Something Was Wrong - S19 E3: [Amy] Fueling the Fear

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

*Content Warning: stalking, cyber stalking, terrorism, harassment, bigotry, racism, non-consensual pornography, murder, physical violence, identity theft, impersonation, rape, sexual assault, threats of violence, psychological violence, emotional abuse, doxxing. *Sources: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): https://www.ic3.gov/ SWW S19 Artwork by the amazing Sara Stewart: Instagram.com/greaterthanokay*Resources: Stalking Prevention, Awareness, Statistics & Resource Center (SPARC): https://www.stalkingawareness.org/ January 18th 2024 is the first ever National Day of Action for Stalking Awareness, find out more info here: https://www.stalkingawareness.org/day-of-action-2024/ Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources Something Was Wrong: somethingwaswrong.com Tiffany Reese: tiffanyreese.me Something Was Wrong on IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTiffany Reese on IG: instagram.com/lookiebooSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, broken cycle media, or Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment.

Thank you so much for listening. I know anybody until you talk to someone. Someone Three years had passed since the last time I heard from him. I definitely did not see that coming and that was only a move two or three of hundreds of multiple daily interactions and communications to me from him completely trying to destroy me. He used multiple fake profiles to interact with himself on these social media sites. On the Facebook page he created of me, I mean, he's interacting with himself using multiple fake profiles. He was posting weird content, racist content,

to a harassment level. The amount of posts on a given day to my company's social media accounts, the amount of posts on a given day to my company's social media accounts, the amount of research or tracking he had to do to come after me from all the angles that he did is just very disturbing. I don't know who has that much time to want to destroy a person, but this man had that. By December of 2020, I had filed four reports to the FBI. The fourth report to the FBI was May of 2020. And at that point, I just kind of gave up.

I figured at some point, someone will reach out to me. I wanted it to be federal because I thought this guy could be in Denver, but I also didn't know where he could be. And so if he was in another state, I thought the FBI would have resources to find him somewhere else. Mind you, I'm still trying to co-run a business and do my daily job. I couldn't stop what I was doing. So this just felt like bombs being launched at me multiple times a day for years. It's almost like warfare and chess. He's trying to outsmart me and he is because the way he thinks is not how a

normal healthy person thinks. And I'm trying to defeat this guy. The support that I have from family and friends was phenomenal. At no point did anybody make me feel bad for what was happening. I think they all were worried about me and obviously wanted it to go away and didn't quite understand why this guy kept coming after us. I of course was very emotionally fragile. I was on edge. I was constantly checking social media. I was constantly checking email, trying to figure out what he had done next. I wanted it to go away and the stuff that he was doing had the potential to destroy relationships in my life.

And I'm grateful for those who held my hand and helped me through it because their support was everything, and that's one thing I fear is, if he had been doing this to other people, did they have the same support system I did? Because I knew what I was going through, and I had all the support in the world, and it was still extremely difficult. When I didn't feel comfortable being here alone, my parents, they came and stayed with me multiple times. I wouldn't necessarily ask for them to come stay with me. They would just say, we're coming. I don't think I realized at the

time that was so impactful because I actually could get a solid night of sleep. Of all the people in the world, she should be the last one to have to deal with something like this, in my opinion. I know I'm her father, but she's a genuinely sincere, caring, good person. And for someone to act this way, whatever their motivation is just unacceptable and very difficult to understand. It was very disheartening, and the anger comes back. Why is this person doing this? Why don't they leave her alone?

The communications were definitely intended to make her uneasy, to make her fear, and to belittle her in any way possible. Once I saw some of the evidence that she had gathered in some of the communications, he seemed to always cite criminals who were involved in serial murder or rape, names of people who were on death row for violent crimes, and that's not the kind of thing you want to hear. It made me concerned for Amy and it made me question whether this was just somebody doing it for their own personal gratification or if it was somebody who had a serious issue, a mental illness or a violent background that could take this to the next level, And I really had that concern and I still do. And I have for some time, I can remember feeling that helplessness return, because again, we still

didn't know who it was, had no idea where they were at, whether they were down the hall or if they were in Europe for it to return after having that period of time when there was less contact. It was very hard to deal with. The hope that we could maybe make progress and stop this any way we could, seemed to have become more unlikely. And it was definitely a disappointing time, that's putting it mildly.

