Backpage co-founder takes own life days before trial

5 min readAug 9, 2023

Along with Michael Lacey, 74-year-old Jim Larkin was one of the co-founders of Backpage.com. Lacey and Larkin founded the website as a craigslist competitor, but Backpage really came into its own when craigslist shuttered its adult/erotic services section in 2010. The thinly veiled prostitution ads made Backpage millions of dollars a month. Federal investigators were finally able to shut down Backpage in 2018. Lacey and Larkin were both charged with facilitating prostitution, money laundering, and conspiracy. Both men went to trial in 2021, but a mistrial was declared after prosecutors kept referring to sex trafficking, which Lacey and Larkin were never charged with.

The new trial was set to take place tomorrow, Tuesday, August 8th. Last Monday, July 31st, Jim Larkin took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The trial has since been rescheduled for August 29th.

I am not here to celebrate his death. I would have preferred he stood trial for his crimes, as the many victims of Backpage’s flippant disregard for human rights deserve justice.

Larkin’s death didn’t make many headlines outside of his home state of Arizona. Most of the news articles I found, discussed how great of a journalist he was when he founded the Phoenix New Times newspaper back in the 1970s. Larkin and Lacey would go on to have an alt-news Empire after buying Village Voice Media.

Many of the news articles I found lauded Larkin for being an advocate of free speech. Libertarian-leaning Reason.com even called him a ‘free speech warrior’. Then again, what would you expect from the party of guns, weed, and child brides? But, I digress.

Larkin and Lacey would always cry free speech when some politician or law enforcement agent would accuse Backpage of facilitating prostitution or child trafficking. They would also hide behind the archaic section 230 of the Communication Decency Act of 1996. The CDA and section 230 essentially says website owners aren’t responsible for the content their users publish. In this instance, ads for women and girls being held in sexual slavery.

Backpage claimed it had stringent safeguards in place to prevent children from being exploited on their website. This interview I did with a Backpage victim from 2012 would tell you otherwise. Not only that, it’s been well documented, Backpage would edit incoming ads to make them less noticeable to law enforcement.

Backpage also touted itself as a law enforcement resource, as it supposedly made it easier for police to find victims who were being trafficked. However, in what I called the Backpage Paradox, Backpage also made it insanely easier for anyone to become a pimp. All anyone needed was a few bucks to place an ad and an unwilling participant to be advertised.

Sex workers who weren’t being trafficked said that Backpage made it safer for them to screen clients. Yet, it didn’t stop sex workers from being abused or murdered by johns. There was even a Backpage serial killer who murdered four Backpage escorts in the Detroit area. And he was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the murder and assaults of Backpage escorts. I used to refer to Backpage as a take-out menu for rapists and killers.

In 2015, Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer was subpoenaed to appear before Congress. Ferrer decided not to show up.

In 2018, Backpage was seized by the federal government. 93 indictments were handed down against seven people who allegedly helped run Backpage. This included Jim Larkin. Carl Ferrer’s name was left off the indictment because he had already pleaded guilty in three states to money laundering and conspiracy to facilitate prostitution. Ferrer also testified that Backpage was essentially a sexual slavery supermarket. In 2015, the major credit card companies stopped letting their cards be used to pay for Backpage ads. In response to that, Ferrer testified he manipulated credit card charges after the ban.

“I worked with my co-conspirators to find ways to fool credit card companies into believing that Backpage-associated charges were being incurred on different websites, as well as route Backpage money through seemingly unrelated entities, and to use companies which processed cryptocurrencies.”

Ferrer’s testimony kills and free speech argument about Backpage.

And speaking of free speech, let’s get back to Jim Larkin. Larkin was what’s called today a free speech absolutist, or so he claimed. It didn’t matter to him that Backpage’s First Amendment rights were more important than the rights of women and girls not to be sold into sexual servitude. If you’re wondering what amendment that violates, it’s the 13th. Look it up sometime. As the saying goes, your rights end where mine begin.

I guess you can say Larkin was a pioneer in being a ‘free speech’ troll, laying the groundwork for today’s absolutists like Elon Musk. While it may be ‘free speech’, it’s not the best idea to allow white supremacists and people with questionable opinions about age of consent laws to proliferate on your platform. Just like it was supposedly ‘free speech’ to allow women and children to be trafficked on Backpage.

I’m also curious as to why Larkin was in possession of a firearm. Under federal law, someone who is awaiting trial for a felony is prohibited from owning a firearm. Then again, it is Arizona, where the gun laws make Texas jealous. That and the fact that Larkin was a rich white dude. I was about to say he must have thought that laws didn’t apply to him, but his most recent action shows otherwise. I wonder if the police will investigate who provided him the gun.

While I am sympathetic to people who suffer from mental illness and think about hitting their own personal off switch, this was not the case here. This was an admission of guilt. In my opinion, Larkin knew he was going to go away for a long time, and decided to take the coward’s way out.

(Sources)

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Backpage co-founder takes own life days before trial

Written by Trench Reynolds

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