True crime or false?
A spine-tingling TikTok video had true crime fans convinced they’d witnessed two simultaneous crimes on camera — only for this theory to be debunked by a social media sleuth.
However, this was not before the macabre clips had racked up millions of views on the platform.
The ominous CCTV footage, posted in 2021 by a Russian TikTokker, shows a man walking down the road carrying a flailing toddler while unsettling music plays in the background.
Shortly thereafter, a woman passes by him toting a large plastic bag filled with an unidentified dark substance.
She proceeds to bobble the parcel, causing the liquid to spill over the gravel path. The caption read, “Two crimes are caught with CCTV at the same time.”
Needless to say, the clip had conspiracy theorists’ tinfoil hats at full mast with many believing they’d seen both a child abduction and a body disposal attempt in one video.
“The woman is on the way to dispose of body parts and blood (she killed her husband),” one true crime fan posited. “The man kidnapped the child from a nearby playground.”
Another wrote, “Killer meets kidnapper.”
Their dreams of a true crime two-fer quickly fizzled after a sharp-eyed TikTok Sherlock revealed that the whole thing had been a hoax.
In a recent explainer clip, which amassed over 600,000 views, TikTokker Brandon Conner revealed how the aforementioned Russian poster had lifted the clip from another content creator, whom he messaged in 2021 to clear the air.
According to Conner, the original poster explained that the so-called bag of blood was actually a “bag of oil” that the woman spilled “on the floor.”
Meanwhile the alleged “kid-napper” was actually the child’s dad, according to Conner.
He explained, “At the same time a father and son were walking when the son was having a temper tantrum and his father was trying to control his son.”
Conner also included a screenshot of his text message correspondence with the original poster.
In it, he explained that the Russki ripoff artist had added ominous music to the footage, which he said “did its job” at hornswoggling the public.
In fact, the video bootlegger had reportedly posted an original vid sans a soundtrack, but then, after it went super viral, he apparently decided to upload a second version with a creepy theme to enhance the effect.