That fake story connecting dead bodies and Black Lives Matter is back

The logo at the top of a website called Now 8 News looks like it could be the logo of a local television station. The slogan below it reads: "First in news." But the supposed news story that social media users are now sharing from the site is fake. 

"Los Angeles police: 12 white female bodies in garage freezer tagged, ‘Black Lives Matter,’" it says. Though the story is undated, it claimed the Los Angeles Police Department made the "gruesome discovery today." 

"Upon arriving at the scene, police knocked on the door to be greeted by a man ‘under the influence of drugs,’" the story says, italicizing that detail. "Upon further investigation, they found 12 White Female Bodies in Garage Freezer Tagged, Black Lives Matter."

The victims were all white women in their mid-20s with blond hair, according to the story, and a suspect is identified only as "Mathis."

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stated on May 14, 2020 in a Facebook post

If masks prevent coronavirus, governors would have given them to prison inmates instead of releasing them.

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

The images that appear with the story — one of a Black man looking at the camera and the other showing the back of a man in a shirt that says "coroner" — are the same images from a similar hoax we fact-checked in 2017. Only in that version of the story, a 39-year-old man in Chicago was arrested after police found "19 white female bodies in freezers with ‘Black Lives Matter’ carved into skin."

But we called LAPD to be sure. "Fake news," a spokesperson said. 

We rate this story Pants on Fire.