If you can't trust an anonymous commenter, who CAN you trust?
Oh dear. I'm afraid I'm very disappointed in our mouse detective. First, he stood me up by ignoring my invitation to give me hints in one of my screened journals to help me confirm his information. But perhaps that's understandable in view of what happened next. Deprived of "Clarabella's" alleged real name and any hints as to how I might find online "incident reports," I was forced to investigate the information s/he had already given us. And I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that the Mouse Detective is shockingly untruthful.
All my attempts to verify the "information" offered have not only discovered lie after lie, they have shown our Mouse Detective's research skills and attention to detail in a very poor light. For instance:
Clarabella's Address
In the comment at Bad_Penny that is now screened (but here is a screencap, with all the information I judge the most sensitive blacked-out), the mouse said the following:
As far as the additional information regarding ‘Clarabella’ it appears that she used msscribe’s address as her permanent residence after late 2002 so having 'met on the internet' is clearly a lie, although prior to that Clarabella resided in Room 24B, Residence Hall #16 Camden, NJ at Rutgers University.
I am perfectly comfortable posting that address for Clarabella because it is not a real address. Even the most basic research on the Rutgers University-Camden campus will show that it only has two residence halls -- Camden Tower and Camden Apartments -- both of which are actually connected as one building (called the Residence Hall) housing 550 on-campus residents:
Moreover, the rooms don't come in numbers like "24" -- as you can see here (scroll down), the ground floor rooms in both the Tower and the Apartments are given numbers like "103", the second floor rooms have numbers like "205" and "217", etc. The individual bedrooms in suites might perhaps be given numbers like A and B, but in that case it would be 204B.
Why did our Mouse Detective think there was a Residence Hall #16? I'll show you. If you Google '"Residence Hall #16" Camden' you will get only two results -- both from a virtual tour of the Rutgers-Camden campus. Here is what it looks like:
Our veteran investigator with twelve years' experience saw the #16 designating the 16th stop on the virtual tour and took it for the building name.
Msscribe's "home health aid" may or may not actually exist and she may or may not have ever attended Rutgers, but she definitely never lived in Room 24B Residence Hall #16 on the Rutgers-Camden campus.
The Physicians
It didn't occur to me until the day before yesterday to verify the identity of the two physicians that the Mouse Detective claimed treated Msscribe in April 2002 and March 2003. I had assumed that s/he would do me the basic courtesy of looking up two actual neurosurgeons practicing at the hospital named. But, alas, apparently that was too much trouble. Here is the expurgated version of what the Mouse Detective wrote in the screened comment:
Dr. T__ M__ was msscribe's Neurologist for her first surgery in April of 2002 - cause was [medical information omitted].
Dr. H__ M__ operated on her on [date] at [time] for what is noted as [diagnosis]. Transportation was via ambulance, [ambulance company] from a location that isn’t her home address, but is a place of business on [address].
Employment records indicate that her medical was covered by a [insurance company] X-group policy listed under [individual]’s office of [city], Delaware and there was extensive billing to N__ A__ [a private neurological practice] in [city] for [medical information omitted].
Dr. T__ M__ seems to be a well-known doctor. In fact, he is the director of a sleep clinic and a noted specialist in sleep disorders. He is not a surgeon, but he actually is a neurologist; he is associated with the hospital named; and he is a member of the N__ A__ neurology practice; so, while it may seem odd to have a sleep specialist treating a traumatic injury case, it's possible.
However, I hope very much that H__ M__ did not operate on Msscribe. Admittedly, she sounds like a wonderful woman who is good at her job. From an online article about her:
Like many doctor's offices, N__ A__ -- with 14 physicians and about 50 employees -- is a busy place.
"We have patients coming in every half-hour and there's a lot of activity," said H__ M__, practice administrator. "As a medical practice, there's a high level of stress also."
In that atmosphere of high demand and high stakes, N__ A__ is another office that has chosen to hire employees like [individual], a 19-year-old [subdivision name] woman who has Down syndrome.
H__ M__ definitely works at N__ A__. In fact, she is its administrator. But there is one small problem. Not only is H__ M__ not a neurosurgeon, she's not even a neurologist. And not only is she not a neurologist, she is not even a doctor.
Mouse Detective, I am not impressed.
The "Incident Report"
I am sorry to tell you that I believe I have the solution to the mysterious online "incident report," and it is sadly anticlimactic. Here is what the Detective Mouse said on Heidi's LJ:
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.
In the screened comment on Bad_Penny, the Mouse said:
I won’t comment any more about the Incident report except to say that the key to finding it is almost too easy. The police department has a public online record and all you need to do is play match the date, although with public reports that are dropped, names and personal information might be omitted.
