Ep. 262: “The Mystery that Changed Wyoming’s Stalking Law”

“What the Hack?” is DeleteMe’s true cybercrime podcast hosted by Beau Friedlander.

Beau: When you get a text from someone in your contacts, you can see right away who sent it. But do you trust the name that’s displayed there? This story is about what happens when you can’t trust that name.

Cathy: She was scared. When she called us, we said, “Don’t go anywhere alone. Don’t go anywhere alone.”

Beau: Imagine not being able to tell your child who to look out for because you don’t know either. Could be a classmate, a teacher, a coach, or a mom sitting next to you at a game.

Cathy: She’s texting this person, “Who are you? Who are you?” And they say “Well, I’m this person.” That child’s on the bus with her, and he’s sleeping. He’s not texting her.

Beau: This week’s episode is about stalking and grooming. It involves children, so a warning there. And it’s not simple, so you’re gonna wanna pay attention. And one more thing. What we’re about to talk about could happen to literally anyone.

Cathy: I texted that number and said, “Just so you know, I’m reporting this to the police” and then I blocked it.

Beau: Phone numbers, schedules, family members. Not long ago, that would have taken a really long time to figure out. Now, today, it’s either online for the taking, people just using social media and not being careful, or it’s for sale through data brokers, or a little bit of both. Column B, column A. Everything that anyone could possibly need is available for anyone to target us. I’m Beau Friedlander, and you’re listening to What the Hack?, the podcast that asks, in a world where your data is everywhere, how do you stay safe online?

Beau: Cathy Holman, thank you so much for joining us today.

Cathy: Beau, thank you for having me. I appreciate you making the time and taking the time to chat with me.

Beau: All right, now you have a blog and it’s been around for a while. What’s the name of the blog?

Cathy: So I’m originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I came out to Wyoming, where I currently live. Keep in mind, this was the late 1900s, okay? People were still doing this. I went to the University of Wyoming to find a cowboy and marry him.

Beau: Really?

Cathy: And yeah, 100%, that’s why I picked Wyoming, and I did. I met him at Frontier Days, which is the daddy of them all, biggest, world’s largest outdoor rodeo. So we’ve been married for 22 years and have five children. So it’s prairiewifeinheels.com and I began it 13 years ago. And so the Prairie Wife comes from the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, and the in heels is a nod to the city girl in me because I still have some of that vibe going on.

Beau: I don’t know much about Wyoming cowboys, I guess.

Cathy: What a lot of people know about us is we have Yellowstone, as in the park, not the TV show, but a lot of our lives are like the TV show. Cowboys, we’re the equality state because we’re the first state to give women the right to vote. Think mountains, wide open prairies, America how it used to be.

Beau: But now, America how it used to be to me doesn’t include suffragettes actually. So how is that the case? So Wyoming’s an interesting place.

Cathy: ‘Cause we were out there feeding cows in 40 below right next to our husbands, right? So actually I could go on forever ’cause I’m the world’s biggest nerd, but technically the reason why we were the first state to give women the right to vote is ’cause we had so few people that that was the only way for us to become a territory and then become a state. And even now, Wyoming is the least populated state in the union with just over half a million people in the entire state.

Beau: Half a million people, that’s what we have in a couple of the cities in Connecticut where I live.

Cathy: Beau, we don’t even have a Costco in our state.

Beau: What?

Cathy: Not even a single Costco in Wyoming.

Beau: So wait, Wyoming’s in the middle of nowhere, but you’re in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, Glenrock, right? So how does… Is that really, really in the middle of nowhere?

Cathy: It is. There’s 2,400 people. We do not have a stoplight. There’s just a four-way stop and, like, no fast food. There’s two gas stations. A Dollar General just got built though. Big deal. Big deal.

Beau: Congrats.

Beau: All right, so Cathy, and listeners, trigger warning, if you don’t like complicated stories, maybe this episode is not for you, ’cause this is a complicated story, but it’s also a story about stalking and grooming, and that is a serious trigger warning. Having said that, Cathy, if you had to in a nutshell say what happened, what happened?

Cathy: This is a story about how technology allows people to hide behind it and do damage that they would never think about doing if it didn’t exist.

Beau: And now when this starts in, was it 2023?

Cathy: Three. Yep, three years we’ve been dealing with this.

Beau: Okay. Your daughter Jillian was 15 years old, a sophomore in high school, and had just been green-lighted to wrestle competitively.

Cathy: Yeah, The state of Wyoming finally, they sanctioned female wrestling as a high school sport, which was a really big deal. We actually are the, we were, at least for the first couple years, the fastest growing in the nation for that sport with how many girls are joining it and participating. So huge deal. She was thriving, absolutely thriving in every sense of the word.

Beau: So Jillian’s thriving. She’s active in everything and one of those things is the FFA, Future Farmers of America. And okay, it’s November of 2023, and she’s at the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis. That’s when this started.