I didn't want this person impacting our lives in this way anymore. I didn't want to see my sister go through this anymore. Especially at that time during COVID, it was horrible. Things that shouldn't be happening were happening to her. First of all, just very wildly inappropriate posts on professional websites where my sister has a presence. Inappropriate emails to not only her colleagues, but people within her profession, our family members. It was just really twisted stuff, reaching out to people that are connected to her, pretty much

anybody he could identify, sending emails. It was just relentless, varied ways to just torture her and keep her on her toes, but also super destructive not just to her but to the people that he brought into this little web of shit that he made It was just Damaging all around it was just destructive You know he had these photos of her too and he was just posting them everywhere like making new counts I spent one evening just sitting there for two hours Constantly reporting these accounts with her photographs and some of them are still up We don't even know how many of those accounts that he made and how many of her photos are just out there. He really likes to include

mass murderers' names when he would write account handles and things like that, recounting traumatic shootings, things like that, and just constantly referencing or speaking of women who had been stalked or murdered and fueling the fear. What really stands out is when he sent an email or posted something to a restaurant where one of their workers had been murdered on her way home from work one night. It wasn't a completely different state. And he sent a message under the alias Havaini and said some pretty horrific things about it directly to that

restaurant. And so they reached out to my sister. I remember she called me one day. It was in the heat of it all really and she just needed to like get out. And so she came and we got lunch. And I think that lunch was probably the hardest because I could see on my sister a level of anxiety and just fear, you know, it just corrode you from the inside out. And it was just so obvious on her that day. Up to this point, you know, Amy was very adventurous and so outgoing and wanted to always go do things. And it was impacting her life.

Like she didn't even want to leave her front door. Since we were kids, Amy was always up for adventure. And fundamentally, it just shut her down. She completely stopped dating. Amy has always been really trusting and open. She really closed off in a way that was sad to see this affecting her professional life immensely too, because she had to be very public facing and it was obviously not her fault, but she had to have conversations that were wildly uncomfortable and embarrassing with people who she never

should have had to have those conversations with. Thankfully, a lot of people were very graceful and understood that it was out of her control. In the past, I had had some, and I still sometimes have some anxiety. And so, you know, I tried to kind of impart some like little tricks for her to calm her down. I just wanted to like make her feel comforted, but it's like, how do you make someone feel comforted when they just feel like everywhere they go,

it's unsafe and everything they do is potentially being watched. I was more, I think, at a certain point angry than anything. I was frightened at first and worried for Amy, but then I just kind of got a little pissed off. Not a little, I got a lot pissed off. My name is Sarah.

I work with Amy. We are her firm's public relations and communications firm that also handles their social media. Our team got the notice of a comment that was posted initially and then Amy had followed up. It just appeared as a very off-color comment on their company's posts. We of course get the alerts and got notified. Amy followed up immediately as she had been tracking it too and we took it down and that's where the conversation about this situation

started to expand. We needed to really be on the lookout because he was very active again. It was alarming. It was unexpected because we had never dealt with any of those types of comments on their posts before, but it didn't necessarily tip us off to what was to come. Usually in a lot of these instances, and like we thought initially, it's just a one-off

comment. It's not unheard of that there are fake accounts. They've had an interaction with a company and felt like they can serve it to the company by posting a negative comment. It's typically a one and done situation. So whether that's deleting and moving on or turning off comments and moving on, that's usually the breadth of it, honestly. But to have it come back and proliferate is something that we had not ever had experience with before. And so usually the typical moves of deleting them and turning off comments,

but that was not the case here. We just wanted to be alert, especially when we're positioning a female executive in a male-dominated industry. That was something that was very present in our conversations. As we're growing a brand for them, we don't want to turn off the two way engagement is there coming into the community and building their brand and so shutting off some of those really had to talk about strategically what are we doing with these channels how can we maintain and build this brand and be engaging but turn off and delete and really be vigilant. But it was also resources from my team. One of the other things that was really important during a lot of the social media barrage is that not only were we taking it down and all of that, but we were ensuring that we were reporting properly and documenting so that we could show the breadth of all of it.

