Bianca michelle devins tiktok video murder, brandon Clarke case
According to a lawsuit, New York prosecutors shared sex and murder video of a teen influencer.
A district attorney's office in upstate New York allegedly distributed child pornography of a teenage social media star — as well as video of her murder — to the press in violation of federal law, according to an explosive lawsuit filed Thursday.
Bianca Devins, a 17-year-old Utica resident on her way to college in July 2019, was butchered in her SUV after a concert by Brandon Clark, a friend she met online two months prior.
Clark installed a camera in his car to capture footage of the two having sex and the moment he slit her throat as she pleaded for her life.
The Cicero man, who was 21 at the time, also took selfies next to Devin's decomposing body and shared them online. He was later prosecuted by the Oneida District Attorney's Office, which used the videos and images as primary evidence in securing a guilty murder plea from him last year.
Devins's online popularity soared following her murder, and her mother Kimberly Devins had long feared the gruesome video of her daughter's final moments would be released and go viral online, according to the federal lawsuit filed in the Northern District of New York.
The mom was assured by two Oneida prosecutors that the videos would never be released, but to her "horror," she later discovered the office shared them with CBS 48 Hours, A&E, a confidant of Clark with a popular YouTube channel, and possibly MTV and Peacock TV, according to the suit.
Additionally, the suit claims that the office shared naked images of Bianca Devins that were taken from her phone after it was seized from the murder scene.
When confronted, Assistant District Attorneys Sarah DeMellier and Michael Nolan admitted to sharing the content with the DA's office, the suit states.
“Kimberly was devastated to learn that her daughter's murder and sex video had been made public.”
Kimberly Devins told The Post that her daughter's death was her "worst nightmare," which feels like a horror film on repeat two years later.
“Our family is compelled to relive the violence on social media as a result of the murderer's posts. It's intolerable that the people tasked with protecting Bianca – the District Attorney's Office – are instead engaging in child pornography, as if she has no right to privacy,” the mother stated.
“The district attorney's office has been rash and careless in who they share my daughter's private images and final moments with; in the meantime, they refuse to let her own family see the evidence.”
Typically, public officials withhold such imagery out of deference to the deceased's family members. Even if the evidence is deemed public, the harm associated with its release typically outweighs the public's interest in seeing it, prompting the majority of law enforcement agencies to withhold such information, or at the very least fight for it.
According to the lawsuit, the DA's office stated that they did not release the content in accordance with freedom of information laws, implying that they did so voluntarily.
It was unclear immediately whether the videos had been blurred or otherwise redacted.
Attorneys for Bianca Devins' estate claim the Oneida DA's office shared the content to curry favor following a negative portrayal of them in an unrelated case on NBC Dateline.
The Oneida County District Attorney's office was embarrassed by the media's portrayal of its prosecution of Kaitlyn Conley in connection with the murder of Dr. Mary Yoder and regretted not defending itself in the 2018 [NBC] Dateline feature on the case,” the suit alleges, calling the office's actions "unconscionable."
“According to information and belief, the District Attorney's Office saw Bianca Devins' murder as the ideal opportunity for media redemption, and as a result, courted the press and documentary filmmakers by enthusiastically turning over... illegal evidence that violated Bianca's privacy and rights, not to mention federal child pornography laws.”
When Kimberly Devins and her counsel confronted the office about it, they claimed that because Bianca Devins was 17 at the time of the murder, New York's child porn laws did not apply to her, and thus they had the right to disseminate her nude images and sex video.
Kimberly and her counsel stated that federal child pornography laws apply to depictions of children under the age of 18 and also notwithstanding the law that Bianca had a right to sexual privacy even after her death,” the suit states.
The argument fell on deaf ears, prompting the estate to sue the district attorney's office, District Attorney Scott McNamara, and the county, which did not respond to requests for comment.
To add insult to injury, Bianca Devins had already been a victim of child pornography at the age of 15 — a crime that sparked Clark's jealousy and contributed to her murder — and even in death, she couldn't be free of the trauma associated with the act, the suit claims.
The suit states that the defendants' actions were particularly cruel in light of the trauma Bianca had endured as a result of being a victim of child pornography beginning at the age of fifteen.
“It is unconscionable for Defendants to continue exploiting Bianca.”
Additionally, Kimberly Devins requested a copy of the videos in order to witness her daughter's murder, but has been repeatedly denied by the county, which the suit alleges is acting in retaliation.
“To date, Bianca's own mother has been barred from viewing the horrifying videos of her daughter's final moments on earth, despite the fact that she appears to be the only one,” the lawsuit states.
According to Carrie Goldberg, the attorney representing Bianca Devins' estate, Oneida prosecutors "must be held accountable for distributing snuff films and child pornography starring Bianca."
“It breaks my heart and perplexes my mind that a 17-year-old murder victim would be subjected to additional abuse by authorities who couldn't care less about her privacy. Bianca will be vindicated in this case,” Goldberg, whose firm specializes in sexual privacy violations, said.
“And the world should be made aware that it is illegal to possess sexual material belonging to Bianca – or anyone under the age of 18.”