Cathy: Yeah. So she’s at this event for FFA. Came home from this event where I think there were maybe six other students. Her advisor came, there were a couple parents chaperoning. And I get a message from a parent that I know, but it’s kinda like I just know because we have the same friends and our kids are in school together. And she messaged me and said she wants to talk about something that happened. So I call her and apparently a bunch of text messages were sent out, screenshots, and they supposedly came from my daughter, and they were speaking disparagingly about other students and about things that happened on that FFA field trip, if you wanna call it that. And so I talked to my daughter, and I was like, “Why didn’t you tell me this happened? Like, I ask you every day when you get home from school, ‘What happened? What’s going on?'” And she’s like, “Oh, Mom, it’s just not a big deal. I didn’t do it.” And I was like, “Okay, are you sure you didn’t do it?” Cause I have teenagers, and they’re not always perfect. And she goes, “Mom, the first thing that you taught me when you gave me a phone is never put it in writing if you don’t want anyone to see it.”

Beau: Well, I mean, that’s fair enough.

Cathy: Which is true. We talk a lot about phone safety and ethics and what we expect from our children, and it’s a privilege, not a right, and the responsibility. And so I believed her, and she kinda said too that she and her friend sat in the car and called the number that it came from a bunch of times and no one answered. Some of the children at school were upset with her, and so she just said, “Here, have my phone.”

Beau: What were the disparaging messages? I mean, you said there are screen grabs. Did they look legit or was there—

Cathy: Yeah, no, they… So, great thing. That’s one of the things that I said to the mom when I got back to her and said, “Look, Jillian said she didn’t do it, but people can create these graphics.” But there were things, making fun of a boy named Preston, talking about children doing inappropriate things. It named actual children that are in our community and claimed that two boys two-timed another girl. Like, they both had sex with her one after the other.

Beau: Okay.

Cathy: And then it was also talking about children vaping or just doing other things that would get them in trouble if someone chose to believe those texts or gave them to admin.

Beau: Well, this is really, really troubling. You know your daughter – I mean, I have two daughters. I know them pretty well. I’ve had experiences—not like this, but I’ve had texting incidents where it was—

Cathy: Yeah, you know your kid, and that’s also not how she texts.

Beau: That’s what I was going to ask.

Cathy: And she said no, it was out of character. Plus the people that she was speaking disparagingly about were her friends. Like, I know the people that she would talk like that about and it wasn’t those people. So, the mom, her name’s Marcy Smith. We had multiple conversations. It actually dragged on to the point where I was like, “Can we just be done? Like, the kids didn’t do this.” We don’t need to keep on rehashing it. We don’t need to bring anyone else into this. In the end, what I did is I tried to report to the police, “Someone’s impersonating my daughter.” The police said, “Because your daughter didn’t receive the text, there’s nothing we can do.” So I encouraged the mom that called me to report it, and then there was another mom, Preston’s mom, her name is Brandy. She was involved as well because Preston received those screenshots and some of the things were about him, and I told her to report it, and she did. This is a small town we’re talking about, 2,500 people. I moved there 18 years ago with my family, so I still am an outsider when it comes to small towns. I did not go to high school there, okay?

Beau: And you’re a city kid.

Cathy: And I’m a city kid, and also I am not… I’m a sports mom, but I never participated in sports. I’m not a fair mom. We don’t do 4H, we don’t do fair. We have animals. I help take care of them and feed them, but I’m not ingrained in that aspect of the community. So this particular mom, I used to have Marcy cut my hair. She had a friend that went to high school with her that became one of my nearest and dearest friends through the years. So I knew her by proximity, but the things she did in her free time wasn’t what I did, so we never really hung out socially unless it was a group thing. And even there, as the years went on, it was more and more sparingly, because again, the things I did with my time wasn’t the same things that these guys did.

Beau: Marcy is somebody who goes to 4H and brings their pig or whatever.

Cathy: Absolutely, yep. She’s ingrained in the community, multi-generational ranch family. Her sister’s the head secretary at the high school. Her dad is fire chief. She went to high school there. Her brother-in-law is a police officer at the next town over. She’s very ingrained in the community. We’ve got a couple of crossovers, but us personally, I would maybe have said friends at some points off and on, but mostly just like, “Hey, how are you doing? We’re both at sports together. Our daughters both play volleyball together.” But again, she didn’t even have my phone number after knowing her for all these years, just to kind of put that into perspective.

Beau: I haven’t even watched the show, but I’m getting Dutton vibes. Is that accurate or no?

Cathy: If you’re talking about a very well-respected ranch family that everyone in the town knows, absolutely. I don’t know if the whole ranch mafia vibe is 100% on point.

Beau: No, and like I said, I haven’t watched it, and I do understand that Dutton guy is basically Tony Soprano. I literally just Googled what the hell is Costner’s name on the show, and they said Dutton, John Dutton III.

Cathy: It’s the multi-generational ranch family. Everybody knows everybody.

Beau: Listen, if you’re from my town, and I love you all, you know that, but it’s the Dance family. I got it. We all have that family in our hometown.

