A True Crime YouTuber, who goes by the handle ‘Zav Girl’, issued an apology video after being heavily criticized for putting up the autopsy photo of a murdered boy on her Patreon account and charging people to see it.
Zav Girl, who has over 87k subscribers on YouTube, has been following the case of 11-year-old Gannon Stauch, who was killed by his stepmother Letecia Stauch in January 2020.
Letecia was said to stabbed Gannon 18 times and shot him, wherein, he died from the gunshot wound and skull fracture. She was then sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on two counts of murder in May this year.
The YouTuber was said to have posted the autopsy photos of Gannon on the membership-based platform Patreon – which she got access to through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request during the trial – and was charging $3 for access.
Gannon’s father called the YouTuber’s action “evil” and “unacceptable,” during an interview with host Brian Entin on NewsNation.
“The word I use to describe it is evil, Brian. The world got enough information from the trial to have every discussion they want to have. Why do we need to go have a Freedom of Information (FOI) request and pay for this kind of information and then dishonor my son by putting his photos out like that?” Gannon’s father said.
Following the backlash, Zav Girl has issued an apology video on her YouTube channel.
“I want to apologize to everyone I’ve hurt, but especially Gannon’s family,” the YouTuber said. “I’ve been doing some major soul-searching and reflecting.”
In the video, she explained how she got hold of the documents she had including the autopsy photos but said that she didn’t request it and was only interested in the interviews with Letecia.
She said that she believes that every photo that she has shown was already shown during the televised trial and other YouTube channels that live streamed the trial.
“I didn’t think any of the images were new, these photos were already public,” she said.
Zav Girl stated that what she posted on Patreon was not meant to be shared outside the platform and intently not posted on YouTube, which is a public platform.
“I chose to put the video on Patreon because [of] the sensitive nature of the evidence,” she added. “Putting the evidence behind a paywall meant added security and I naively thought they wouldn’t be made public.”
She then clarified that it was not her intention to mock the deceased and assured that her Patreon account has been shut down and she was not sharing any of the content anywhere, anymore.
Patreon has deleted the video along with Zav Girl’s account following the incident, “We removed ‘Zav Girl’ from Patreon for violations of our Community Guidelines for Violent and Graphic Content. To create a safe environment for users, Patreon does not allow content glorifying or promoting violence of any kind,” a spokesperson said to Newsweek.
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