Wikipedia edited to list torture, murder victim as Sault’s mayor (update)

5:45 a.m. update

The Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Wikipedia page was edited overnight by 'cityssm' to remove bogus references to the Outlaws and the mayor being a 2007 murder victim.

Original story

In what appears to be a perverted hack of the City of Sault Ste. Marie's Wikipedia page, the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia lists a victim of a 2007 double murder as the city's mayor.

Since June 9, Mayor Christian Provenzano's name has been replaced with that of Christopher Newsome.

Clicking on that name on the Sault's Wikipedia page takes readers to another Wikipedia page titled "Murders of Channon Christian and Christopher  Newsom."

That page describes a brutal 2007 carjacking, rape and double torture/murder that occurred in Knoxville, Tenn. on Jan. 6, 2007.

The same web page lists the city motto as 'Go Outlaws.'

Wikipedia describes itself as a "free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it."

"Since 2001, it has grown rapidly to become the world's largest reference website, with 6.5 million articles in English attracting billions of views every month."

"Anyone can edit almost every page; just find something that can be improved and make it better!" the website declares.

Wikipedia refers to instances of intentionally disruptive or malicious edits as 'vandalism' and employs bots and human editors to spot and reverse the bogus changes.

SooToday will have more on this story as additional information becomes available.