A woman who was attacked by a man she met on Match.com is suing the dating website for failing to alert her of the dangers that come with an online match.
Mary Kay Beckman, 50, met Wade Ridley on the site in 2010 but when she ended their courtship after eight days, Mr Ridley stabbed her with a butcher knife 10 times and stomped on her head.
She filed a lawsuit against Match.com on Friday, seeking $10million in damages, alleging that the company does not do enough to keep violent offenders off the website.
The woman told KVVU-TV how she first encountered Mr Wade online in September 2010.
The mother-of-two had been on the website for two months when the match was made and she quickly discovered that he wasn't a good fit for her.
But when she broke off the romance, he reacted violently.
'He broke into my garage,' she told the local news website about the attack on the night of January 21, 2011.
The man stabbed her 10 times and when the knife broke, he stomped on her head.
'When the police arrested him, he said he wasn't there to hurt me. He was there to kill me. His intent was to kill me that night.'
The victim, who is a real estate agent in Las Vegas, was hospitalized for months after the attack.
She has undergone three head surgeries to repair her broken jaw, preserve her eyesight and remove part of her skull to the tune of $400,000 and counting
Less than a month after the January attack, while Beckman was still in the hospital, Ridley met Anne Marie Simenson, 62, through Match.com in Arizona and stabbed her to death with a machete and a butcher knife before getting away with her car, jewelry and electronics.
When police captured him shortly after, he told officers that he wanted Beckman dead for 'mistreating' him and was surprised that she had survived.
Ridley was convicted of murdering his victim in Phoenix. He committed suicide in 2012 while serving a 70-year sentence for the killing.
'I struggled a lot thinking why did she die and why did I live,' Beckman said.
Though grateful that she survived, Beckman wants the website to more prominently include a disclaimer of the dangers associated with using the website.
'God saved me that night for a reason,' she said.
'I shouldn't be here today. It's my mission and goal to save someone from being hurt or help someone make a different decision with their online dating choices.'
The company, based in Dallas, Texas said they are shocked by what happened to Beckman but offered their assurances that they do indeed warn users of the risk involved.
'What happened to Mary Kay Beckman is horrible but this lawsuit is absurd,' Match.com said in a statement.
'The many millions of people who have found love on Match.com and other online dating sites know how fulfilling it is. And while that doesn't make what happened in this case any less awful, this is about a sick, twisted individual with no prior criminal record, not an entire community of men and women looking to meet each other.'
Beckman's attorney, Marc Saggese, told KAS-TV that Match.com, where his client and Ridley had met, is 'absolutely not safe,' even though subscribers who pay $30 a month to use the service think it is.
'The basis of the lawsuit is the advertising that is utilized by Match.com, lulling women and men into a false sense of security,' Saggese said.
The woman claims that the dating site misled her into thinking that she would end up in 'a stable and loving relationship with another member.' Instead, she ended up with a man 'whose intentions are not to find a mate, but to find victims to kill or rape,' her complaint alleges.
Besides $10million, Beckman wants Match.com to post a disclaimer on the site similar to the warnings on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages,
'They don't say one in five users are part of an attempted murder,' she told reporters. 'They don't tell you people are missing.'
June 09, 2013, 08:26:13 PM