Gary Jon Van Ryswyk’s booking photo on Aug. 18, 2019.
Highlands County Sheriff’s Office
There are many legal, but many more illegal, things a person with a little computer savvy can buy on the dark web.
A gram of cocaine (70% pure, the ad touts). Fake designer watches and sunglasses. Fake IDs. Hacking tips. Erection pills.
And also castration on a fetish site, which led to the arrest of a 74-year-old Florida man.
These are just a few of the 23 outrageous things you can buy on the dark web that My BroadBand wrote about a few years ago.
The Highlands County Sheriff’s Office in Sebring, Florida, found another more, er, grizzly transaction that transpired on the Internet’s less sunny side.
We’ll let the deputies open this one as they so colorfully did on their Facebook page: “This one is a little … let’s just say sensitive. You could even say it’s kinda nuts.”
According to their report, deputies responded to a home in Sebring after receiving a 911 hang up just before midnight on Sunday.
When the deputy arrived, Gary Jon Van Ryswyk, 74, opened the door and delivered a startling statement. According to Highlands deputies, Van Ryswyk said he had just performed a castration on a man he had met via a website on the dark web.
That man was inside the house, in a room decked out like a surgical center with medical equipment and painkillers. He was on a bed with a towel covering his groin, which was bleeding heavily, deputies said.
That’s because, right nearby, a pink container “held two body parts that had recently been much closer to the victim,” according to the department’s post.
The victim is hospitalized in stable condition., deputies said.
Van Ryswyk told deputies the website he found his “patient” on is “for people who have a castration fetish.”
Deputies say Van Ryswyk told them he told the man he had done the procedure on animals before and had removed one of his own testicles seven years ago, WFLA News 8 reported.
Deputies say he also told them this wasn’t his first attempt at castrating this victim. He had tried to do the procedure a week earlier, “but when he tried to sanitize the area, something came up so the procedure had to be delayed,” deputies wrote.
Van Ryswyk’s charge on Monday is considered a second-degree felony. He’s being held on a bond of $250,000.
Deputies believe there might be other victims and ask that if anyone has information on Van Ryswyk they can call Det. Roger St. Laurent at 863-402-7250 or email detectives@highlandssheriff.com. Or call Heartland Crime Stoppers at 1-800-226-8477 or www.heartlandcrimestoppers.com.
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