The Msscribe Story, Afterword Three
Greetings! It's been a while since I last posted on June 23rd, 2006. There is an interesting new development.
But first, here is a brief recap of the Msscribe-related events that I know of since that post, with a couple that happened before that post, but weren't covered in it:
June 21 -- malachan (formerly cygnusfap), revealing himself to be the person behind fandom_quibbler, posted some more IP matches for Msscribe -- anonymous comments about the fall of GT on the Quibbler.
June 22 -- angua9 posted the text of the email that she had sent Heidi in March-April 2004, saying that it was in response to a comment on Heidi's journal, which she quoted.
June 23 -- clarabella21 commented on this post in angua9's Live Journal, saying only: An update will be posted in my journal. According to angua9, the IP was 151.138.254.21, which looks like it comes from the DFW Airport in Dallas, Texas. A couple of hours later, "Clarabella" made a voice mail post on her own LJ, oddly backdated to a month before. Here is a screencap, and here is what it said, as transcribed by tophets_tool:
It’s me. I know that I haven’t been around in years and I never thought I’d come back to this journal. I’ve already apologised, I have nothing else to say, except that I wan’t to be left alone. I don’t appreciate people contacting me, and I will be deleting this journal in twenty four hours. Thank you
I have no idea who made that phone call, but Clarabella's journal was deleted twenty-four hours later as she promised.
In between those two events on that same day, June 23, Msscribe made another change to her LJ, changing her name to dejaspirit and her title to "Solitude." That LJ is still in existence as I write this, and looks like this:
There are no public posts, but she has three friend-only posts since then, according to the calendar, the latest one on September 29th. As I recall, there were a few more posts previously that must have now been deleted. Currently, dejaspirit has 87 people friended, and 47 mutual friends. Here is a screencap taken by smithereen showing that dejaspirit is the same LJ as delawarean/light_music/msscribe, renamed again.
June 24 -- heidi8 posted a public apology for "some of the things I said and did, as well as some of the things I didn't say or didn't do."
July 7 or so -- The dejaspirit LJ was changed from a permanent account to a basic account. People have speculated that Live Journal allowed Msscribe to transfer her permanent account status to a different LJ. If so, I do not know what that LJ name is.
July 15 -- I received an email apparently from babygrrl/infinitus. It appeared to be authentic, from what I could tell, and said briefly that she was a real person; that she did not know if what I have said about Msscribe was true, but that Msscribe had been a good friend to her; and that she had spoken to "Clarabella" on the telephone a couple of times while Msscribe was said to be in the hospital. She further said that she has left fandom completely for personal reasons and does not wish to be contacted in any way. I did not respond, and I have no plan to question her further.
Now for the reason for my post:
October 1 -- In response to a "fandom history" posted by michaelaecks on the bad_penny community, and now deleted, heidi8 had made a post on September 30 discussing michaelaeck's allegations. On that post, an anonymous commenter offered some information about Msscribe. I will repeat selected parts of the comment here:
...I am a 12 year veteran of an investigative until dedicated to mostly fraud, but I’ve had some experience with other crimes more personal in nature. I won’t be revealing who I am and I’m sure you can understand that concern.
...Wanting to uncover a few things, I did some digging on my own. In order to remain neutral, I didn’t contact either the people in question or the accusers.
...Some things I discovered:
Msscribe sued a trucking company entitled J & P trucking using personal injury attorney Fred Freibott in April of 2002. The suit alleged that the injury’s included head injury, a broken rib, a broken arm, and a dislocated shoulder. The case settled five months later.
From that April 2002 until 2003, msscribe’s tax records indicate that she and her husband employed someone who has a very similar last name to that belonging to the sockpuppet ‘Clarabella’. The title of the position they gave her was ‘home health aid.’ That person also claimed their income on their own tax return. Using the real name on the tax record, I was able to access their college information as well as other information regarding them including the fact that they had been employed at a nursing home for two years prior. The employee of msscribe’s last employment record is as a nurse’s aid in Florida in 2004, the prior record being a child care worker in late 2003.
Msscribe was hospitalized at least five times in that three-year period, twice for surgery according to her application for disability status in 2003. (I would question why someone who is married to a lawyer needs disability, but that might be me being judgemental.) When I gave her real name to the records department at Christiana Hospital in Delaware, this was confirmed.
