| schema:text
| - Islamic State claimed responsibility for the 2018 murders of Austin and Geoghegan, as well as two other tourists. Austin and Geoghegan wrote online several times about the kindness they experienced on their travels.
There is no evidence the couple was aware of any terrorist threat in Tajikistan, or that they chose to travel through "ISIS territory" to prove their belief in human generosity.
For years, internet users have claimed that ISIS militants in Tajikistan killed an American couple in 2018 while they biked around the world on a trip they hoped would prove humans were "kind."
In December 2024, the claim resurfaced on X (archived, archived), but it had been circulating for several years on Reddit (archived) and on YouTube, where a user speculated Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, both 29, were "virtue signaling" — a term suggesting their acts were designed to demonstrate their social conscience or moral correctness.
The same screenshot of a headline cropped up repeatedly across platforms, reading: "Millenial Couple Bikes Through ISIS Territory to Prove 'Humans Are Kind' and Gets Killed." We first looked into the authenticity of this claim in 2018 and found no evidence that Austin and Geoghegan set out to do so.
The claim originated from an article (archived) published on Aug. 15, 2018, by Pluralist — a conservative media website. Previously, Snopes reported Pluralist's headline was later changed, but a live version of the article can no longer be found to corroborate this. The original headline, alongside the quotes Pluralist chose from the couple's travel blog, could work to suggest the pair's motivation for taking the extended trip (emphasis is Pluralist's own):
Throughout the trip, the couple embraced the kindness of strangers and sought to demonstrate that people are inherently good."You read the papers and you're led to believe that the world is a big, scary place," Austin wrote. "People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.""I don't buy it," he continued. "Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own... By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind."
Reading on, Pluralist's choice of words may have added to the impression that the couple's "tragic and gruesome end" served as a warning:
"Some conservatives have framed the tragedy as a cautionary tale about not just the perils of travel but also naivete in general. In their telling, an overly generous understanding of human nature is behind much of today's progressive movement, including calls to radically scale back immigration enforcement and policing and support for socialism.
"Some liberals, for their part, might view Austin and Geoghegan as martyrs in the struggle for a better world, or simply as unfortunate."
While Pluralist's reporting accurately described the details of the couple's trip and their deaths, we found no evidence that Austin and Geoghegan's motive was to "demonstrate that people are inherently good."
What Happened on the Couple's Trip Through Tajikistan?
On Jul. 29, 2018, five terrorists in Tajikstan rammed a car into a group of cyclists from a number of Western countries. Tajik authorities said the occupants of the car also stabbed and shot some of their victims. Four of the travelers were killed (archived): Austin and Geoghegan from the U.S., one person from Switzerland and one from the Netherlands.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the murders and said the attack was "in response to calls to target citizens of Coalition countries" (archived). According to The New York Times, that wording suggested the view of ISIS was that the attackers in Tajikistan had been inspired by its propaganda.
After the cyclists' deaths, discussions on news and social media websites debated whether the couple had been naive for traveling in the country.
'Life Is Short and the World is Big'
We found no evidence that either Austin or Geoghegan set out on their cycling trip for the purpose of vindicating an existing belief about the overall goodness or kindness of humanity or that they chose "ISIS territory" to do so.
The couple's adventure took them to Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. On their blog "Simply Cycling" (archived), Austin explained why he had quit his job at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to do so:
"Getting too cozy is dangerous. Inertia is a stealthy predator. I've learned a lot from these seven years, and I enjoyed plenty, but with each passing year I feel I learned a little less. The days have blended into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years. I've grown tired of meetings, of teleconferences, of timesheets and password changes and Monday morning elevator commiseration. I've grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige."
Their blog's introductory page explained their motivation to travel widely together:
"In the summer of 2016, we flew to Iceland with our bicycles and enjoyed a delightful month riding around the country. We cycled over a thousand kilometers and camped for twenty-six nights straight and, by the end of our time there, agreed that we wanted more of it: more peaceful pedaling through gorgeous landscapes, more sleeping in open fields under clear skies, more quiet sunsets and more friendly people and more adventure and, importantly, more time together too, living life on simpler, more meaningful terms. So we decided to quit our jobs and bike around the world.
"A few qualifiers. For one, we're not breaking any world records: not the longest 'round-the-world bike ride, nor the quickest -- not necessarily even a proper circumnavigation. We have neither a firm route nor a timetable, a sponsorship nor a place we need to be, and so we're comfortable just pedaling where the winds and the world and our own hearts take us."
Notably, on the "questions and answers" page of their blog (archived), they outlined their reasons for packing up their lives to see the world:
"It's because life is short and the world is big and we want to make the most out of our youth and good health before they're gone. We'd both been working in offices for most of our twenties and living a nine-to-five existence that had been pleasant but not necessarily as challenging or rewarding as biking around the world could be. We wanted to learn new things, live a life on simpler, more deliberate terms, spend more time together and meeting others and being outdoors, and see the world. The limits of cycling are a great way to do so slowly and intimately."
Instead, the evidence suggests they simply recorded the moments during their travels in which they were struck by locals' generosity. The example cited by Pluralist, in which Austin wrote (archived) that "evil" was "a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans," came after being fed and shown hospitality by a family in Morocco.
None of the many blog entries (archived) and Instagram posts that the couple published before and during their journey suggested that they set out with the intention of "proving" that humans are good or kind. Austin posted several times about experiencing locals' generosity, such as in the example below from their travels in Kyrgyzstan, posted on their Instagram page:
(Instagram user simplycycling)
Its caption reads:
"A few nights ago we set up camp near a little creek outside a village. A family living in a nearby house noticed our small settlement of tents and bikes and camp kitchens. They came by—not to chase us away from their home, but rather to offer us all sweet tea and fresh homemade bread and water if we needed it. And, before leaving for the night, a really special and beautiful musical performance from their eldest daughter. 🍵🍞🎸 It was a really lovely evening. Conversation was, as usual, limited to charades and our collective (and very limited) Russian/Kyrgyz, but no one really seemed to mind. Sometimes words aren't so important."
None of what Austin wrote indicated that the couple was concerned about or aware of any risk of a terrorist attack in Tajikistan.
At the time Austin and Geoghegan visited the country, the U.S. State Department listed the country as a relatively low-risk destination. Its website advised that terrorist organizations were "known to have a presence in the region" but attacks were "infrequent" and largely focused on law enforcement and security services. The Washington Post said the deaths of Austin and Geoghegan represented the first terrorist assault against Western tourists in Tajikistan.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)