Indeed, it is laughably easy, and laughably irrelevant. Here is a "public online record" kept by a "police department" where all you need to do is "match the date" and it indeed has a record of "telephone harrassment" for March 26, 2003. It is the online Crime Log of the University of Dayton campus police, and here, I suspect, we can find the "incident report" referred to in the Mouse's second post:
The idea that some student in a dorm room receiving a harrassing phone call is a good match for two months of cyber-stalking, hacking into thirteen computers, mailing unwanted religious books, sending nasty emails, and slander, leading to arrest, expulsion, being taken to court, and probation might perhaps be convincing to someone desperately trying to believe that Msscribe was telling the truth (or something sort of distantly related to the truth). It is certainly not convincing to me!
As for the first post, with its talk of Msscribe's maiden name, "Louis" being a nickname, and an "incident record" as opposed to a "police record," I never believed that and I still don't. The Detective Mouse has given us no reason to take his or her word over that of angua9, oulangi, ishie, and my other informant. I'd like a case number, please.
For completeness, I will mention something called the "NIBRS" ("National Incident Based Reporting System"), which the City of Dayton uses. According to their website:
Unlike the UCR method, the NIBRS system records all criminal offenses that occurs during a particular incident. So for the example given above, Dayton would record the kidnapping, the robbery, and the assault as three separate offenses, not one. Naturally, to compare cities that use the UCR method with cities that use the NIBRS system results in inaccurate and misleading conclusions. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison that ultimately penalizes cities who provide more detailed crime reports to the FBI.
Initially, before I had my heart broken by the Mouse Detective's sloppy lies, I wondered if he or she might have somehow gained access to this FBI-gathered database. I see now how foolish I was.
If anyone can lead me to a way to access this database, I would welcome it. Perhaps we can confirm yet one more time, as sort of a nostalgia thing, that there was no Fermatojam.
The State Senator
This section is tricky to write because I am dealing with a public figure, but I thought it only fair to include it because it is the only case where I have attempted to verify the Mouse Detective's claims and found any merit at all. I will repeat what I quoted above, replacing two words I had blocked out:
Employment records indicate that her medical was covered by a [insurance company] X-group policy listed under State Senator __’s office of [city], Delaware
In Delaware, many of the 21 state senators have day jobs to supplement their legislative pay. The one named by the Mouse Detective heads a public vocational and technical school in the county of __. You may recall from my earlier reports that Msscribe had an employee account for the same vocational and technical school district (thus the eduproxy.k12.de.us IPs used by Clarabella, Fermatojam, Kellie, and Melodyannsings). It appears that Msscribe possibly did work for a state senator -- she worked for the school he ran.
This school has a staff page and Msscribe's real name is not currently listed on it. However, using the Wayback Machine, I found the following:
June 29, 2003: Her real name was listed as a "Consultant" with a school email address and telephone extension number.
August 15, 2003: Her job listing was changed to "Public Relations Consultant."
Feb. 7, 2004: Her listing was unchanged.
Feb. 1, 2005: She no longer appeared on the list.
Judging from her phone number, she seems to have had an office at the school, but judging from the word "consultant" we can speculate that she probably did not work full-time. It is possible that she might have been doing political public relations for the state senator as she claimed in her post, though they would have had to be extremely careful to avoid ethical improprieties having a public employee doing political work for her boss and using publicly-funded resources. I really don't want to get into that, but I will be revising my Chapter Six to take into account this new information. For now, I'd like to return to our Detective Mouse.
The Mouse's claim that Msscribe's medical bills were paid by the state senator's "X-group policy" makes no sense to me. For one thing, her medical complications supposedly resulted from her original accident and should have been paid by her settlement, as noted by an anonymous commenter here. For another, state senator's offices aren't businesses with employees and insurance plans! Normally, politicians have employees (such as secretaries) who are government employees, paid by the state and covered by government employee benefits, who do NOT do campaign work, and employees (such as campaign managers) who are campaign employees, paid by campaign funds and generally with very poor insurance coverage (if any) because campaigns are run on a shoe-string. They don't have "X-group policies" (as far as I can determine from Googling, there's no such thing as an "X-group policy" for the named insurance company or any other US insurance company). Certainly a political campaign would not be likely to be paying what appear to have been hugely expensive medical expenses for a consultant whose condition was -1- preexisting and -2- covered by a lawsuit settlement, anyway.
Or was it?
The Lawsuit
The one element that took the most work to investigate is the one that should be public knowledge, the lawsuit filing. I apologize for the length of this section. Though it is quick and easy to show that something exists (by giving a case number, for instance), it is time-consuming and difficult to show that something does not exist. Here's what I've got:
Our detective mouse claimed, in Heidi's LJ:
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.