The alleged stalker: This is a tricky one. The bad penny people can’t be blamed too much for this, but it turns out that there is a record, although it isn’t a police report, rather an incident report, and at the time msscribe appeared to still be using her maiden name and not her married one. In addition, the name ‘Louis’ turned out not to be a legal name, but a nickname. At first attempt to uncover the report, I was told they could find it, but upon inquiring about an incident record, I was able to retrieve more information. It was reported as telephone harassment and not internet harassment, and the charges were dropped. It appears that she lied about any death threats and that even though she may have been harassed, she dropped the ball when it came down to pursuing it, perhaps because she didn’t have a clear case. I’ve dealt with numerous police departments regarding Internet cases and they are pretty inept at handling these things. I toyed with posting the report, but most of the information would be blacked out and I don’t think it would add all that much weight.
In any case, her alleged stalker has no prior criminal history and none since, with the exception of one citation for public consumption of alcohol in 2005.
...I am continuing to plow through these reports, but I’ll be happy to take requests. I don’t want to flood the system with inquiries however (things like Lexis and other national databases require logins and often money) but I will be happy to try to clarify things.
...I'm thinking of setting up a journal and post ing what I find, although please know that it sometimes takes a few days to access information.
Of course I have no idea who this anonymous person is or any way to judge the accuracy of the information. I understand that heidi8 had IP logging turned off at the time, so she will not have this person's IP. I will say that I do not believe that this is Msscribe. The style is very different from hers, it has a precise, dispassionate tone that I do not believe her to be capable of, and, perhaps most telling of all, it does not flatter Msscribe or emphasize her importance. I would be very interested in speaking further with this unidentified informant.
Here is how this information strikes me:
As to the automobile accident and lawsuit, I tend to believe it. I have always suspected that Msscribe was telling the truth about having been in an automobile accident and having a severe head injury. This is one aspect of her story that never wavered from first to last. As lawsuits are a matter of public record, perhaps someone who knows Msscribe's real name can verify this.
As to the home health care aide, this sounds credible, though it would be much harder to independently verify. I note that if "Clarabella" or her equivalent was working and possibly residing with Msscribe from June 2002 onward, this obviously does not fit Clarabella's two different descriptions of herself in her early posts at Portkey and on LJ when she was fangirling Msscribe. Nor does it fit Msscribe's posts to and about Clarabella, since they posted as strangers who were meeting for the first time. If you will remember my recap here, both Msscribe and Clarabella were claiming that they lived in different places as late as May 30, 2003. It was not until March 2, 2004 that Msscribe made the first reference to "Clarabella" living with her or being any kind of health aide. Before that, she was a fan met on the internet and, later, a friend and occasional babysitter.
If this new information is correct, it seems that either Msscribe based her "Clarabella" sockpuppet on her real-life health care aide, or possibly the real-life health care aide was involved in the fangirling scheme, posing as a stranger to Msscribe. I note that the anonymous commenter says that the real-life health care aide had "a very similar last name to that belonging to the sockpuppet ‘Clarabella’." I would be very interested in knowing what that name is. Though I obviously can't access tax records, etc., like this person claims to, I can at least do a Google search!
Next comes the claim about hospital visits: Msscribe was hospitalized at least five times in that three-year period, twice for surgery according to her application for disability status in 2003. I frankly don't understand this. If the "five times in that three-year period" was described in a disability application in 2003, does that mean the accident was way back in 2000? Or is this person writing unclearly, and the "three-year period" goes, say, from 2002 to 2005? I have no difficulty believing that Msscribe might have had hospital visits, but I remain very skeptical of her dramatic near-death collapse as reported to us by "Clarabella" in March of 2003. I would be interested to know if this anonymous source claims a hospital visit corresponding to that date.
I have no idea if this claim can be independently verified. I have been informed that hospitals will not give out information without the permission of the patient, and this source is not clear how he or she obtained the information from "the records department at Christiana Hospital in Delaware." I would point out the discrepancy between a disability application and an active career as a back-up singer/senator's publicist who made appearances on the television news and was forced to resign for writing smutty fanfic.
