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During the 1980s and 1990s, at the height of the HIV and AIDS crises, rumors ran wild about people deliberately spreading the virus to their clueless sexual partners. Although the stigma over HIV has somewhat subsided over the ensuing decades, the rumors about AIDS Mary are still alive and well. A modern version of this urban legend first appeared online in 2014, after the Kenya Daily Post published an article appearing to report that a 19-year-old college student in Kenya had purposefully infected 324 men with human immunodeficiency virus, and that she planned on infecting thousands by the end of the year: Problems in the Original Story The article was entirely based on a Facebook post that was allegedly posted to a page called Kenya Scandals, Hidden Controversial Files Exposed. This Facebook page no longer exists, and we were unable to find this post anywhere in any Internet archives. However, the anonymous message driving this story has been preserved by a number of questionable web sites: This is an unverified story from an anonymous author that was posted to a Facebook page seemingly dedicated to scandals and rumors. The story itself is also rather preposterous. For one, how does this woman know how many people she infected? After all, having unprotected sex with someone who is HIV-positive does not automatically mean that the disease will spread: Unless this anonymous woman accompanied her victims to the hospital after every sexual encounter for testing after a set period of time, there's no way she would know how many people she had given HIV. The web site Make Kenya Better took a closer look at some of the more specific claims in the story. Daniel Kibet, who was reportedly in his final year at Kabarak University when this rumor started to circulate, said that the school's strict rules on gender segregation, the relatively small student population, and the fact that this woman was claiming she had more than three sexual partners per day for three months made this story completely implausible: Problems With Subsequent Postings There are several other factors that point to this being a fearmongering rumor, as opposed to a genuine story about sexual revenge. For one thing, as this rumor was passed from disreputable web site to spurious blog, the accompanying photograph seemed to change. Many of these outlets claimed that images were culled from this woman's Facebook profile. This is suspicious, however, as the woman's identity was supposedly never revealed. Furthermore, we've seen photographs of least five different women used to spread the hoax: Theses images were taken from dating profiles, porn web sites, and social media posts (such as this one, which is decidedly not safe for work). However, we couldn't connect any of these images to a 19-year-old student in Kenya. Another clue that this rumor is based more on fear than facts is that it receives minor updates with each passing year. In addition to changing the photograph, these sites have also altered the number of men reportedly infected with HIV by this woman, as well as her goal date for completing her revenge. For example, the disreputable blog Now8News rehashed this story, but claimed in their title that the woman had now infected 586 men (not 324) and that she planned on infecting more than 2000 by the end of 2018, not 2014. Interestingly, the body of that article still said that this took place in 2017, which must have been a holdover from the previous year's piece: To Sum Up The claim that a woman in Kenya infected 324 men with human immunodeficiency virus over the span of a few months and that she plans on infecting hundreds more by the end of the year is based entirely on a years-old anonymous Facebook post filled with inaccurate statements, fearmongering rhetoric, and unsubstantiated claims.
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