I was really limited of what I informed the rest of my team that was managing that account to protect her privacy. But I also want to set a backdrop that since this is my husband's firm, it was like our brother firm. A lot of our teams had interaction together outside of work, meaning we'd also go out to a happy hour or an event, a sporting event or something like that. So the bond that my team had with Amy's team and Amy was really strong. That basis of protecting Amy that transferred to all of my team members

that worked on this, we're really angry about what was happening to her. And we all felt this sense of protectionism. That was the first emotion, right? And that really never left as my husband's partner, Amy's part of our family, and we're gonna do everything possible to make sure that we keep her protected, as well as the image of the firm that they were building. Being able

to have eyes on 24-7 for these was really asking for a lot of additional time from my team on it. We were very vigilant and I would say did a successful job of keeping those two goals of building that firm and its brand and protecting Amy intact. The conversations remained very supportive and strategic to handle both of the objectives of growing a company, but protecting Amy. We were really able to be fluid with our communications and in their counseling with Amy. There were certain points that she was like, I think we just take all of our social down and but that didn't move forth the objective of them growing a business. We were able to keep a lot of it under the wraps

and that was really important too. So our conversations were fluid but I think the harder conversations were really starting to come with my team. with my team. Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending, but the worst part is, if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history.

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My name's Andy and I'm Amy's business partner. We've been business partners since 2017. Amy and I would have conversations whenever he would surface and text her or reach out to her. And so I was aware that it was intermittently going on, but when it started to really pick up in intensity, we felt it was important to let our team members know because he was starting to create multiple profiles

from Amy with her picture on it. We wanted to make sure that everybody was very vigilant about their safety. We have a lot of women that work with us and we wanted to make sure that everybody was feeling safe and fully understanding the situation and aware of what was going on. It was very concerning. He was referencing local restaurants right around our offices. It was as though he was local at that point. I think we all lost some sleep during that time. We worked with the security services for our office to make sure that

they were well aware of the situation, we put locks on the doors. We made sure that if people didn't feel comfortable walking folks to cars and things like that, just making sure that everybody felt like they were going to be in a safe situation, making sure that Amy felt like we were reaching out to her and that she was taking good care of herself, both mentally and physically, but also than not putting herself in situations where she's walking around alone, downtown, and things like that. I think the support was very helpful for her during that time, but it also showed how much people just care about her. Everybody is more than happy to help her deal with the situation as it unfolded. Everybody was deeply concerned for Amy,

was much more concerned about the team that she was for herself. My name is Natalie and I have worked with Amy for the last five and a half years at our company. It's an isolating time for all of us. She's isolated and has capacity and time to continue to go through his rolladex of victims, but also it can be very targeted and scary. If he knows Amy is single and she's going to be by herself the majority of the time due to the government shutdown, is he able to have a stronger impact in what he does during that time? I don't have any doubt that that wasn't planned in some capacity.

I remember initially it was brought to our attention as a team more so, hey, I want everyone to be aware of this because you may be a victim to this as well, unfortunately as collateral. I felt like we needed as many eyes out on social media as possible to try to mitigate and shut down these fake profiles that were seemingly coming up as quickly as we were trying to take them down. I would see new friend requests from people I didn't recognize, especially if they used Amy's photos, likely explicit. I was always screenshotting them, documenting them, sending them to Amy. Really just as like a heads up, let me know what I can do to support. I do remember how difficult, unfortunately, it was to navigate some of the social media

platforms of getting that content down. It was a lot more challenging than I think one would anticipate or expect, especially some of the explicit content. It's obviously a mortifying thing to have photos of you that you thought were shared privately to be so publicly shared online alongside the language that was posted with it. You feel lost and alone and you wonder, where do I begin?

Do I know this individual? Do they live overseas or do they live in my community and in my neighborhood? And do I interact with that person? There was a fear of really a lack of understanding of what is this individual's motive that was never clear to us. Did he have violent plans for further down the road or did he just get joy out of taunting his victims in the capacity of embarrassing them online?

