Lorin LaFave is speaking out again as a new documentary revisits the murder of her 14-year-old son.
The grieving mother, whose teenager Breck Bednar was killed in 2014 after being groomed through online gaming, gave a fresh interview ahead of the Prime release “From Minecraft to Murder: The Killing of Breck Bednar” on October 20. Lorin, who founded the Breck Foundation to combat online dangers, recounted how her maternal instincts first flagged danger in her son’s gaming group.
“Breck had reunited with friends he knew from primary school, and they invited him into a gaming group,” she explained in her interview. “At the time I was so pleased because he loved gaming, technology and computing. He just understood how things worked.”
The Surrey-based teenagers spent evenings together on various platforms, laughing and socializing while playing games like Battlefield and Call of Duty. Lorin initially welcomed the activity, glad her son had reconnected with school friends who would make plans to meet up online in the evenings. Then she noticed something that made her uneasy.
“But at one point I noticed there was a deeper sounding voice within the gaming group. Immediately, my mum ears pricked up. I was like, who is this that sounds older?” she recalled.
Breck told her the voice belonged to Lewis Daynes, the server administrator. “Mum, he runs the server. He’s super clever. All the guys have been gaming with him for years,” Breck said, according to Lorin’s account. She pressed further about the stranger’s age, but Breck had nothing negative to say about him.
“I really struggled to get anyone to believe at that point there could be anything untoward about this relationship. But as a parent I felt I had a right to question an older sounding voice, who in the end, turned out to be a predator,” she said.
Lorin admitted her mental image of the threat made her sound paranoid to others. “In the back of my head, I always thought that this predator was older. I pictured some creepy, fat, old guy in his underpants trying to entice the boys to send them naked photos. It made me sound even more paranoid.”
Within weeks of joining the gaming group, Breck’s behavior shifted dramatically. The 135 Squadron Air Training Corps member began refusing church, claimed he didn’t need school, and stopped sitting with the family for meals. Lorin described how his “personality changed” and that she knew he was being groomed, sharing her concerns with police and the school. Her son also grew distant from friends and family.
“I actually didn’t really know that much about grooming other than what I had heard in the news,” she confessed. “It was usually about the poor girls who were groomed in Rotherham and Rochdale and groomed face to face with drugs and sex involved, so it was a completely different situation.”
The manipulation became explicit in Breck’s new attitudes. “Breck would say odd things like ‘Lewis says I shouldn’t have to join the family dinner if I’m not hungry. Lewis says I shouldn’t have to go on family walks anymore. Lewis says I don’t have to finish school because he can get me an amazing job’,” Lorin recalled.
“And I felt like I was suddenly up against some stranger who was like some other parent.”
She reached out to other parents but found little support. “I could tell it wasn’t a healthy relationship. I tried to talk to other parents and they either didn’t want to know or I didn’t have their contact details. I felt like I was up against brick walls.”
Lorin also noticed Daynes attempting to humiliate her. When she entered Breck’s bedroom, she claimed Lewis would organize for witches to appear on the gaming screen to embarrass her son in front of his friends.
She eventually contacted police, providing Daynes’s name and explaining how the Essex-based teenager had falsely claimed to be a different age and from New York. Nothing further resulted, despite Daynes having been previously reported for offenses against other young victims. After an intervention meeting with other parents, Breck’s devices were confiscated.
But Breck had secretly recorded the conversation on an old MP3 player and passed it to Daynes, revealing that authorities were investigating. “Then it all became even more dangerous because it went underground,” Lorin said. “When I spoke to people, they would all say ‘Breck’s a nice boy’ and ‘he’ll grow out of it’.”
Unbeknownst to Lorin, Daynes sent Breck a new phone, and the two continued communicating in secret. Breck’s behavior appeared to normalize—he did chores, sat with the family at dinner, and participated in family activities. Lorin had no idea the police investigation had been closed.
On February 17, 2014, Breck was supposed to stay with his father but never arrived. He claimed he was sleeping at a friend’s house but had secretly traveled to meet Daynes at his flat, lured by promises of a fictional computer business that would bring “great wealth.”
Hours later, Breck’s three siblings received text messages that their brother had been murdered and that photos of his body had been posted on social media. The images had also been shared in their online gaming group. Daynes, then 18, had fatally stabbed Breck in the throat. Duct tape was found on Breck’s ankles and wrists, his clothes discarded in a bin bag. Evidence showed sexual activity between the two shortly before the killing.
The following morning, Daynes called police claiming Breck had tried to take his own life and was accidentally stabbed during a struggle to save him.
“Breck got hurt because he made mistakes, and didn’t realise that online friends are different to real-life friends,” Lorin explained.
Daynes, a computer engineer who was 19 at sentencing, received life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years. Serious questions emerged about police handling after it was revealed Daynes had been arrested in 2011 on suspicion of raping and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old, but no action was taken. The offenses were only re-investigated following Breck’s murder.
An Essex Police statement from 2015, citing an Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation, defended the 2011 handling as “thorough” and the “no further action” decision as “appropriate in the circumstances.”
In the years since, Lorin established the Breck Foundation to educate about healthy relationships and online safety. “I wanted to really educate people about what a healthy relationship is, whether that is online or face to face,” she said. “I am not a tech person, so I never endeavoured to teach about the intricacies of computing and gaming, it was more about recognising when someone is asking you to do something that isn’t good for you and is manipulation.”
Her advocacy expanded to push for legal changes and platform accountability. “As time went on, I realised I could educate until I’m blue in the face, but we really need law changes and we need changes in the platforms themselves to have safety by design.”
She has supported the UK’s Online Safety Act, which introduces age limits on certain platforms and a social media ban on under-16s from next March, though she dislikes the framing. “This is why when we talk about a ban, I don’t like that wording at all. I don’t want to ban or take anything away from anyone,” she stated.
“I feel strongly about raising the age of social media to give young people more time to just grow, gain their education and get a bit more maturity so they can better recognise an unhealthy relationship.”
The documentary “From Minecraft to Murder: The Killing of Breck Bednar” reconstructs the pattern of online manipulation that led to the teenager’s death and airs on Prime on October 20.