Next comes the matter of the alleged "telephone harrasser." I am inclined to be suspicious of this account. Too many people have badgered both the Dayton Police and the University of Dayton campus authorities for information about "Louis Movello" or any similar name for me to believe that there was an "incident report" for any person with the same last name that somehow wasn't found. However, this can of course be confirmed, if anyone feels like bothering the unfortunate Dayton Police one last time. Given the fact that Msscribe gave ari_o the name of an officer who wasn't employed there in 2003, and the total lack of success various people have had looking for someone with a name similar to Msscribe's alleged stalker both in the town of Dayton and at the university, I simply can't believe this claim without further substantiation. I would like to know what name the alleged incident report was made for, if "Louis" was a nickname, as this person claims. I would also be very interested in the date. Was it, perhaps, an earlier incident that Msscribe drew upon when creating the story of Fermatojam's stalking?
Whatever the truth of the alleged incident report (and I hope we'll find out more soon), I note that this story, if true, shows that Msscribe was lying in almost everything she ever said about "Louis," including that she "had him arrested" and "took him to court," that she had a police report, that he was expelled from his school, that he hacked into her computer and twelve others, that he sent her threatening emails that were "all printed out and sitting in a little file at the campus police department," and, presumably, that he was a member of Gryffindor Tower. Also, it destroys the explanation of how Clarabella discovered Fermatojam's email password and "hacked into" his accounts.
If the person who posted on Heidi's LJ is legitimate, I hope he or she will respond to some of these questions!
ETA: I feel like I'm stepping on eggshells here, but here goes. An anonymous commenter who seems by style to be the same anonymous commenter from Heidi's LJ has posted on Bad_Penny in response to my questions, claiming to be using an Anonymizer. The posts were screened by the mods because they contained a great deal of personal information, including names, addresses, and medical information that is apparently not legal to give out in public and could conceivably get this community, JF, and of course me into legal trouble. For this reason, I have screened all new comments on my JF and LJ journals. I will unscreen all inoffensive comments as soon as I notice them, but please be aware that I do not have comment notification turned on, so I might miss some. I am very sorry about this.
Here is what the person said in response to my questions, without the details:
1 - S/he says that Msscribe was admitted to the hospital on the date she and Clarabella claimed, with particulars that generally fit their accounts (except for Clarabella's place of residence and relationship to Msscribe).
2 - S/he says that Msscribe's home health care aide seems by address to have been a student at Clarabella's claimed university at one time, though apparently not after late 2002 (in other words, her time in the HP fandom), when she listed her address as Msscribe's address. S/he didn't respond about the age question or offer the person's real name (which is good, of course, and I shouldn't have asked without specifying that I wanted to receive this information privately!). S/he gave more information about the person's post-Msscribe work and personal history.
3. S/he says that Msscribe showed income from being a back-up singer mainly prior to 1996. S/he said something that indicated that Msscribe might have been employed by a state senator in 2003, but did not say whether or not she reported income from that. S/he gave much information about Msscribe's employment record prior to 2002, some of which agrees with what I found by Googling.
4. S/he said something that seems to imply that the telephone harassment incident report he or she previously mentioned was on the correct date in March 2003, and also said that it is available on an online database. I have not found out how to access such a database, but have found indications that one might exist. No more detail was given on that.
Despite the wealth of detail offered, I have not been able to confirm any of this information. I am extremely reluctant to call the hospital, though it may be that hospitals are willing to confirm the bare fact of an admission if you have the correct patient name and date. I am somewhat reluctant to bother the Dayton police, especially if an online alternative really is available. I cannot attempt to confirm any of the "Clarabella" or "Louis" information, as I do not have their alleged real names. I am still hoping that someone will confirm or deny the lawsuit -- I'm afraid I personally have no knowledge of how to search for court cases.
If the investigative mouse wants to comment on my screened JF or LJ with more hints to help me confirm his or her assertions, I think that would be acceptable. I will investigate to the best of my amateur (and within-the-bounds-of-legal) ability and report the results without personal details. He or she can no longer post on Bad_Penny (unless s/he gets an account), because the mods have turned off anonymous posting.
I thank the mouse for responding, and I apologize to the Bad_Penny mods and Journalfen for the spate of TMI that occurred. I'm so glad you were watching!
