By the end of the day, the San Francisco Police Department confirmed a rumor that was making the rounds via e-mail: there was a serial rapist in the neighborhood. Police said the same assailant was responsible for a similarly violent rape and robbery that occurred on Nov. 18 at 24th Street and Potrero Avenue.

The e-mail, written on Dec. 7 and posted to a confidential e-mail list for workers at San Francisco Women Against Rape, a victims’ services group, went viral.

But like much chatter passed around via word of mouth, electronic or otherwise, the e-mail contained some false information. Specifically, a grisly detail — that the rapist was breaking the victims’ necks — was untrue, according to the police at a community gathering in mid-December.

“There were no broken necks,” Michael Biel, a police department commander, said at the packed meeting of approximately 250 residents.

The path of that particular detail highlights the fine line between advisable caution and unreasonable panic.

“I walked in believing she had a broken neck,” Tia Pierce, a Fair Oaks resident, said a bit sheepishly after the meeting. “We can’t check on Snopes,” she said, referring to a myth-dispelling Web site that is not updated for local events.

“It’s very easy to slip into hysteria,” said Lynn Kaplan, another Fair Oaks resident. She had not seen any forwarded e-mails, but her daughter, Cameron, 13, said she had been receiving “a bunch” since the crime.

The phrasing on the initial e-mail did not mince words.

“There is a serial rapist attacking women near 25th and Potrero. It’s particularly brutal (breaking necks) and he’s doing it in public,” wrote an employee of Women Against Rape, in a post intended to be read only by fellow rape crisis workers who might be going to the nearby San Francisco General Hospital, late at night.

From that private e-mail group, the message was copied and put on an internal e-mail list for another organization, Bay Area Women Against Rape. Like a game of digital telephone, bits and pieces also went into individual e-mails and were forwarded, often misattributed to the Bay Area group.

Mission Mission, a neighborhood blog, excerpted it in a Dec. 9 post titled “Serial rapist’s ‘particularly brutal’ crimes apparently result in broken necks and blood all over the sidewalk,” which garnered over 130 comments.

“I’m very upset,” said Janelle White, executive director of San Francisco Women Against Rape. “Everything that goes out on our Listserv is confidential and someone decided they wanted to forward it out — that’s a huge breach.”

“That’s not an e-mail that B.A.W.A.R. would ever put out,” said Marcia Blackstock, the group’s executive director. “Why certain crimes get picked out and sensationalized has always baffled me.”

The police department has released surveillance video and drawings based on the victims’ descriptions, but there have been no arrests.

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