Cathy: Absolutely. And I thanked her a multitude of times for reaching out to me about this instead of making assumptions. Like, that’s the right way to handle things: “Hey, I have this problem going on. Your daughter’s involved. Can our daughters talk? Can they work it out? Can we make sure we’re on the same page?” I looped the administration at the school into the situation, sent her screenshots of the email so we’re all on the same page. I communicated with Brandy, this other mom. Like, this is how we’re supposed to solve problems.

Beau: So Preston, the subject of these seemingly fake texts, dated Marcy Smith’s daughter.

Cathy: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they had broken up by the time this FFA situation happened, but there’s 40 kids in the class. You still intermingle. You learn how to get over things. You still have to do activities together. So they were both on the trip.

Beau: I mean, that was a while ago, but I don’t know. Can you ever really get over a broken heart? I mean, you should. Or maybe you can try or it’s worth trying. But anyway, fast-forward a little bit. Nothing new has happened. There’s been no messages. There’s been no screenshots, nothing like that. And then a new message appears.

Cathy: Yeah, and it said, “Hey, Prairie Wife,” which is my brand name from Prairie Wife in Heels, and went on to say that they were a concerned parent, and they were alerted to some texts and some conversations. And our daughter had been talking about how she had been giving—and I’m just gonna quote it—”[BLEEP]jobs,” in parentheses, “(Ew, I even hate saying that word,) to boys at school.” And that also Preston had a bet going on saying that he was gonna take away her “V card,” meaning her virginity.

Beau: Now, were you taking this seriously at this point, Cathy? Like, did you think it was real, or did you think it was something like the supposedly fake screenshot that had already been discussed?

Cathy: It just didn’t sit right with me, especially with what had happened. The, “Ew, I feel weird saying that,” that’s not how an adult would talk, right? An adult wouldn’t say, “Ew, I feel weird saying [BLEEP]job.” So that was a little red flag to me because they said they were a concerned parent. So I responded with, “If you’re not gonna tell me who you are, I’m not gonna talk to my daughter about this.” And nothing happens. And then all of a sudden, 20 minutes later, my phone rings, and it’s my husband, and I knew. I knew. I open up my phone, and he is losing his mind because they copied and pasted that exact same text, changed it to Mr. Prairie Wife, which is what I used to call him when I had a radio show here in town for five years, and it was the exact same word for word. I had to pull my daughter aside and take her into the bedroom. That’s where we have our private conversations and I had to say, “I’m gonna ask you a question, and if your answer is yes, we’re gonna talk about how you can make decisions at one time and decide that that decision no longer works for who you wanna be and stop. And if your answer is no, I’m gonna believe you.” So I had to tell her, and I had to ask her, “Are you doing this with boys? Did this happen? Is this something that’s happening?” And she was mortified. She was crying, and I will never forget the look on her face when she realized that her dad got that same text. We don’t think our daughter’s perfect, so we asked her, “Is this true? Did this really happen?” all along the way. And so I sat down—I have access to all of her bank accounts as the mom. I’m on there as a co-signer or whatever the smart word is for it that I can’t think of. And I looked to make sure there hadn’t been either a cash withdrawal in a large amount of money to purchase a burner phone, or that she hadn’t gone and bought something at Walmart, and there was nothing.

Beau: I mean, that is damning for the situation because now you know somebody else is doing this, and now you have to find out who is doing this. This is to me like a chapter in the holy screed of dumpster fire lore. We’re like in the dumpster fire now. You know that something’s going on. It’s not your daughter, but somebody’s in it. It’s almost like Clue, ’cause there’s only 40 people.

Cathy: I know, in her class, right?

Beau: Are you starting to think that maybe it’s not a classmate?

Cathy: We had no idea, right? There’s all these things that are coming in that are making it look like it could be a child, but also what child is gonna be sending text messages in the middle of the day, right?

Beau: How do you know it’s not somebody who’s not from your community and just really being a troublemaker?

Cathy: So this is the thing. I have a worldwide network with my brand.

Beau: That’s what I was wondering about. Someone’s coming at you.

Cathy: The reason why I felt that it was someone local, and so did the police, was the names. Names were used all along of real children in the community, real children that were in that class with my daughter, and the only people that were receiving messages were people in the Glenrock community. But our school has a no phones policy, and some of these messages—’cause just a plethora just started going boom to the other victim, Preston, to his mom, to my older son, who is a senior that year—things kept on going, and some of these things were sent during the day, and these kids aren’t allowed to have their phones.

Beau: So during the day is a hint ’cause the kids aren’t allowed to have their phones. The phone numbers to me, a little perplexing, like how does this person have all these different people’s phone numbers? But there’s people search sites, and there’s other ways to get people’s phone numbers. For example, I’ll just give you an example from my own life. I had to send someone a letter recently. We’ve been going back and forth a bunch, and they were doing me a favor, and I didn’t wanna bug them one more time to tell them I forgot the name of an in-law who I needed to list on this email I was sending. So I figured I’d just Google it, and within a few minutes I didn’t have everything I needed, and I didn’t have the name of the in-law I was looking for, but man, all these other relatives were up there: their addresses, their family members’ names, other family members’ names, phone numbers, email. I had enough information basically, if I was a different kind of person, to target the whole family.