Afterword Four
But first, here is a brief recap of the Msscribe-related events that I know of since that post, with a couple that happened before that post, but weren't covered in it:
June 21 -- malachan (formerly cygnusfap), revealing himself to be the person behind fandom_quibbler, posted some more IP matches for Msscribe -- anonymous comments about the fall of GT on the Quibbler.
June 22 -- angua9 posted the text of the email that she had sent Heidi in March-April 2004, saying that it was in response to a comment on Heidi's journal, which she quoted.
June 23 -- clarabella21 commented on this post in angua9's Live Journal, saying only: An update will be posted in my journal. According to angua9, the IP was 151.138.254.21, which looks like it comes from the DFW Airport in Dallas, Texas. A couple of hours later, "Clarabella" made a voice mail post on her own LJ, oddly backdated to a month before. Here is a screencap, and here is what it said, as transcribed by tophets_tool:
It’s me. I know that I haven’t been around in years and I never thought I’d come back to this journal. I’ve already apologised, I have nothing else to say, except that I wan’t to be left alone. I don’t appreciate people contacting me, and I will be deleting this journal in twenty four hours. Thank you
I have no idea who made that phone call, but Clarabella's journal was deleted twenty-four hours later as she promised.
In between those two events on that same day, June 23, Msscribe made another change to her LJ, changing her name to dejaspirit and her title to "Solitude." That LJ is still in existence as I write this, and looks like this:
There are no public posts, but she has three friend-only posts since then, according to the calendar, the latest one on September 29th. As I recall, there were a few more posts previously that must have now been deleted. Currently, dejaspirit has 87 people friended, and 47 mutual friends. Here is a screencap taken by smithereen showing that dejaspirit is the same LJ as delawarean/light_music/msscribe, renamed again.
June 24 -- heidi8 posted a public apology for "some of the things I said and did, as well as some of the things I didn't say or didn't do."
July 7 or so -- The dejaspirit LJ was changed from a permanent account to a basic account. People have speculated that Live Journal allowed Msscribe to transfer her permanent account status to a different LJ. If so, I do not know what that LJ name is.
July 15 -- I received an email apparently from babygrrl/infinitus. It appeared to be authentic, from what I could tell, and said briefly that she was a real person; that she did not know if what I have said about Msscribe was true, but that Msscribe had been a good friend to her; and that she had spoken to "Clarabella" on the telephone a couple of times while Msscribe was said to be in the hospital. She further said that she has left fandom completely for personal reasons and does not wish to be contacted in any way. I did not respond, and I have no plan to question her further.
Now for the reason for my post:
October 1 -- In response to a "fandom history" posted by michaelaecks on the bad_penny community, and now deleted, heidi8 had made a post on September 30 discussing michaelaeck's allegations. On that post, an anonymous commenter offered some information about Msscribe. I will repeat selected parts of the comment here:
...I am a 12 year veteran of an investigative until dedicated to mostly fraud, but I’ve had some experience with other crimes more personal in nature. I won’t be revealing who I am and I’m sure you can understand that concern.
...Wanting to uncover a few things, I did some digging on my own. In order to remain neutral, I didn’t contact either the people in question or the accusers.
...Some things I discovered:
Msscribe sued a trucking company entitled J & P trucking using personal injury attorney Fred Freibott in April of 2002. The suit alleged that the injury’s included head injury, a broken rib, a broken arm, and a dislocated shoulder. The case settled five months later.
From that April 2002 until 2003, msscribe’s tax records indicate that she and her husband employed someone who has a very similar last name to that belonging to the sockpuppet ‘Clarabella’. The title of the position they gave her was ‘home health aid.’ That person also claimed their income on their own tax return. Using the real name on the tax record, I was able to access their college information as well as other information regarding them including the fact that they had been employed at a nursing home for two years prior. The employee of msscribe’s last employment record is as a nurse’s aid in Florida in 2004, the prior record being a child care worker in late 2003.
Msscribe was hospitalized at least five times in that three-year period, twice for surgery according to her application for disability status in 2003. (I would question why someone who is married to a lawyer needs disability, but that might be me being judgemental.) When I gave her real name to the records department at Christiana Hospital in Delaware, this was confirmed.
