time before he realized that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON THE THIRD OF MAY, 2013, Maxwell mustered up the courage to send a message to his mother’s new Facebook page. He knew his grandmother believed that the page belonged to an impostor, and he was inclined to agree with her. But what if it didn’t? What if this was really his mom’s page?
He wasn’t sure what to say, so he kept it simple. Two letters. H and I. Hi.
He soon received a response that he admits “freaked me out a little bit.”
Hey, little man. How are you?
His mother certainly had never referred to him as a “little man.” It was demeaning, the kind of endearment someone might use when addressing a small boy—not a robust fifteen-year-old football player. He stared at the breezy greeting, sent by someone he was almost positive had to be a stranger posing as his mom. Thoroughly spooked, he could not bring himself to reply. He waited a week or so before he attempted to get the truth. Then he typed three questions: What is my middle name? What was the name of our first boxer? Who was my best friend when I was growing up?
“Anyone could figure out my middle name,” Maxwell acknowledges. “But only my mom would know the answers to the other two questions.” Max’s middle name could be found in an online search, but nothing on the web would reveal the identity of his childhood friend or the name of their boxer dog. If this were really his mom communicating with him, she should be able to easily answer his questions, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t.
There was no reply.
Though the stalker didn’t answer Max, they were so active that May 2013 it was hard to believe that just one person was creating so much havoc. Threatening emails and texts popped up faster than Dave could read them, and much of the time he didn’t. What was the point in reading all of those ugly things? She had favorite words and used them repeatedly. Whore. Fat. Ugly. Kill.
At first Dave had scrutinized it all for clues, but his harasser was too clever to give away her location. While she came right out and said she was Cari, she never told him where she was, not until she had moved onto the next place. She was always one step ahead of him. The messages continued to express a peculiar animosity toward Liz and made her the focus of most of the threats. Sometimes Liz’s children were mentioned. On one May night, Dave received an email from [email protected] with an attached photograph of Liz’s kids: These are the ugliest kids, just like their whore mom. They should die with their whore mom, so I don’t have to see their ugliness anymore. No one wants her and her bratty kids around.
The image showed the kids inside of Liz’s home, and the picture was apparently taken by someone outside, shooting through a window. Liz told Dave that it made her very uncomfortable to know that someone was watching her children. How in the world did the maniac manage to photograph her kids? Had she been creeping around in the bushes outside of Liz’s home like a paparazzo shooting celebrities for the tabloids? How did she manage to be everywhere, yet never be seen?
While Liz was the favorite victim, the harassment wasn’t limited to her. If Dave sent a brief message to a female he met online, it created trouble. That May, he met a pretty woman on the Plenty of Fish dating site. Jessica McCarthy had two young sons, and while not technically single, she was separated and free to date. Jessica was drawn to the photo of the good-looking father of two. Though she was a decade younger than Dave, they had things in common. Both lived in Omaha and were hardworking people and devoted parents.
“My acquaintance with Jessica lasted about two hours,” says Dave. “I forget which one of us approached the other, but we communicated on the site, messaging back and forth, for about an hour.” Then Jessica suggested that they “friend” each other on Facebook. Once “friended,” they could not only message each other privately, they could also comment on each other’s posts.
All Facebook members can view the contents of the pages of other members, including their photos and their lists of Facebook friends unless steps are taken by individual users to make their pages private. Most people are unaware that clicking on the