Cathy: Yeah, and they’re getting minors’ phone numbers. They’re getting children’s phone numbers. So there’s another child at our daughter’s school that received a text that said, “Jillian’s gonna beat you up.”

Beau: Okay, so here’s where we are. Some fake texts from Jillian’s phone snowballed over months into an anonymous harassment campaign aimed at the Glenrock community, and it got really a big chunk of the Glenrock community, if you think about it. And it got Cathy thinking that someone was targeting them, their whole family. And in the middle of this, life goes on. Jillian and Preston, actually, they’ve been friends since middle school. They start to, as teenagers say these days, talk, and by February, it’s clear they’re heading toward dating. But then Jillian starts getting some weird texts about how she looks coming from someone named Al Deaver. I feel like I should say that five times fast and it’ll make sense. Now this name isn’t a complete surprise. It’s actually a fake profile that Preston uses to shop on Facebook Marketplace. It’s a fake name made up by a kid, so I’m probably right about saying it fast. But anyway, his parents know about it. They probably haven’t said it fast. Sorry, I can’t get over it. But someone cloned it here, ’cause it wasn’t Preston. They took that name, and they set up a fake Instagram and started messaging Jillian, and they started messaging other students at the school.

Cathy: Basically, everything has to do with tearing down Jillian’s character to others, including Preston and his family, so he won’t be interested in dating her, and so she’ll have privileges taken away by coaches, teachers, and us, and then trying to get her to date other boys or feel like Preston is not worthy of her.

Beau: It’s a little messy and a little complicated, but all you need to know is that someone is continuing to pose as different students spreading false information, harassing people, and at this point, no one really understands why.

Cathy: And Preston and Jillian were in communication all along. Our daughter was under strict instructions to talk to no one about this, and my husband and I talked to no one about this, because we don’t know who’s doing this. We don’t know who we can trust. So the only person that Jillian could talk to about this scary, huge thing that took over our lives was Preston, who’s also a victim, her friend at the beginning who was a part of the situation and who also received texts from the person, her brother, and her dad and I. So everything escalated. We continued to get all of these messages. It really escalated after that first one in February to everyone: all of the victims, the family members, the community, teachers are receiving emails. And so Jillian’s at this event, FFA again. She’s on a trip in Wyoming. Oftentimes you have to drive six hours, so you stay overnight. You have your teachers, you have parent chaperones, and you have the kids. And she receives a text saying, “You look hot in that skirt. I would wanna tap that,” or something to that, right?

Beau: And what skirt now? How are they seeing this skirt in the first place?

Cathy: My daughter’s terrified, because she did not post a picture of herself and she realizes the person is there watching her.

Beau: They’re somewhere else staying in a hotel, and the person who’s stalking her must be there because it’s the only way they could know how she’s dressed.

Cathy: And still none of her chaperones know and her teachers don’t know because we don’t know if they are the ones that are doing it.

Beau: So you think it could be maybe a coach, it could be anyone.

Cathy: Yeah, it could be her wrestling coach, it could be her advisor, it could be one of the kids. No one has any clue other than the police because we have no clue who it is, and the game plan is don’t let them see you sweat. Keep your mouth shut, act like nothing’s happening, live your best life and smile, and we think they’re gonna get bold and brave and stupid and make a mistake.

Beau: It sounds like they’re getting pretty bold.

Cathy: Yeah, so an email was sent right before this FFA trip to her wrestling coach and FFA advisor; we had no idea about that email until after our case went public. And it said that Jillian was gonna sneak out of her room to have sex with Preston, so she shouldn’t be allowed to go on the trip. And that email was made to look like it came from a staff member. And that coach just deleted it because he’s like, “That’s not Jillian. Jillian would never do that.” Deleted it, never even talked to us about it ’cause he just thought it was stupid and because he had no idea the depth of what had been happening. And that one we didn’t find out about until after our case went public.

Beau: And meanwhile, Preston is getting anonymous texts that are dissing Jillian as like, “Don’t date her.”

Cathy: Same thing, yep. And also with the FFA situation where she was scared, when she called us, we said, “Don’t go anywhere alone. Don’t go anywhere alone.” Thank God we have the relationship with our daughter that we do that she played along with all these things, even though it was really hard for her. She trusted us. She knew this was in her best interest, that we were fighting for her, that we were taking care of her. So they’re on the bus back from the trip, and she’s texting this person, “Who are you? Who are you?” And they say a child’s name, “Well, I’m this person.” And Jillian looks over there, because that child’s on the bus with her, and he’s sleeping. He’s not texting her.

Beau: Okay.

