By Michael Patrick Carney

COLUMBIA - A virtual auction house pulled the plug Friday on a Missouri man who was trying to sell such domain names as www.killbillclinton and www.killjohnmcclain.com. (yes, he misspelled it.)

The advertisement, headlined "I warned the Secret Service about this, they didn't repond.-illClinton," was placed Thursday afternoon by Darryl Bozwell of St. Charles. He is the registered owner of a series of Web addresses that start with "kill" and end with the name of major-party political candidates.

Bozwell, using the online handle "dbozwell," appeared to have no takers for the auction, which started at $3,500.

Speaking before the ad was deleted, Tom Churchill, Yahoo's senior producer for auctions, said the company would review the posting. About 150,000 auctions are posted each day, with only a very small percentage removed, Churchill said.

"It's probably an iffy call. What makes it definitely not iffy is if we receive a complaint from a copyright holder or legal authority," Churchill said.

Yahoo removed the auction notice because it could be interpreted as a threat against the president, a spokesman said.

"Sounds like dbozwell is possibly on his way to a conversation with the Secret Service," Churchill said.