The alleged stalker: This is a tricky one. The bad penny people can’t be blamed too much for this, but it turns out that there is a record, although it isn’t a police report, rather an incident report, and at the time msscribe appeared to still be using her maiden name and not her married one. In addition, the name ‘Louis’ turned out not to be a legal name, but a nickname. At first attempt to uncover the report, I was told they could find it, but upon inquiring about an incident record, I was able to retrieve more information. It was reported as telephone harassment and not internet harassment, and the charges were dropped. It appears that she lied about any death threats and that even though she may have been harassed, she dropped the ball when it came down to pursuing it, perhaps because she didn’t have a clear case. I’ve dealt with numerous police departments regarding Internet cases and they are pretty inept at handling these things. I toyed with posting the report, but most of the information would be blacked out and I don’t think it would add all that much weight.
In any case, her alleged stalker has no prior criminal history and none since, with the exception of one citation for public consumption of alcohol in 2005.
...I am continuing to plow through these reports, but I’ll be happy to take requests. I don’t want to flood the system with inquiries however (things like Lexis and other national databases require logins and often money) but I will be happy to try to clarify things.
...I'm thinking of setting up a journal and post ing what I find, although please know that it sometimes takes a few days to access information.
Of course I have no idea who this anonymous person is or any way to judge the accuracy of the information. I understand that heidi8 had IP logging turned off at the time, so she will not have this person's IP. I will say that I do not believe that this is Msscribe. The style is very different from hers, it has a precise, dispassionate tone that I do not believe her to be capable of, and, perhaps most telling of all, it does not flatter Msscribe or emphasize her importance. I would be very interested in speaking further with this unidentified informant.
Here is how this information strikes me:
As to the automobile accident and lawsuit, I tend to believe it. I have always suspected that Msscribe was telling the truth about having been in an automobile accident and having a severe head injury. This is one aspect of her story that never wavered from first to last. As lawsuits are a matter of public record, perhaps someone who knows Msscribe's real name can verify this.
As to the home health care aide, this sounds credible, though it would be much harder to independently verify. I note that if "Clarabella" or her equivalent was working and possibly residing with Msscribe from June 2002 onward, this obviously does not fit Clarabella's two different descriptions of herself in her early posts at Portkey and on LJ when she was fangirling Msscribe. Nor does it fit Msscribe's posts to and about Clarabella, since they posted as strangers who were meeting for the first time. If you will remember my recap here, both Msscribe and Clarabella were claiming that they lived in different places as late as May 30, 2003. It was not until March 2, 2004 that Msscribe made the first reference to "Clarabella" living with her or being any kind of health aide. Before that, she was a fan met on the internet and, later, a friend and occasional babysitter.
If this new information is correct, it seems that either Msscribe based her "Clarabella" sockpuppet on her real-life health care aide, or possibly the real-life health care aide was involved in the fangirling scheme, posing as a stranger to Msscribe. I note that the anonymous commenter says that the real-life health care aide had "a very similar last name to that belonging to the sockpuppet ‘Clarabella’." I would be very interested in knowing what that name is. Though I obviously can't access tax records, etc., like this person claims to, I can at least do a Google search!
Next comes the claim about hospital visits: Msscribe was hospitalized at least five times in that three-year period, twice for surgery according to her application for disability status in 2003. I frankly don't understand this. If the "five times in that three-year period" was described in a disability application in 2003, does that mean the accident was way back in 2000? Or is this person writing unclearly, and the "three-year period" goes, say, from 2002 to 2005? I have no difficulty believing that Msscribe might have had hospital visits, but I remain very skeptical of her dramatic near-death collapse as reported to us by "Clarabella" in March of 2003. I would be interested to know if this anonymous source claims a hospital visit corresponding to that date.
I have no idea if this claim can be independently verified. I have been informed that hospitals will not give out information without the permission of the patient, and this source is not clear how he or she obtained the information from "the records department at Christiana Hospital in Delaware." I would point out the discrepancy between a disability application and an active career as a back-up singer/senator's publicist who made appearances on the television news and was forced to resign for writing smutty fanfic.