Cathy: She knows it’s not him. So we can eliminate one person off the list because of that. But it was someone that was there.

Beau: But at some point when you start to see it can’t be this, it can’t be this, it can’t be this, you start to say, “It has to be…”

Cathy: You start narrowing it down.

Beau: There’s an email that comes in April of 2024, and it says, “So you talk about leading a life of grit and grace,” which is a phrase that you use a lot in your own work, “and the same for your kids. But let me tell you, your daughter shouldn’t be a [BLEEP]…” All right, that is not how a Gen Z person talks.

Cathy: Yeah, try explaining what that means to a 16-year-old at the time.

Beau: I wouldn’t know where to start ’cause I’m not quite sure where the term comes from, but I know it’s not okay.

Cathy: Okay, so the backstory on this email is it’s prom.

Beau: Oh no.

Cathy: and Jillian and Preston are sophomores, so they should not be allowed to go to prom, right? Junior, senior. But in our school, they have something called the sophomore escorts, so the escorts escort people down the stage if they don’t have a date. And Preston was voted an escort.

Beau: Right.

Cathy: Jillian’s older brother is a senior, and he’s – obviously I’m biased – one of the nicest kids in the world. He knows Preston’s gonna be at prom, so he takes his sister as his date so Jillian and Preston can be at prom together. And that made that person mad. I received the email from the teacher, which by the way, turned out to be the same fake teacher account that was sent to the coach we talked about, and I received text messages. Preston’s mom received a message that was from an old man that goes to their church about Preston’s behavior at prom. I think there were four to six messages that night of prom that we received. That person was mad. So we have this email that’s supposedly from a teacher. Small town. I reach out to the teacher. I know her. She’s taught all my kids. She said, “I would never speak about a child that way,” which I already knew, but I needed to confirm and make sure. This broke the case because we finally have an email, not an anonymous message sent from a burner app. The police can get a warrant and find out where the email came from. Our plan worked. Live your best life. Keep your mouth shut. Let them think they’re getting away with it, and they’ll make a mistake. And there we had it. Now, going back to it, I’m reading the language of the email. I see that word [BLEEP], and I know it’s not a kid because my daughter goes, “What’s that?”

Beau: What? Okay, so first of all, it’s a movie starring Brad Pitt.

Cathy: And I knew as soon as I saw that word it was an adult.

Beau: Okay, so you got this email and you’re finally able to get a search warrant. That says something about our digital legislation already, but how long did it take to get any information from the search warrant?

Cathy: Three months is what it took. Three months where harassment continued. That is ridiculous to me.

Beau: So the police had the email-

Cathy: Three months for Google to get back to them with the information.

Beau: Now, this is really troublesome because as you know, I’m sure, these situations sometimes end really badly.

Cathy: Yeah, that’s how kids die.

Beau: So shame on Google for not getting right back to them. But this goes to their bottom line ’cause they don’t make money saving kids from stalkers or abuse situations. They make money from ads.

Cathy: So the information that came back was that it gave the special number for the phone that showed that it was an AT&T Samsung phone. And they were able to say that the same person that created that Gmail also had downloaded a burner app where you can disguise your phone number as many times as you need to.

Beau: And now this person, they were creating new phone numbers all the time?

Cathy: Every single time, because we would block, right? So that very first instance where the screenshots were sent to these children, it was from an anonymous number that wasn’t a real number, so we blocked it. But this burner app allows you to regenerate as many phone numbers as you need to, so even though every time something came in, we would block, block, block, there’s an infinite number, and the police can’t trace it.

Beau: All right, now, Cathy, when Google comes back to the police with the information, are you able then to make a positive identification of the person behind this?

Cathy: No, because all we have is that it’s an AT&T phone and that that person that wrote the email has the Burner app. So then there’s another search warrant that has to be taken out so they can go to AT&T with that information and find out details about that specific phone.

Beau: All right. And then what happens?

Cathy: A month and a half later—and remember throughout this whole time that we’re waiting, we’re continuing to be harassed, and so is the other victim. Things have not slowed down. Some might say they escalated and peaked with an incident that happened in July.

Beau: What was that incident?

Cathy: So in July, my daughter is at Fargo. If you’re a wrestler, you understand that that’s peak. There were three college scouts there to watch her, and one of the things that the anonymous texter did is they would send texts before big wrestling tournaments, regionals, and state. They specifically targeted the kids on important dates in their life, which is how, again, we knew it was someone local who was watching them and knew what they did. There was no coincidence. So I’m with my mom and dad, who happen to be in town, and my husband and I receive a screenshot of a text message from Marcy, and the screenshot-

Beau: Marcy Smith.

Cathy: Yeah, from the very beginning. Haven’t—

Beau: Smith, the Dutton family, the ranchers who know everybody—

Cathy: That our tribe intermingles and everything like that. And I receive a screenshot from her, and it looks like it’s from the anonymous texter, and it says, “You better keep mine and Preston’s name out of your mouth. We both blocked you on social media.” And she goes, “I’m sick of this [BLEEP].” And until this point, I didn’t realize that she had been receiving texts and messages too. Because remember, we locked down. Not only are we not talking about it, but I have stopped interacting. We’ve all isolated. It was awful, but it was for our own safety.

