The man who called himself the "catchmekiller" used the Internet to taunt the families of missing women, claiming he was a serial killer who had murdered 16 and would kill more.

In videos posted on the popular Web site YouTube, with his face digitally obscured and his voice altered, he boasted that he could not be traced, and there was "no point in trying."

Authorities said they did trace the bizarre Internet ramblings to a Gainesville man, and this week a Hall County grand jury indicted him on charges of making false statements and tampering with evidence.

There is no indication that 26-year-old construction worker Andrew Scott Haley ever murdered anyone, officials said.

"There are weird people in this world," said Drew Kesse, the father of missing Florida woman Jennifer Kesse, one of two missing women who Haley allegedly wrote of anonymously on the Internet. "Some people need attention, some never got it. I’m guessing he never got it."

Kesse notified authorities in February when someone who visited a Web site devoted to the search for his 28-year-old daughter left a link to a YouTube video entitled "Serial Killer Confession."

Orlando television station WDFL soon reported on the mysterious Internet videos, which included a posting about the unsolved missing persons case of Tara Grinstead. Grinstead was a 31-year-old high school teacher when she vanished from her Ocilla home in October 2005. In the video, the obscured speaker claimed to have killed Grinstead and know the location of her body.

Grinstead and Kesse had something else in common: both had been featured on a February episode of the CBS television show "48 Hours."

As odd as the Internet claims seemed, authorities had to look into them, said Gary Rothwell, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s special agent in charge for the agency’s Perry office.

"We were pretty sure it was a hoax early on, but in our business, we have no choice. We have to run it down," Rothwell said. "We can’t let somebody announce to the world on the Internet he was responsible for a death and not pursue it."

Officials from at least five law enforcement agencies in two states spent "hundreds of hours and probably tens of thousands of dollars" investigating the postings, Rothwell said. "A tremendous amount of resources were used."

Rothwell said some of the Internet postings were made by Haley inside Northeast Georgia Medical Center using the hospital’s wireless Internet network. Haley did not work there and was not a patient, but "had a legitimate reason for being there," Rothwell said.

Rothwell would not speculate on whether the postings from the hospital were an effort to cover tracks, but said Haley was "taking measures to hide his identity and hide his (Internet) addresses."

Haley’s home at 4931 Patterson Lane was searched on Feb. 20. On Tuesday, a Hall County grand jury returned the indictments.

Hall County District Attorney Lee Darragh said there are no laws on the books in Georgia that address Internet hoaxes, but "the charges reflected in this indictment do address the situation at hand."

It could not be determined if Haley has a lawyer. Calls to his home went unanswered Wednesday.

Kesse, who continues to press on in the 3-year-old search for his daughter, said he didn’t believe authorities wasted their time on Haley.

"I’m glad they did track him down, and I’m glad they did indict him," Kesse said. "Hopefully other people who have misused Jennifer and other missing persons in their time of need will learn from it."