We really didn't have that insight. It was a really trying and frankly scary time for Amy to navigate along with all of us. She was trying to be strong and you could see it. She was really trying to be strong for all of us. We were locking the doors to our offices. I was very grateful that she lived in a locked building. So there were multiple avenues that an individual

would have to get to to get to her front door. I even noticed looking over my shoulder, just being a little bit more mindful of my surroundings, then you otherwise feel like you should have to be. Here's Amy's mom. It was such a hard time for everybody. We're all going through our things. We're all concerned for the loved ones that are at risk, you know, to pass away just from COVID were all concerned for the loved ones that are at risk, you know, to pass away just from COVID, and that he's taking advantage of the opportunity to terrorize even more during that time, which

tells you a lot about his wicked evil, since I want to be very respectful towards Amy. And it's hard because some of the family members have not been able to listen or hear about some of the most evil things that he's done. And I give them a pass because I know that it would totally annihilate and every personality can only handle what can handle. Pardon me, these are tears of frustration. I try to keep it as a righteous anchor but I get so frustrated that if someone is allowed to do this so freely. He's describing basically I'm going to be really nice about this but very twisted pornographic acts inviting others to do those. But I had no idea some of the really evil things beyond it would just blow your mind what this man has said he wants to have happen to her.

I haven't mentioned the things and that's why I get a little choked up, but my mind couldn't even wrap itself around a few of the things that Amy had sent to me, told me and read to me some of the things that she described that he had done. Being a nurse and having done some psych and things like that, I do know that those places exist and how I was raised. I do understand that, yet I don't understand how someone gleefully and surgically with great skill cuts through somebody's life like that and puts them at risk for evil to be done by other people who are sick. And it's serious terrorizing heinous evil things. What he is inviting other people to do, what he's saying to do, he can see into parts of her life because he's describing specific clothing of hers.

She's out there. There's no way she can hide it. Or he's like, well, she should change her phone number. You guys don't realize it's not like that. He's let everybody else know who she is. And those platforms are still up and running on social media And social media refuses to take them down. It was very disheartening It was very scary at times throughout this process

I knew I had to educate myself to the dark side not to become part of the dark side But to be smart like a fox and stay ahead of it. It is mind-blowing And Amy kept working and doing what she needed to do, but it was so exhausting. So exhausting because it's a 24-7 attack. It's harmed her reputation. Thank God Amy is so well known and has gotten business leader of the year. She's won many awards she will never tell you about,

which is very hard in a predominantly male industry that she works in, extremely hard, but she has done it. Her sister said it best. She lost her sense of adventure. She lost a lot of that. That she's such a joy-filled heart. She likes to share that with others. And there was a time that she didn't to protect others. She had to shut down a lot of her pictures and social media in general, which she had no problem doing to protect others. But because this predator had gotten to some of the pictures of her friends, she's all about protecting everybody.

And Amy went to the ends of the earth to do that, no matter what the cost was to her. We're not built to live with this sustained type of stress. We are not built to live with sustained chronic stress. And that's what our daughter has been doing. Amy was so brave. She was so courageous. I always say she's my hero. My hero is an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.

And that's what she has done. There's a lot of heroes in life and a lot of heroes in my life, but Amy is my hero. She's an ordinary person that has done extraordinary things. And she had to do a lot of those through this process. We all communicated and kept communicating and started to come together even more, circle the wagons even closer. It's a lot that it was impacting me, but me aside, he took it to a whole other level where he went after those that I love and respect the

torment and online stalking escalated to a point where it was impacting not only me, but those around me, family, friends, coworkers. He took it as far as coming after my company, calling and going after my female employees. He even went after one of my business partner's wives and her company and her female employees. He was calling me, leaving me voicemails, calling my female employees. Whenever I would hear from a number that I didn't recognize or I would get a voicemail, I would text all of them and say, hey, I just got a message from this number. Did anybody else, if I would block it or I would just let it go to voicemail, he would call and call and call repeatedly.

And this isn't just me. These are all of my female employees. They're really colleagues to me, but technically my employees, which I think makes it even more disturbing. They're all wonderful and supportive through that time, but they have to document this stuff too. My female colleagues and I started a text chain. There are three or four of us at the time.

If I got a message from a number, then I would check with them to see if they got a message from that number or a call. If they got something, I wanted them to text on that chain because when I was trying to protect them and two, I just wanted to start documenting these numbers so I knew the ones not to answer. There became a pattern of numbers. There's a South Carolina area code and a Newport Beach one that keep coming up repeatedly. We do all the things to try to reverse search and try to figure out who's attached to them and we cannot find anything. You have to remember if I'm working and I see this number come up my heart sinks to my stomach. I wasn't only worried about my protection or my safety but I was worried about my family, my friends, my colleagues, given the direct attacks and threats to them through all of this.