Next comes the matter of the alleged "telephone harrasser." I am inclined to be suspicious of this account. Too many people have badgered both the Dayton Police and the University of Dayton campus authorities for information about "Louis Movello" or any similar name for me to believe that there was an "incident report" for any person with the same last name that somehow wasn't found. However, this can of course be confirmed, if anyone feels like bothering the unfortunate Dayton Police one last time. Given the fact that Msscribe gave ari_o the name of an officer who wasn't employed there in 2003, and the total lack of success various people have had looking for someone with a name similar to Msscribe's alleged stalker both in the town of Dayton and at the university, I simply can't believe this claim without further substantiation. I would like to know what name the alleged incident report was made for, if "Louis" was a nickname, as this person claims. I would also be very interested in the date. Was it, perhaps, an earlier incident that Msscribe drew upon when creating the story of Fermatojam's stalking?
Whatever the truth of the alleged incident report (and I hope we'll find out more soon), I note that this story, if true, shows that Msscribe was lying in almost everything she ever said about "Louis," including that she "had him arrested" and "took him to court," that she had a police report, that he was expelled from his school, that he hacked into her computer and twelve others, that he sent her threatening emails that were "all printed out and sitting in a little file at the campus police department," and, presumably, that he was a member of Gryffindor Tower. Also, it destroys the explanation of how Clarabella discovered Fermatojam's email password and "hacked into" his accounts.
If the person who posted on Heidi's LJ is legitimate, I hope he or she will respond to some of these questions!
ETA: I feel like I'm stepping on eggshells here, but here goes. An anonymous commenter who seems by style to be the same anonymous commenter from Heidi's LJ has posted on Bad_Penny in response to my questions, claiming to be using an Anonymizer. The posts were screened by the mods because they contained a great deal of personal information, including names, addresses, and medical information that is apparently not legal to give out in public and could conceivably get this community, JF, and of course me into legal trouble. For this reason, I have screened all new comments on my JF and LJ journals. I will unscreen all inoffensive comments as soon as I notice them, but please be aware that I do not have comment notification turned on, so I might miss some. I am very sorry about this.
Here is what the person said in response to my questions, without the details:
1 - S/he says that Msscribe was admitted to the hospital on the date she and Clarabella claimed, with particulars that generally fit their accounts (except for Clarabella's place of residence and relationship to Msscribe).
2 - S/he says that Msscribe's home health care aide seems by address to have been a student at Clarabella's claimed university at one time, though apparently not after late 2002 (in other words, her time in the HP fandom), when she listed her address as Msscribe's address. S/he didn't respond about the age question or offer the person's real name (which is good, of course, and I shouldn't have asked without specifying that I wanted to receive this information privately!). S/he gave more information about the person's post-Msscribe work and personal history.
3. S/he says that Msscribe showed income from being a back-up singer mainly prior to 1996. S/he said something that indicated that Msscribe might have been employed by a state senator in 2003, but did not say whether or not she reported income from that. S/he gave much information about Msscribe's employment record prior to 2002, some of which agrees with what I found by Googling.
4. S/he said something that seems to imply that the telephone harassment incident report he or she previously mentioned was on the correct date in March 2003, and also said that it is available on an online database. I have not found out how to access such a database, but have found indications that one might exist. No more detail was given on that.
Despite the wealth of detail offered, I have not been able to confirm any of this information. I am extremely reluctant to call the hospital, though it may be that hospitals are willing to confirm the bare fact of an admission if you have the correct patient name and date. I am somewhat reluctant to bother the Dayton police, especially if an online alternative really is available. I cannot attempt to confirm any of the "Clarabella" or "Louis" information, as I do not have their alleged real names. I am still hoping that someone will confirm or deny the lawsuit -- I'm afraid I personally have no knowledge of how to search for court cases.
If the investigative mouse wants to comment on my screened JF or LJ with more hints to help me confirm his or her assertions, I think that would be acceptable. I will investigate to the best of my amateur (and within-the-bounds-of-legal) ability and report the results without personal details. He or she can no longer post on Bad_Penny (unless s/he gets an account), because the mods have turned off anonymous posting.
I thank the mouse for responding, and I apologize to the Bad_Penny mods and Journalfen for the spate of TMI that occurred. I'm so glad you were watching!
Afterword Four