A Pennsylvania teen was being held without bail after allegedly killing his high school classmate and then taking a selfie with the corpse – a photo that police said they used to charge him.
Authorities are holding Maxwell Marion Morton, 16, without bond at the Westmoreland County juvenile detention center in Jeannette on first-degree murder charges, homicide and possession of a firearm by a minor,
according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Ryan Mangan, 16, was found dead by his mother in their home last Wednesday with a gunshot wound to the face, authorities told the Tribune-Review. Mangan and Morton were juniors at Jeannette High School.
District attorney John Peck told the Tribune-Review that in his more than 30 years of prosecuting crimes getting a selfie of an alleged suspect with the dead victim was a first.
"I've never seen it before, but it was a key piece of evidence that led investigators to the defendant," Peck told the newspaper.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that authorities said in an affidavit that Mangan's mother contacted police after finding her son and they found a 9 mm shell casing. The affidavit stated that the next day another woman contacted police to say her son had saved a Snapchat photo he received from Morton.
Jeannette Police Sgt. Donald Johnston said the photo was a "selfie" Morton had taken with Mangan in the background in the same way he was found by authorities on Wednesday, noted the Post-Gazette.
The affidavit charged that Morton then sent two messages to the woman's son stating "Told you I cleaned up the shells" and "Ryan was not the last one." The affidavit went on to state that a 9 mm gun was found in Morton's room.
As social media has become more engrained in everyday life, its use in crime has also increased. In some incidents, criminals have recorded their crimes, only for them to be discovered by others, Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, told the Tribune-Review.
"This is really a question about criminal pathology rather than technology," said Rutledge, also a psychology and social media instructor at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California. "Perpetrators in need of validating their power and sense of self-importance have used all kinds of communications to 'brag' about criminal activities – from the local hangout to social media, like Facebook."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.