As I've mentioned many times before, I use Google Alerts to pick up stories in the media about D&D and other roleplaying games. Last week, something strange happened with my alerts. On March 23rd, it sent me an alert about Christopher Gribble, a participant in a horrible home invasion/murder incident that happened in October of 2009. The article from the New Hampshire Union Leader seemed to suggest that Gribble's involvement in Dungeons & Dragons was one of the things that kept his homicidal impulses at bay:



This could have been a first. I mean, we've seen an impressive decline in articles that attempt to connect D&D with criminal behavior, but this could be one of the first times a news story has directly suggested that playing the game could have the opposite effect for someone with extreme violent impulses..

When I clicked the link, however, I discovered that the article didn't contain any of the text found in the alert. I did a search for the text on Google, and found a link to the same article:



I had no luck with the Google cache, either, and an email to the reporter has yet to be answered. I'm guessing that the article had a quick revision of some sort before I got to view it. This isn't anything new - the same thing happened at SFGate during the coverage of the Columbine massacre, and I'm sure that's not the only time an article has gotten a substantial revision.

If anyone happened to see a copy of the original article, or knows how I can see it for myself, please contact me. Thanks!

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