Beau: So Marcy Smith has also been getting these texts from the texter?

Cathy: Apparently. I had no idea. And so she says, “I’m sick of this st.” And I said, “Well, report it to the cops. Like, you have to report it to the cops.” And she said, “Well, I looked and Jillian and Preston did block me on social media.”

Beau: And now she’s saying that Jillian and Preston are the anonymous texters.

Cathy: And so I call her because I’m like, “I’m done. How dare you? We have gone through hell, and how dare you accuse me of that?” So I call her up and I say, “Hey, are you saying that Jillian and I sent these? Because we did not. We have been receiving these nonstop for a year. We are victims in this as well.” She brought up again the fact that, “Well, Jillian and Preston did block me.” And then she says, “I don’t know what your [BLEEP]ing problem is with me. Your daughter will not leave…” and she names her daughter, her niece, and her daughter’s best friend “…alone. She’s a bully. I don’t know what your problem is.” And at this point I’m going, “What?” Because I really haven’t been in communication with this woman other than, “Hey,” at sporting events, and I’ll sit next to her and say hi to her or whatever, and there’s so much anger in there. And I said, “You know what? This is not okay. This is unacceptable. Let’s go meet with admin and let’s solve this once and for all. I will pay to have an outside mediator come in and participate in it if there’s counseling. If my daughter is doing this, she has to stop. It’s unacceptable.” And she says, “I’m so sick of this and receiving the texts that I’m thinking about killing myself.” And I said, “That is unacceptable. I am so sorry that you are feeling that way. Let’s solve the problem. Let’s have the AD. Let’s have the principal. Again, I’ll pay for an outside mediator. Let’s get this stopped once and for all. If Jillian needs to be punished, let’s do this. We need to stop this. It’s not okay that you’re feeling that way.” And she goes, “Well, what the [BLEEP] will having the athletic director do? Why are you bringing them into it?” ‘Cause sports are everything, and when you get in trouble with sports, there’s some pretty big repercussions, both socially and for kids that are thinking about going on at the collegiate level. It’s a big deal. But if my daughter’s doing that, she deserves every repercussion, and if that means she can’t participate in sports, then that’s what happens. A little punishment now to create a better human in the future. That’s my thought, right? She’s screaming, yelling, swearing. I have my mom and dad there, and my husband is a witness to everything that’s happening. She’s screaming and yelling, and she says, “Well, they did block me on social media.” She brings that up again, and my response was, “Well, based on your behavior right now, that was the right call.” And she hung up on me. So I immediately call the police and have the sheriff go do a well check on her ’cause I don’t play around with someone talking about taking their own life. That is a very serious thing. So they go, and they do a well check. Keep in mind, small town, I find out that she called her husband, who’s at fair with half the town, and told him that I called a wellness check on her because I told the police she was a bad mom.

Beau: Okay.

Cathy: Her husband’s with this community of people and they’re all talking about how awful I am, about all the texts that I’ve been sending to everyone, and I won’t quit. My daughter’s best friend—keep in mind my daughter’s at Fargo, right? Her best friend was there, tried to stand up for our family in front of all these adults, which is amazing, and then called Jillian and told her about it. And so Jillian calls me and she’s a wreck. She can’t even talk. The coaches are like, “What has happened? What is going on? Your daughter’s having a panic attack.” And we finally had to let her coaches know what was happening and cue them in so they could care for her because she’s—sorry—she’s 10 hours away from me. And she’s been so good and so strong. And she called me and she’s just asking me, “What have I done? Who hates me this much?” And meanwhile, we’re just waiting for Google to get back to us. Just waiting for Google.

Beau: That was during the three months when Google was taking their sweet time.

Cathy: Yeah.

Beau: That is…

Cathy: It’s appalling.

Beau: And literally it sounds like at least two lives were on the line during that period where Google was taking their sweet time to do this.

Cathy: The police officer calls. She says, “I finally got the information back from AT&T,” and they said that the phone was purchased at the East Side Walmart. She went to the East Side Walmart and asked them for the video footage of that time, ’cause they have the time and the date of when it was purchased, and she pulls it up, and Marcy Smith is on camera wearing a mask, which keep in mind that Wyoming barely wore COVID masks even when it was COVID. And so the fact that she was wearing a mask and paid in cash tells me that she knew what she was doing.

Beau: So the person who bought that burner phone is Marcy Smith.

Cathy: And then just to make sure, they looked at other footage, and immediately after that she took the mask off, went and bought her groceries, and paid with her credit card.

Beau: Wow. That’s sort of almost Darwin Awards “I wanna get arrested” territory, but okay. To each his own. All right, so I assume here, Cathy, that Marcy Smith is arrested based on this information, and she’s now serving time probably in a low-security, in a state prison somewhere. Stop shaking your head. She is. She’s in a prison in Wyoming, end of story.

