by - Chance Seneca of Louisiana was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison Wednesday, the DOJ said.
- In June 2020, Seneca used Grindr, a gay dating app, to lure and kidnap an 18-year-old.
- Seneca mirrored the actions of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and had plans to eat his victims, the DOJ said.
A Louisiana man was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for the kidnapping and attempted murder of an 18-year-old gay teenager he lured on Grindr, an LGBTQ dating app, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
According to the DOJ, Chance Seneca, who was 19 when he carried out the attack, was inspired by the actions of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, whose violent exploits were recently depicted in a Netflix show.
“Seneca intentionally targeted homosexuals, as Dahmer had done. Seneca also intended to eat and preserve the bodies of his victims, as Dahmer had done,” the Justice Department wrote.
Around May 2020, Seneca started talking to the then 18-year-old Holden White through Grindr. Seneca told authorities in an interview that he viewed the dating application as a “hunting ground,” according to a complaint. The two also communicated through Snapchat.
During their contact, Seneca “pretended to be interested in meeting (Holden White) for recreational or romantic purposes,” the complaint said. “However, Sencea’s true intent was to seize, conceal, kidnap, abduct and hold (White) for the unlawful purpose of killing and dismembering him for his own gratification.”
On June 20, 2020, Seneca picked up White and drove to her father’s isolated home in Lafayette, Louisiana.
It was there that Seneca “suggested a sexual encounter” and convinced White to put on handcuffs as a “dark joke,” according to the complaint.
Seneca then strangled White from behind with a belt until he was unconscious. Afterwards, he pulled White “into a bathtub, stripped him of his clothes and prepared to begin the cutting process.”
“To make sure HW was dead, Seneca hit HW in the back of the head with a hammer and stabbed him in the neck with an ice pick,” the court documents said. Seneca also used a Bowie knife to cut HW’s wrist. “
Seneca later told authorities that his plan was to preserve White’s hands, but that he could not carry out the act after seeing the exposed bones in White’s wrists.
Seneca called 911 to the Lafayette home “in a self-described attempt to be committed to a mental institution,” the complaint said.
White survived the attack but suffered injuries that put him in a coma for three days, according to NBC News.
In announcing Seneca’s sentence, the Justice Department said Sencea acknowledged he had a “compulsive homicidal fantasy.”
“Seneca had become obsessed with the idea of killing gay men, and this fascination led him to spend months designing a murder-kidnapping program that mirrored the murders of gay men committed by notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer,” the release said.
Seneca was indicted in March 2021 on three charges: hate crime with attempted murder, kidnapping and possession of a firearm. In September 2022, he reached a deal, which dropped the hate crime charge, by pleading guilty to kidnapping.
“No one should ever be subjected to the type of horrific actions that this defendant inflicted on the victim in this case,” U.S. Attorney Brandon B. Brown for the Western District of Louisiana said in a Justice Department news release.
In an interview with The New York Times, White said he hoped for a harsher sentence.
“That’s not what I asked for,” White told The Times. “Life is what I asked for.”
A spokesperson for Grindr did not return a request for comment from Insider.
