I’m sorry for the people who were hurt in this, but I love a bizarre story, and this ranks among the strangest of the new year.

In Clarence, New York, not far from Buffalo, 47-year-old Tom Montgomery worked in a tool factory. He and his wife have two teenage sons, and I suppose old Tom was bored. That’s when he went online and pretended to be someone he wasn’t.

On the internet, he told the 18-year-old West Virginia beauty he was a Marine just back from Iraq. Mister Macho man. Good looking, muscular, tough, all that.

Tom went to the young lady’s website and found she was everything he hoped: beautiful, smart, and interested in him. Well, she was interested in him the way he described himself.

They began chatting back and forth as people do these days. The middle-aged man romancing the teenager through cyberspace. As I got the story, the young woman was unnamed for reasons that will appear below.

At work, Tom would brag to his co-workers about this sweet young thing he was stringing along. One of the men who heard his tales was Brian Barrett, a part-time factory worker and full-time student at Buffalo State College where he hoped to become a teacher. Nice guy, everyone says. Give you the shirt off his back.

One day, Tom’s wife found an e-mail from the sweet young West Virginia thing and figured out what her man was doing. She blew the whistle and sent a note to the teen informing her that Tom was most definitely not a Marine, not just back from Iraq, and not anything at all like he was presenting himself.

At some point along the line, Tom had told the West Virginia girl about his co-worker Brian Barrett. For reasons not clear, she managed to go online and track Brian down and introduce herself. They began emailing each other also.

Gradually Brian and Tom became rivals for the affections of the young lady. The bizarre thing about that is that neither of them had met her and neither even had plans to drive to West Virginia and meet her. But a rivalry grew up between them.

Last September 15, Brian got off work and was sitting in his car in the plant parking lot when someone drove by and pumped his body full of lead using a 30 caliber gun.

In the investigation which followed, police learned of the rivalry between the men and of the internet correspondence with the young lady in West Virginia. They confiscated the computers of all three and printed out hundreds of pages of their talks, much of it described as of an “adult nature.”

The other day, they arrested Tom Montgomery and charged him with murdering Brian. Once they got him in jail, they told him the rest of the story. The teenager in West Virginia was no teen. She is the 40-something year old mother of the young woman whose photo she sent and whose website she used. She too was a fraud.

The assistant district attorney for Erie County said, “The uniqueness of this case is that everybody appeared to be misleading everybody else and the whole situation which resulted in a violent death was unnecessary.” He added, “Ironically, the only person telling the truth here was the victim.”

Internet fantasies. Scary, scary business.

Right after I accepted the Lord’s call into the ministry, an older minister gave me a couple of books on pastoring churches. I have long forgotten the title of this one, but the author was a Florida pastor named Bedsole, and one chapter in particular has stayed with me all these years. The title of that section was: “Watch Your Inner Sanctum.” He defined that as the deepest, innermost recess of your heart and mind, where one’s fantasies exist. Watch out for that place, he warned. Make sure nothing goes in except as passes by the Guard of the Holy Spirit standing watch at the door.

I frequently pray Psalm 141:3, “Set a guard upon my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.” But I don’t stop there. The form of that little prayer fits so many other areas of my life.

“Set a guard upon my mind, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my thoughts.”

“Set a guard upon my eyes, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my vision.”

“Set a guard upon my ears, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my hearing.”

“Set a guard upon my hands, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my touching.”

“Set a guard upon my feet, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my travels.”

And then, I like to enlarge this prayer.

“Set a guard upon my life, O Lord; keep watch over all that I am.”

“Set a guard upon my family, O Lord; keep watch over all these I hold dear.”

“Set a guard upon my church, O Lord; keep watch over our family of faith.”

“Set a guard upon my city, O Lord; keep watch over this community.”

“Set a guard upon our nation, O Lord; keep watch over the United States of America.”

I’ve prayed versions of this little prayer for a long time, but I will confess to you that after reading about Tom Montgomery’s foolishness, I am now adding one more aspect: “Set a guard upon my computer, O Lord; keep watch over my internet connections.”

One cannot be too careful.