Killing of Sharon Lopatka

The case inspired a 2008 movie, Downloading Nancy, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and had a wider release during 2009. Interviews with screenwriter Lee Ross indicate he was aware of the Lopatka case and found it "dark, horrible ... and intriguing".

Glass was found dead of a heart attack in prison on February 20, 2002, one month before he was to finish his state sentence and begin his federal sentence.

Glass pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and sexual exploitation charges on January 27, 2000, and was sentenced to 36–53 months in the Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution. He was also sentenced to an additional 27 months for federal charges of second-degree minor exploitation, to be served consecutively.

Robert "Bobby" Frederick Glass worked as a computer analyst for the government of Catawba County, North Carolina, for nearly 16 years. His tasks included programming tax rolls and keeping track of the amount of vehicle gas consumption in the county. For 14 years until May 1996, Glass was married to his wife Sherri, and the couple had two daughters and one son. Later during the marriage, Sherri noticed her husband was spending much more time on the computer than with her. Wary, she logged on to his email account and found several "raw, violent and disturbing" messages that he sent using the pseudonyms Toyman and Slowhand. As a result, the two separated. Lopatka first met Glass in August 1996 while in a pornographic chat room. Through email, Lopatka presented her fetish of being tortured to Glass, while he sent messages about how he would fulfill her fantasy. Close to 900 pages of emails between the two were discovered by police during the investigation of Lopatka's death.

On the morning of October 13, 1996, Lopatka informed her husband she was going to Georgia to meet acquaintances. She also left him a note that she would not be returning home and requested not to track down Glass. The note also read, "If my body is never retrieved, don't worry: know that I'm at peace." That morning, Lopatka drove her blue Honda Civic to Baltimore's Pennsylvania Station (a 45-minute drive) and had arrived on an Amtrak train at Charlotte, North Carolina, by 8:45 p.m. Glass drove with Lopatka in his pickup truck to his rural Lenoir, North Carolina mobile home, 80 miles from Charlotte.

North Carolina police staked out Glass's home for several days, but did not see Lopatka. On October 25, 1996, Judge Beverly T. Beal issued a search warrant on the home, and inside the house, investigators discovered items belonging to Lopatka. In addition, they also found drug and bondage equipment, child pornography magazines, a .357 Magnum pistol, and several computer disks, as well as trash and toys outside the trailer. A police officer then noticed a mound of soil 75 feet away from the home, before finding some bodyparts buried two and a half feet below. Glass was arrested at work following this discovery, charged with first-degree murder, and held without bond in the Caldwell County Jail. Glass also faced additional state and federal charges for the possession of child pornography. County investigator D. A. Brown said that Lopatka's body might have never been found had it been buried in the woods behind Glass's house.

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."

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 allegedly considered 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 Lopatka in Ellicott City, Maryland, in 1991, and relocated with him to a ranch-esque tract house in Hampstead, Maryland, during the early 1990s. The marriage was described by a classmate of Lopatka as a "way of breaking away", and her parents did not approve of it.

Sharon Rina Lopatka (September 20, 1961 – October 16, 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 gathered primarily from email messages. While Lopatka and Glass had initially planned a consensual homicide, Glass maintained that the death was an accident, which was corroborated by Lopatka's autopsy. However, police contended the death was intentional.