Death of Sharon Lopatka

Sharon Rina Lopatka (September 20, 1961 – October 1996) was an Internet entrepreneur in Hampstead, Maryland, United States, who was killed in a case of apparent consensual homicide. Lopatka was tortured and strangled to death on October 16, 1996, by Robert "Bobby" Frederick Glass, a computer analyst from North Carolina. The apparent purpose was mutual sexual gratification. The case was reportedly the first where a police department arrested a murder suspect with evidence primarily gathered from email messages.

Sharon Lopatka was the first of four daughters born to Orthodox Jewish parents Mr. and Mrs. Abraham J. Denburg. They were members of the Beth Tfiloh Congregation, Abraham being a cantor at the synagogue. Raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Sharon was seen by her classmates "as normal as you can get", wrote The News & Observer, and was a part of sport teams and her school's choir club. Graduating from Pikesville High School in 1979, Lopatka married construction worker Victor in Ellicott City, Maryland, in 1991, and moved with him to a ranch-esque tract house in Hampstead, Maryland, in the early 1990s. The marriage was described by a classmate of Lopatka as a "way of breaking away", and her parents did not support it.

In 1995 Lopatka started doing online advertising businesses from her Ellicott City home in order to make additional money. The first website she hosted, "House of Dion", was for selling home decor guides by mail for seven dollars. An advertisement on the website read, "Home decorating secrets seen in the posh homes from the New England states to the Hollywood homes can now be yours. Never published before! Quick easy ways to decorate your home."

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