Cathy: Yeah, no, not even a little bit, my friend. I’m sorry. No justice happened. We found out who it was. It took a couple days before they were able to bring her in for questioning. Meanwhile, I went into the police and they said, “You need to fill out a protection order.” And I said, “How do you do that?” And they directed me to something called the Converse County HOPE Center, which is our local county’s victim advocacy services, which I had no idea such a thing existed, and I just wanna put out there that it is the most amazing service. It is everywhere in every state. It’s your victim advocacy services. If you think you are a victim of a crime, even if you haven’t even talked to the police yet, go to them and they will help you. So we were assigned a victim advocate who at times was the only person that gave us hope and comfort through the terrible process that followed, and she filled out a protection order with me. We couldn’t turn it in until Marcy had already been brought in and questioned, so I just had it ready to go, and then we slapped it on the judge’s desk as soon as Marcy went in and confessed, which she did confess. It took her a while to get there. I have a copy of, not the full confession word for word, but the paraphrasing. She started out and just talked about how we had sent the texts to her, how horrible it was. When the police asked, “What do you think the Holmans should have to do as a repercussion for sending these texts to you and doing this?” she said all she needed was an apology. And then the police officer said, “Well, actually, we know it was you.” When I finally got the opportunity to read through the full confession, which was actually only a few weeks ago, it was insane to me. She started out acting as a victim, the whole part, and even at the end she said she was afraid of the repercussions from the Holman family and wanted to get a protection order against us.

Judge: Miss Smith.

Beau: This is the judge at Marcy Smith’s sentencing.

Judge: One of the most precious things about a small town is the trust that people develop in each other in a small town. You’ve obviously destroyed that completely.

Beau: I assumed she was just like those teachers who get obsessed with a student kind of thing, and that that’s what we were really dealing with. But it sounds like she wanted all along Preston to date one of her daughters.

Cathy: With her confession, it was all about what happened with our daughter, right?

Beau: So there’s nothing about what her motive was?

Cathy: Nope. It’s just she said that she did it because my daughter bullied her, and I ruined her life. That’s what’s in the confession.

Beau: That’s not a confession. That’s not an apology. That’s nothing.

Cathy: But it was ownership for what she did. And so then the state in a criminal trial charged her with stalking.

Beau: Stalking.

Cathy: Yep, stalking [inaudible].

Beau: But she stalked 20 people.

Cathy: I think that in the end, there were 20 different people that received texts from her maybe. But they’re focused on what she did with Jillian because that’s the evidence that they have. That’s the police file that was opened. Those are the charges they can press, okay?

Beau: So why doesn’t that land her in jail?

Cathy: Because in Wyoming, stalking is a misdemeanor charge, and there’s no discrepancy between an adult stalking an adult and an adult stalking a minor. So in Wyoming at the time of our trial, it was the same as a littering fine, throwing a beer can out the window, what happened to her.

Judge: I’ve dealt with a lot of different stalking cases over the years.

Beau: Here’s the judge again.

Judge: I spent 24 years as a prosecutor and there’s a wide range of behavior that falls within that statute. There are some where it’s just really technical stalking, I’d say. The real depth of intent isn’t there, but the behavior meets the statute. And there are other cases, be they felony or misdemeanor, sometimes the behavior doesn’t rise to the level of a felony. I can only think of one word to describe what I see in those kind of serious felony cases and misdemeanor cases, and I’ve seen a few. Not very many, but a few. And the behavior is just evil. And that’s what I’ve heard here today, is just evil.

Cathy: I’ve been in contact with Brandy, Preston’s mom, this whole entire time, and I’m not gonna deep dive into his case. It is all up at prairiewifeinheels.com if you want to, and you’ll get a much bigger picture. But when Brandy found out Marcy was the stalker, she had a police file too. She went and looked at texts that Marcy sent from her actual phone when Preston was dating her daughter and after Preston was dating her daughter, and very clearly Marcy was grooming Preston.

Beau: Grooming Preston to be…

Cathy: For herself.

Beau: So I was right.

Cathy: Or for her daughter, interchangeable.

Beau: Oh boy.

Cathy: So Brandy goes to the police with this new evidence, right? And after some pressure from Brandy, one case becomes two cases, but they treat it as one because so much of the evidence is intermixed. You may say, why are they not also doing grooming charges? Because the state of Wyoming at the time had no grooming laws. Asking a child for pictures in their underwear, which is one of the things that happened, was perfectly legal in the state of Wyoming at the time of our trial. So she has stalking charges, and in the end, she received two years of unsupervised probation and about $1,000 in fines and a protection order for both our families where she could not go… That ended up having to be modified because she broke the original one.

Beau: Is it possible that there was no law against grooming in the state of Wyoming because Wyoming only has half a million people and they’re all pretty nice?