But the amount of time it took to like handle all of this, it was like a full-time job in itself. Here's Amy's co-worker, Natalie. It really became a very intimate reality for all of us in 2020, as we all were unfortunately victimized by the defendant. As it relates to my social media, I had posted to a very high profile nonprofit organization that I chair. And not only did Morrison attempt to defame Amy, but he was also attempting

to really jeopardize my professional and philanthropic career. For somebody who is scrolling social media and sees those comments without the context of what's going on, it is really confusing. And people don't typically jump to the conclusion that we have a stalker. And so it was a balance of how do we try to get this content shut down and how do we respond to this content in a way that doesn't continue to fuel him to continue to post. It was a very fine balance that we were trying to navigate. With the business that we're in, we're very public facing and we're highly

involved in the community. And so there is a little bit of that public safety element too of how do we continue to be successful in the work that we do while maintaining the privacy that we need to make sure that we can make our whole team and our family and extended family feel safe as well. In addition to the anxiety that Morrison was creating online for us, there were times that I physically felt unsafe in my own home or in the office if I was working later. As I mentioned, we don't know who this person is.

Do they live in our community? Do they actually know a lot more about us than we think they might? I actually run a short-term rental business on the side and there was one particular night that I received a relatively strange request on my short-term rental app asking for very specific information regarding my property being watered across streets, more insight into kind of the layout of the bedrooms, etc. of our house. And I freely gave that information, as I normally do, to help see if a guest is potentially interested. And directly following that information I provided, the request was withdrawn and I

began immediately receiving text messages from the defendant Morrison and it was hey Nat are you up? He was calling me repeatedly. At that point I'm like is this guy at my front doorstep and I just don't know and so that was one of those moments that I was really scared and felt extremely alone. It felt interesting that he kept referring to me as Nat, which is really only a nickname that is used by close friends and family. It felt a little bit strange too, like maybe this individual does potentially know us or has at least had enough exposure to others to understand that that's kind of a more personal name that

people call me. My husband wasn't home that night, so I reached out to him, and then I reached out to one of our other male co-workers who was very privy to the situation at hand. I was debating, like, do I go stay at someone else's house tonight? I don't think I actually shared that until the following day, just out of wanting to protect. Amy, it's not fair for her to have to carry all of this load just because she was the initial victim. But also wanting Amy to be aware of the situation from a documentation perspective. She ended up being relatively factual, just, hey, wanted to let you know I had this experience. These are all of the voicemails,, all the text messages. She immediately went into action of how we will navigate this with our PR company,

with the news outlets. And it was just amazing to see how proactive she was to the situation at hand. It just speaks to the quality of a leader that she is and the type of person that she is. the quality of a leader that she is and the type of person that she is. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, host of Wondery's Podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, corruption in sports, corporate fraud.

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early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus. Here's Amy's work colleague, Sarah. Here's Amy's work colleague, Sarah. It was a daily connect with our team. When these situations happen, you don't always see or know those that are trying to support and help also become the targets too. Our team, they were trying to block and protect and then had it turned on them two. Now I've exposed my team to something that is incredibly damaging. And this was again really new on any level to deal with this. At first it was really more about time, meaning that with these burner accounts that were set up and comments at the fever pace that it was happening, but then it did progress into finding out

who at my team then managed that particular account to start attacking them. And that is, I don't think something that, as an employer, as a boss, we're all equipped to deal with. And the best thing that we can do is to talk through it and be supportive and to help. I remember when he finally found me, I was at a holiday lights display with my family and it came through and I just remember

reading that post and it took me a minute even with the context of all of this to know oh my gosh this is all connected because you're just so dumb founded and taken back from it that anger just comes back. It affected myself and up to three other of our team members that then he latched on to find to start doing personal attacks there too. It was a daily conversation then with my team and then it turned into a twice a day and three times a day during the heart

of when this was really intense. You understand and empathize and then all of a sudden it happens to you in the mix and it's just really earth shattering. It's really disorienting. It makes this internal question happen like, did I make a wrong move that's so misplaced to have any of those questions. But as an employer, when it's coming onto the team and we're committed to do everything that we can and even more so because of the personal relationships involved, as an employer, that was one of the most challenging times of how I can be a support and a coach and a shoulder

for my team that was experiencing it. Well, I'm also experiencing it. The compounding effect of the supportive ring around Amy was huge. To have it creep into so many different lives, what one person can do is just devastating. It's wild to me, and it's not something that you can lock the door and know that you're secure. We're so widely connected now that's coming in through social media, and it's getting at you in so many ways. So the security from that standpoint is lost.

