Kriti Mehrotra
CBS’ ’48 Hours: The Online Life & Death of Bianca Devins’ examines the horrific 2019 homicide of 17-year-old Instagram personality Bianca Devins, along with its equally harrowing aftermath. On July 13, 2019, she attended a concert, only for then-21-year-old Brandon Clark to slash her throat following an argument about their connection on their drive back home to Utica. As if this wasn’t brutal enough, he documented the crime online, which others then shared and sent to her family. With that, we couldn’t help but wonder more about Bianca’s mother, so here’s what we found out.
Who is Kim Devins?
Having grown up and lived in Utica, upstate New York, for most of her life, when Kimberly “Kim” Devins learned that she was pregnant as a 17-year-old Catholic high school junior, she was terrified. However, since she knew she wanted to be a mother, she gladly welcomed Bianca Michelle Devins into the world on October 2, 2011, just days before her 18th birthday. A couple of years later, she gave birth to her second daughter, Olivia Devins. Referencing all this in court, Kim stated, “My entire adult life, I have been Bianca’s mom; without her, I don’t know who I am,” adding that the teen was her best friend.
As a single mother whose ex-husband was “emotionally abusive” and not actively present in the kids’ lives, Kim always strived to be there for them. She knew about Bianca’s mental health issues and had tried to help in every way possible, and she was also aware of her friendship with Brandon Clark. Having met the young man, Kim initially thought of him as “charming and polite” and someone who had opened up to her and appeared to care a lot about her daughter. With everything that’s happened, though, she now asserts that “He was very, very good at masking who he really was.”
Where is Kim Devins Now?
Following Bianca’s passing and the online frenzy that ensued, Kim Devins tried her best to avoid looking at the gory pictures. The fact that she kept getting tagged in them by trolls made it difficult, but her family helped out as well. She then started calling for social media platforms to block these images or increase their monitoring, which led to her working alongside a congress member to propose Bianca’s Law. This legislation requires all influential major online platforms to develop software to distinguish such violent images and make sharing them a criminal/civil offense.
Kim worked hard to get Bianca’s Law passed in the hopes it would one day be introduced both as a New York State and Federal law, just for the state to pass a version of it into existence in 2022. As if that’s not enough, to honor her daughter, she has since even launched the Bianca Michelle Devins Memorial Scholarship Fund. This foundation financially supports those who yearn to pursue psychology or counseling to aid others with mental illnesses, just like Bianca wanted to.
In July 2021, the Devins family also sued county officials, accusing them of child pornography for sharing Bianca’s videos with the media, including footage of her death as well as her in compromising situations. It’s unclear whether this case went ahead or not, yet we do know Kim Devins continues to grapple with the pain and loss of losing her eldest child while also ensuring they get true justice. With that said, she has clarified that since her daughter’s killer, Brandon Clark, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, she will definitely contend his parole in the future.
We should also mention Kim has since spoken up against ‘Interview With a Killer,’ ‘Dead Asleep,’ and any other true-crime production chronicling her daughter’s tale without her or her family’s involvement, stating: “It’s wrong. We’re a grieving family. Why do they want to exploit us? They’re putting our pain up on the screen. What they’re doing is hurting our family.”
Read More: How Did Bianca Devins Die?