Cathy: I think as much as I love this state and love raising my children here, we’re behind on a lot.

Beau: Especially these kinds of laws.

Cathy: Yeah. Protecting children, mental health issues, we’re behind.

Beau: A case like this does usually attract legislative attention. What’s going on in the state of Wyoming?

Cathy: Yep. I decided after I got done crying that I was gonna change the laws, that if there was one thing that came from this, I was changing the laws. I Googled how to change laws. I reached out to our local senator, Brian Boner, and said, “I want the laws to change. Will you help me?” And he said, “Absolutely.” And so the day of our court case, that morning at 6:00 AM, an article went out, talked about how this had been happening, and keep in mind, most people had no clue, and that, by the way, we’re working on changing these laws. I used my platform. We testified in front of management council, in front of the judiciary committee, and after some back and forth, our legislation passed it in February. We spent almost two weeks straight at the Capitol advocating and being there, a year of our lives dedicated calling upon the people of Wyoming to send emails and letters and talk to their legislators, which they did. We could not have done this without them. Brandy also helped, the other victim’s mom. In the end, what we ended up with, as of March of this year, grooming became defined as a crime in the state of Wyoming, and it comes with up to 10 years of jail time and $10,000 in fines, and if you’re convicted, you have to register as a sex offender. And as of July 1st, an adult stalking a minor is a felony in the state of Wyoming. The reason why we needed to change the law is we put in the protection order, which is highly unusual, but we put it in to protect our community that for the length of the protection order, she could not volunteer or chaperone at schools and be near children. She has misdemeanor charges. She’ll be able to pass any background check. She can go and work with children and go back to being an advisor and go back to being a chaperone as soon as that protection order is up. That is why it was so vital that we have an adult stalking a minor a felony, because that will come up in a background check and not allow her to be near children, and establishing grooming, same thing. Or it would have if she had been able to be charged.

Beau: So you don’t need to live in a small town to know everyone’s business. All that data, your addresses, your relatives, your kids’ names, and who they know even, it all comes from data brokers and people search sites that scrape public records and sell the rest. And even if you remove it, even if you use a service to remove it, it’s gonna get posted again, so you have to remove it all the time. I mean, with people search sites and data removal, think of it more like somebody who comes and mows your lawn. It’s that regular. And if you’re not thinking of it that way, trust me. We do this stuff all the time; it’s all we talk about on this show, right? So the takeaway here is really simple. And I bring back my friend whose in-law I needed their name, yada, yada, yada… If I had a ton of dough, I would make sure that everyone I’m connected to loosely was also offline, at least had a service that removed them. And the reason I would do that is because all it takes is one person having a leaky vessel as far as their online presence is concerned, and then I could be got. They could be spoofed. They could think someone could make a deep fake, and if I’m having an off day, boom, I’m done. Cathy Holman, thank you so much for joining us this week. It’s been a pleasure to have you here. I’m sorry you had to go through all that, but thank you for joining us.

Cathy: Thank you for having me. Thank you for allowing me to share our story, and I have tons of stuff about parents keeping kids safe about tech. And if you wanna do the deep dive into this case, just find it all at prairiewifeinheels.com.

Beau: Okay, so the Tinfoil Swan this week is monitor your children’s communications, and if they don’t make sense, get in touch with the school, the police, and everyone else. Cathy did everything exactly right. Do you have a plan when somebody is playing around with the identity of someone that you love or who’s under your care? If you don’t have one, the very simplest thing you need to do is if there’s anything identity-related happening in your account ever, go to the police and file a report. Now, if the police are anything like they were the last time I went, they’re gonna say, “Well, that’s not really something we do a report about.” Nonsense. You tell them you looked it up, and you need a police report, and they know darn well they have to do it. They just don’t wanna do it because it often takes about two hours to fill out. Yeah, buyer beware. It will take a second to file the report, but it’s very important because if whatever’s happening continues to happen, you need that police report, and that is it. So what’s the lesson? Something happens to you online, identity-related, file a police report. Okay, that’s it for this week. If you have tips for the show, you wanna be on the show, or you have a story you think people should know, get in touch through the DeleteMe website. And if you love What The Hack, you’ve been listening for a while, you’ve listened to it since back in the Adam and Travis days, and you still haven’t written a review or rated it where you listen, please do because it helps people find the show. All right, see you next week. This episode of What the Hack was produced by me and Andrew Steven who also did the editing. What the Hack is a production of DeleteMe, which was picked by the New York Times’ Wirecutter as the #1 personal information removal service. You should be using it already. If you’re not and you want to, well, you can. Here’s what to do. Go to joindeleteme.com/wth. That’s joindeleteme.com/wth and get 20% off. I kid you not, 20%. 20% off. That’s joindeleteme.com/wth. Now, stay safe out there. See you around.

Learn More:

• Read more about cyberstalking and how to protect yourself and your family.
• Listen to more from What the Hack via Podlink.
• Read our walkthrough for what to do if you or your child falls victim to sextortion online.