That is something that's incredibly hard to deal with. That also speaks to how the social media apps themselves have to come up with some other safeguards too, because for one person to just proliferate all of these dummy accounts at the speed and they're all being flagged and reported. Really goes to show you some of that reporting internally to those channels is a bunch of BS. We don't have the law and the tools in those apps on our side. This wasn't in the playbook.

We're not publicists for individuals. You care about your work and you care about the people that you work with, but then the extra burden that that brings upon even Amy herself. Look at where this has gone. It seeps into so many different ways, emotionally, psychologically, physically. It's really hard to gain that security

back after something like this. It did end up coming into physical security too. It became threatening when the additional personal targeting came in. That's when a lot of this escalated. We needed some of that outside law enforcement help because it was becoming beyond something that I could protect. We needed more help. I think the most alarming conversation we would have was when he would reach out to our employees. My wife's company, who does all our public relations,

they were shutting down those profiles or lock the email. But then he started going after my wife and her employee. So it really started to broaden out the impact that he was making in any circle. I think that was the most concerning piece of this. We weren't concerned about our reputation or what was eventually going to happen with what he was able to do online. What we were concerned about is

how aggressive he was being in his approach and in his staffing efforts and was he actually going to do something to physically hurt someone with our biggest concern. We just wanted to make sure that everybody felt safe. I was concerned about the intensity of where this was going and I felt it was important for us to make sure that this was being documented and that law enforcement was engaged. Amy, she fully agreed that this had gotten to the level that we needed to start taking the next step. We also reached out to several attorneys that we felt could help us engage with the FBI on this. We had a team of professionals that was going to help us navigate this because it

was obviously not going away. I had submitted multiple reports to the FBI at this point documenting the behaviors and what was happening in the crime and I hadn't heard anything. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want this to be impacting them in the way that it was our company. My loved ones, my coworkers, my business partner, his wife. It was crazy the amount of people that were getting impacted by Morrison's actions. We had a conversation with an attorney that kind of ended there, but we agreed that I would lob a call into the FBI field office here in Denver and just get their advice on

what to do. I didn't know what to anticipate when I called. I didn't know if it would be a voicemail or what would happen. I actually got someone in person on the phone and basically said, I'm being stalked online. This is the situation kind of summarized exactly what I've explained to you thus far. I actually got a special agent on duty. I don't know what I said to him, but he listened

to me and heard me and heard my story and escalated my case to the cyber crime unit within the FBI field office here. As a result, a case was officially opened actually through the Denver Police Department in January of 2021. So fairly soon after I made that call to the FBI, I was very grateful. That was the last thing I expected. Here I thought this is just something I'm going to have to tackle. I have to handle this. This is all on me. And at the time I held a lot of guilt for what I had done because I thought, gosh, I was so stupid to send pictures. I did this to myself. This is what I get for what I did. I've let go a lot of that now.

And I realize it's not the case because this guy is obviously a predator. But I was extremely grateful in January of 2021 to hear they were going to open a case. There was a detective assigned to my case who is with the Denver Police Department but also served on the cybercrime task force for the FBI. My detective started investigating

and trying to find who this individual was that was harassing and stalking me. I was on the phone with him probably every day multiple times a day as my stalker was continuing his behaviors and I was reporting information and a lot of the details that I talked about prior. I kind of took a backseat and anything new I saw, I would just send it to him to add to the file. His devotion and the time spent on my case was so much more than what I anticipated. And we had a number of like phone conversations, but I have not met this individual in person while he was investigating my case. My sister, she was absolutely detective number one in

