sharing it under the handle NightNeko3, again with no personal details. The “Neko” reference in both profiles suggested they were affiliated.
Searching for similar social profiles, we found a Pinterest account also registered as NightNeko3,
giving the real name Morgan Treacy. Our team at Storyful quickly located a Facebook account
for Morgan Treacy, a teenager whose posts were geolocated to Ballston Spa in New York State.
Morgan described the video on Twitter as her mother’s perspective of the explosion. Knowing that a prestigious marathon like Boston’s would likely track athlete times, we checked
the surname “Treacy” on Boston Athletic Association’s registrant page. A single result was
returned - Jennifer Treacy, age 45-49, from New York State. Jennifer Treacy’s time split shows
her passing the 40 kilometer mark at 2:38 p.m. but failing to cross the finish line 2 kilometers
later. Jennifer was averaging 10 minutes per mile, placing her in the vicinity of the blast at
2:50 p.m., when the bombs exploded.
The social people search website Spokeo.com gave us an entry for Jennifer L. Treacy, 47, with
an address at Ballston Spa, New York. LinkedIn also gave us a profile for Jennifer Treacy from
Ballston Spa, who is employed by the New York State Department of Health.
One final piece of evidence confirmed our investigation. A man named Gerard Quinn is a
Facebook friend of Morgan Treacy, who we were now almost 100 percent sure was Jennifer’s
daughter. Quinn previously commented on family videos posted by Morgan. So there was a
56
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents