The Reignmaker (See Content Warning)
Sadistic Personality Disorder and Comorbid Mental Illness
12 Years Old & Tortured To Death Over In Game Currency
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