William Melchert-Dinkel, suicide chat room troll, sentenced
William Melchert-Dinkel had a perverse obsession with impersonating women while trolling internet chat rooms ad urging despondent people to commit suicide "for the thrill of the chase." 
Melchert-Dinkel posed as a woman online while urging others to commit suicide.
And he could have been sentenced Wednesday to 30 years for his role in the deaths of an Englishman in 2005, and and Canadian in 2008. Instead, he's been ordered to jail for a year, with a 6 1/2 years stayed sentence, and 30 years of probation.
Rice County District Court Judge Thomas Neuville is also ordered Melchert-Dinkel to present himself for two additional days behind bars every year on the anniversary of each of his victims' deaths, for the next 10 years.
It's not enough, but maybe it'll deter the guy from trying to fulfill his twisted fantasies.
The former nurse from Faribault was found guilty in March of helping persuade Briton Mark Drybrough and Canadian Nadia Kajouji to kill themselves. Drybrough was 32 when he hanged himself after struggling with depression. Kajouji had suffered a miscarriage before she jumped into a frozen river in 2008 when she was 18 years old.
Both had been in contact with Melchert-Dinkel, 48. He even urged Kajouji to hang herself while he watched online. And investigators worry that he may have urged at least 10 others to kill themselves, all while using online aliases including "Li Dao," "Cami" and "Falcon Girl."
This man is not a free speech hero.
And he might have gotten away with it, were it not for a couple of nosey and persistent British women who contacted Minnesota authorities after they found a a despondent friends of theirs had encountered one of Melchert-Dinkel's aliases online.
Melchert-Dinkel's attorney, Terry Watkins, tried to excuse his client's deranged virtual fantasies as "babbling" exercises in free speech rights.
Kajouli's mother read a statement in court that was at first heartbreaking, then filled with anger.
What Melchert-Dinkel did was vile, offensive and most importantly, illegal. He knowingly chose to mastermind the deaths of some and destroy the lives of many. In doing so he also completely shattered a trust that society has bestowed upon those in his profession. Most profound, he would have us believe that it is his right to do so. He would have us believe that some members of society are disposable, but Nadia was not disposable. None of our children are disposable.
At sentencing, Judge Neuville described the crimes in starker terms.
"You were stalking and soliciting people to die," he said. "You knew it was wrong."
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