Authorities have apprehended an 18-year-old from Pennsylvania, Matthew Edward Pysher, in a California hotel room where he allegedly enticed a 13-year-old girl with intentions of engaging in sexual activities and a pact for suicide.
Pysher faces charges of traveling with the intent to participate in illicit sexual conduct, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. More details are available here.
“The allegations in this case are deeply disturbing,” stated First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. “The internet can serve as a gateway for dangerous predators to reach children. We remain committed to pursuing and prosecuting those who target and exploit minors.”
Pysher allegedly met the young girl on the social platform Discord, as revealed by the US Attorney’s Office. The girl’s mother reported to authorities that their communication began in December 2025, as noted in the complaint. The mother contacted the FBI on February 10, expressing concerns that her daughter was being urged to self-harm by someone named ‘Matthew’ whom she had encountered on a Discord server associated with mental health issues, according to PEOPLE.
The complaint describes how Pysher allegedly instructed the girl to send explicit content and images that depicted self-harm. He purportedly encouraged her to create a Discord server where she could live-stream acts of self-harm involving blades.
On February 20, FBI agents visited the girl’s residence to collect her electronic devices for examination. Shortly after, the girl’s mother reported her disappearance to the agents, noting that her grandfather had discovered a suicide note.
According to the complaint, the agents searched a phone number the mother had found in her bedroom and found two email addresses registered to Pysher, who had flown to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania earlier that day and was now in Castaic.
Police began reviewing surveillance footage from local motels and found video of Pysher and the girl entering a room at The Rodeway Inn Motel in Castaic.
“Inside the room, law enforcement found Minor Victim One hiding in the bathroom as well as a bottle of lubricant on the nightstand, a knife, several razor blades, and bloody tissues,” the complaint said.
The complaint says the girl told investigators that a woman had driven her and Pysher to the hotel, where he “”cut [her] several times with a knife on her left and right forearms for approximately 15 minutes” and then “had sexual intercourse with [her] even though [she] said she did not want to.” She also told them that Pysher repeatedly choked her while he raped her.
Further, the complaint said, the girl said the “plan was for them to go to the top of a ‘big’ hotel and jump off together.”
Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office said Pysher was “one of a growing number of alleged nihilistic violent extremists who prey on children and talk them into compromising sex acts and self-multilation.”
According to the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, “nihilistic violent extremism” is a new classification of violent extremism from the US Department of Justice.
“NVEs are described as being motivated by a hatred of society and a desire to see it destroyed,” GNET said. “While these motivational factors can also be attributed to other violent extremists, for instance accelerationists, what sets NVEs apart is their lack of ideological substance beyond a broad anger and hatred directed outwards at the world.”
In particular, these extremists frequently “target vulnerable populations.”
