Kiwi Farms

On March 27th 2020, a broke and mentally unstable furry couple came up with an exceptional idea. They wanted to (presumably, judging by their Twitter and the robbery charges) make money by luring a victim in with a dating app, robbing and murdering him, and hiding his body somewhere in California. The victim picked them up and took them to his place, where he was robbed and shot to death. They then bragged about this and sent a picture of the body to one of their friends who alerted police and got them arrested. Tonya Dillard and Jacob Berkovitz were arrested and charged with murder with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, and conspiracy to commit robbery.

News articles about this give a very brief summary of events with what’s currently known as the investigation is ongoing.


What makes this story stand out among all the other murder news stories is who the killers were. They were furry artists/fursuit makers in the fandom and known for being mentally off the rails and taking people’s money. This news story came to the attention of the fandom when someone who knew them made a post about it. It also says to demand PayPal refunds because right before this they were constantly taking art/fursuit commissions they clearly were not delivering on.

http://archive.fo/TFbBV

When this news hit the Animal Control subforum, other farmers went digging and found out quite a bit about both of the murderers, so I’m going to share the most important bits of info that was revealed. First of all a guy on Facebook who was friends with Tonya made a post revealing more gruesome details (there were more screencaps in the post that got deleted) including that their dog was murdered/skinned alive as well, that she had no remorse for this, and that she killed someone and enjoyed it. Oh and by the way she’s a FtM troon as well and also went by the name Vincent Vex Dillard. This makes the next read confusing when the police report is taken into account.

A good friend of mine is the 'sibling' (not related by blood, 'he was like a brother to me' type relationship) of Vincent who was the 'tip' to the police. Vincent had confessed and even shown photos of his victim (photos not provided and never will be provided).

They have expressed that they can answer any questions, but honestly, I feel they need more support than questions at the moment.
Any questions asking for photos will be deleted.

Despite the article's wording, my friend's pronouns are he/him

According to my friend (not screenshoted as it's being spoken through video), Vincent had been hanging out with the body in the victim's house for about 10hrs by the time he called and he expressed that he planned on "putting the body in the refrigerator and steal his car." He expressed that the "opportunity came to him on a silver platter" and that he is now "officially a psychopath."

"He said he wasn't concerned about police. He wasn't concerned about anything. His voice was like ice. He was happy that he did it."

"He told me this was his first and last and that in prison, he feels that he can hold up his own. He didn't care when he skinned his dog. He was mostly upset that he lost it's pelt."

"He told me not to tell anybody except for if I saw him on the news then to tell everybody but. That's not something I can hold. I have to tell the police. And at that point, that's not even snitching. He killed somebody and he enjoyed it."

"I also have high suspicion that he's been involved with meth usage."

These quotes are only main highlights.

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Being a furry, they both had a large Twitter footprint and their Twitter feed is worth talking about because it’s a journey into the mind of two killers. Here’s a few summaries of their Twitter feed from Animal Control posters:

Leonard Helplessness said:

Having looked at the murderers' twitter feed (archive) for a bit it's extremely fucked up, particularly in the most recent months. January and February are pretty much one prolonged cry for help, broken by occasional sketches or fursuit WIPs or photos of the dog that they would also later kill. Near the end, Jacob was constantly in and out of the hospital for suicide attempts and PTSD meltdowns and shit. He was being eaten alive by depression, and not one person among his many thousands of followers appears to have ever intervened nor sounded an alarm.

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RisingPheonix said:

Reading Lockjaws twitter is generally depressing no matter how far you go, but recent events do make you question how they ended up in their own sorry situation.

She met the boyfriend at a mental health institution after being sanctioned for a suicide attempt, they got along well and she decided to date him. Family all were not keen on her dating a guy with his own host of issues and made clear they wouldn't support it. She flounces off with boyfriend and they try to make a go of it.

They move in some place, but it's crowded and apparently crawling with scorpions, so they eventually move to "The Nightmare House" - with a landlord who lives in the same living quarters, hocks his drugs to all his residents and frequently slaps various charges on things. Basically two people with massive mental health challenges leave home and end up in a worse situation. I'm almost shocked they didn't kill that guy instead with how much they go on about him. But they also spend a lot of time protesting that they are very normal people caught up in a horrid house full of mental cases and tweakers.

There's also a lot of "I love my dog" and "aww look at my boyfriend being great with my dog : )" posts that are very creepy with hindsight.

They eventually escape and move into the motel, but without the chaos of before to distract - her depression comes back and whatever the guy's dealing with means he's really got 0 capacity to help her, let alone himself. She tells her mother at Xmas that everything's great and the mom calls her out on it, and turns out to be ultimately right in the end. She also insists after time in the loonybin, she doesn't ever want to go back and refuses any help from family. Ended up completely reliant on a partner who had their own stability issues.

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Their Twitter feed was nothing but depressive posts about how shit their life is, but those AC posts helped me draw a rough timeline and pointed me to the most important tweets.
In the end, both of them were living beyond their means and having to grift for money just to make rent instead of taking the logical step and getting a real job somewhere. Tonya/Vex burnt bridges with her family as well, and both of them were very clearly mentally unstable, drifting in and out of the mental hospital. Their Studio Apartment/Motel experience of living in a small area away from the drama finally pushed them over the edge, along with Vex burning bridges with her family. The last month or two on Twitter was a cry for help, before going silent on Twitter and eventually turning to murder.

Social media profiles:
Main Twitter: @LockJawArts (Archive)
Vexes personal account (not used as much): @BlackCraftWitch (Archive)
Jax's FB: http://archive.fo/F0WvL
Vexes FBs: