Sharon Lopatka and Autassassinophilia
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Not long ago, I wrote a piece about people who fall in love with serial killers. While doing research for that piece, I was inspired to look into other paraphilias, also known as abnormal sexual desires.
Autassassinophilia is perhaps more dangerous than hybristophilia. Somebody with autassassinophilia derives sexual pleasure or arousal at the thought of being killed. Not everybody with this kind of paraphilia wants to die, but the risk of death may seem appealing during sexual arousal.
In researching cases of autassassinophilia, I was able to find one prominent case. Sharon Loptaka’s death appears to be a case of autassassinophilia, but the details of the case and even the sentencing of the individual who killed her are controversial.
The Death of Sharon Lopatka
In 1996, 34-year-old Sharon Lopatka was an online business owner. She would offer psychic readings, love potions, and books about home decor through the mail. One of her businesses involved pornography, some involving unconscious women and other fetishes. She also sold worn undergarments. She did all of this under a false persona.
Sharon was married to a man named Victor. Apparently her parents did not support the marriage, and some news outlets describe the relationship as Sharon trying to break away from the normalcy of her life. In fact, Sharon had always been regarded as quite normal.
Some of Sharon’s communications with those she spoke to online expressed a desire to be tortured to death. Allegedly, Sharon had spoken with several men about fulfilling her fantasy, but at least one man backed out after realizing that this was something she was serious about.
She also corresponded with Robert Frederick Glass, a computer analyst who lived alone in North Carolina. Robert had been married to a woman named Sherri for 14 years and had three children, but his wife had noticed him spending more time on his computer. When she looked to see what he was doing, she noticed he had sent some disturbing and violent messages under pseudonyms, including Toyman. The couple separated.
Sharon and Robert met in a pornographic chat room in which she sent him messages about her fantasy of being tortured. Robert seemed interested in fulfilling that fantasy for her. The two exchanged about 900 pages of emails. In their messages, Sharon and Robert discussed her fantasies and he seemed eager to fulfill them.
On October 13, Sharon told her husband she was going to Georgia to meet some friends. She also left behind a note suggesting she was suicidal and also telling Victor not to hunt down the person who killed her. Victor reported the note to the police, who would go on to find six weeks of correspondence. Sharon had taken the train to North Carolina.
On October 16, Robert strangled Sharon with a rope. She’d spent three days with Glass by this point.
Police officers staked out the home where Robert lived for days. They’d seen no sign of Sharon and decided to move forward with a search warrant. It was not until October 25 that the warrant was issued and authorities could search the premises.
When police arrived at the scene, they found some of Sharon’s belongings in the home, strewn amongst bondage equipment, a gun, drugs, and child pornography.
Robert had buried Sharon’s body not far from his trailer. Her grave was not quite three feet deep. No evidence that Sharon had been severely wounded or injured before her death appeared to investigators. She’d died of asphyxiation, which was consistent with what Richard told them.
Police arrested Robert and charged him with first-degree murder. He was held without bond at Caldwell County Jail before pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and sexual exploitation in January of 2000. He claimed that he had not killed her intentionally but that it had been an accident while they engaged in sexual activity.
Glass was sentenced to 36 to 53 months in prison for Sharon’s murder in addition to 27 months for second-degree exploitation of a minor.
Robert Glass died of a heart attack about two years after he was sentenced, just a month before the end of his state prison sentence. He was just about to begin his federal sentence.
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