trying to find information and track him. I'm pretty off the grid, which has turned out to be a very good thing. I have no social media and I haven't for a good while. At the time, I think I had just Instagram, but I didn't have my real name. I had no real evidence to connect me to Amy. And then thankfully, professionally, I don't need to be super public facing online, so I can sort of just fade out of there. I really felt like at first I didn't have any reason to worry, but as things progressed, I became pretty vigilant about just sort of

making sure that I was not to be found online at all because the severity was so clear. I never had any kind of contact or interaction but it got to a point where I was like I don't know what I'm doing but I might as well do what I can to try and figure out maybe who this person is or at least where this is coming from. Thankfully Amy was smart enough to keep so much evidence. She just documented every single thing and I have so much respect for her in that regard to keep your composure and just constantly be logging for literally, you know, years. It couldn't have been easy. So I looked through what I could. There was a lot of things to consider with that. And so it was very

overwhelming and I'm not professionally trained to do that. I was trying to investigate this the best I could. My conclusion was that he was probably in his 50s or 60s and knew he was racist. I thought that he looked on the West Coast. I had these different preconceived notions based on what I had researched and tried to kind of track down the police. Once they got more involved, it was a relief. It was a huge relief when it seemed like it became a prioritized case with them. Your daughter, who you've been responsible for,

who you protected her whole life, is suddenly exposed in a position of vulnerability. And there's not a thing you can do about it other than try to be there at the right time if something happens and try to provide support. It was very, very difficult. Even though I'm an IT person, I tend to be less online. I don't do social media because I've worked

in the defense industry and I've had security clearances where that was refriended upon. So I just never did it. I don't think he ever identified me or was able to contact me in any way that I am aware of. He seemed to be more focused on people within his own generation around Amy's age. I actually threw myself into research as well, and I will tell you that Amanda did a better job than I did. I went out and started trying to put together the pieces,

looking at the evidence that Amy had gathered, and she did a great job of trying to track all the communications and giving us information on what was communicated in doing research online for the most part. There are websites where you can look at people's backgrounds, investigating people, and I had almost pegged a person in California, which was the wrong person, but I had identified them as a strong candidate. It helped because at least you felt like you were doing something, but I had identified them as a strong candidate. It helped because at least you felt like you were doing something, but there was nothing you could do. There was no action you could take. It's one of the most frustrating experiences of my life because

you feel so helpless. I have a brother who's a retired FBI agent. He was a special agent for the FBI years ago. And so naturally we reached out to him to talk to him about this. He's been retired for 20 plus years or more. And so his understanding of the crime was very difficult for him to understand. This is a whole new world and laws haven't caught up with this kind of crime. It's so prevalent out on the internet, but the laws are still the old fashioned stocking laws. He was so confused by the whole process. And for the law enforcement, who I can't say enough good things about how well they worked on this case, they have a special task force that

took this bull by the horns. Amy gave them so much information. She documented everything. There was a huge electronic file. She had snippets of voice messages that were left, text messages, We had snippets of voice messages that were left, text messages, all emails. She had everything put together. So they didn't, I don't think they needed to talk to me and I really didn't have any direct evidence. Everything I had was secondary, you know, what I had found out through Amy. Amanda, she was tracking him. She was able to connect the pieces of the puzzle very quickly, very methodically, always running

everything through her sister and through us. She was absolutely phenomenal. She was heads and tails above all of us. It's just part of her nature, being a teacher and teaching history. And we learned from the FBI that they actually hire historians to do exactly what she was doing that naturally came to her. Tying everything together from this smallest little piece, she wasn't far off to the point where the FBI finally said, hold it, who's getting this information? Cause they need to stop. She was too close.

They primarily focused on interviewing Amy. We were thrilled. We're like, oh my gosh, we're finally going to know who this is, where he's at, and something is finally going to be done to stop him, not just for Amy. Amy number one, you know, she is the love of our life, yet for everybody else. Next time on Something Was Wrong. Until he was arrested, I didn't know if this guy was going to try to come find me or flee.

So I pursued a civil protection order until he was ultimately arrested. And that was one of the worst experiences of my life. The first time she went to get a restraining order, they tried to shame her. Those in the system aren't... They're supposed to be there to stop this sort of behavior. Every system has its dirty little secrets. When you choose to be a part of it, that makes you as bad as a dirty little secret.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe friends. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Rees. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram, at Something Was Wrong Podcast. Our theme song was composed by Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much.

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