Note that for the investigator mousie to find a record of the suit it would have to have been filed before it was settled. If Msscribe had merely retained a lawyer who negotiated a settlement without filing suit, there would have been no record for the mouse to find. S/he implied that perhaps it was found on Lexis:
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 was perfectly willing to believe in Msscribe's accident and lawsuit. But when I tried to confirm it, all I found was evidence against it. First, salacious tried and failed to find the suit on findlaw.com. However, that doesn't necessarily prove that the case did not exist.
I looked for an online database that includes information on lawsuits filed, and found KnowX.com. They claim to have the relevant information:
The Lawsuits database provides filing information on civil suits from various courts, including circuit, district, small claims, chancery, and municipal courts throughout various jurisdictions in the United States. Not all jurisdictions across the U.S. are included in this database, nor are all courts included in each of the available jurisdictions. Check the section entitled Coverage to determine which jurisdictions are included in the Lawsuits database.
I checked the coverage and found that all three counties in Delaware are covered. I also verified that the database has coverage for every county in the neighboring states New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. However, Mr. Freibott has bar admissions only in Delaware. Here are the search results:
Plaintiff = "Lastname" Defendant = "J & P Trucking" State = "All states": 0 results.
Plaintiff = "Maidenname" Defendant = "J & P Trucking" State = "All states": 0 results.
Plaintiff = "Lastname" State = "All states": 259 results, of which one, "Louis Lastname," was in Delaware. In Pennsylvania, there was a case filed by "Deanna R. Lastname" and nothing else was even close. I have found the details on both cases and they are against altogether different companies (a gas station and a pharmaceutical company).
Plaintiff = "Maidenname" State = "All states": 127 results, of which three were in Delaware -- "William G. Maidenname," "Maidenname's Used Cars," and "Betty Maidenname." In New Jersey, five cases were filed by "Dawn J. Maidenname," and nothing else is at all close (most of the results are first names).
Defendant = "J & P Trucking" State = "All states": 45 results, of which none are in Delaware. Since Msscribe's name is not involved in this search, I can show you the results and you can see that most of them are for different company names like "PJ's Trucking" anyway. There are only sixteen results for "J & P Trucking" or "JP Trucking" - in Texas, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Just to remind you, Fred Freibott is not qualified to practice in any of those states.
If we can believe the KnowX.com database, Msscribe has never sued anyone in any state for anything.
Next, two friends who have access to Lexis searched it for me. Here is what one of them said (quoted with permission):
I can search Delaware's civil filings on the Lexis Public Records database (they haven't, unfortunately, put settlements on-line, but there should still be a record of a civil case even if it was settled and there was no written decision). This doesn't give much information about the case (and doesn't list the attorney), but should give the party names
All I got for [Lastname] was a Louis and Wanda [Lastname] suing [gas station]. I got nothing for J&P Trucking.
[After looking for Maidenname...] Yep, nothing there!
My other friend got the exact same results. The second friend and I also compared the two sets of results. KnowX.com actually shows more cases than Lexis does (which surprised me), though Lexis shows at least one case that Knowx.com does not.
No database is perfect, apparently. The only way to know for sure if a lawsuit was filed is to ask at the court where it would have been filed. So, finally, another friend called the courthouse in Msscribe's county. In that court, no one of Msscribe's name (either her married name or maiden name) has ever filed a lawsuit -- in April 2002 or at any other time, against J & P Trucking or any other defendant.
I'm beginning to think that our Mouse Detective might have lied to us.
Conclusion
I must admit that I was sadly mistaken and all the commenters who thought our Mouse Detective was Msscribe were, I believe, correct. I suspect that she took advantage of some errors being found in michaelaeck's recent history to try to reestablish her reputation as much as she could. The posts were almost certainly not targeted at me and my readers, except insofar as my inability to disprove them can be taken as a confirmation of them. I'm hypothesizing that the parts of Msscribe's story that the Mouse Detective admitted were lies are parts that she has already admitted to her friends, while the parts that the Mouse Detective insisted are true and provided "evidence" for are the parts she needs for her latest cover story. As to what that latest cover story is, we can see hints from her friend's comment here, in anonymous comments on this post, and this thread on the anonymous lol_meme. I strongly suspect that this comment on the lol_meme is Msscribe herself:
*looks at police report as attachment in inbox*
*looks up number on database*
OMG. THOSE LYING CUNTS. ONE WANKY SOCKPUPPET DOES NOT EQUAL CONSPIRACY, BITCHES.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
It's almost like old times to be called a "cunt" once again! :)
[Later edit: The best indication of the story Msscribe was telling her friends about this time can be seen from the explanation she posted on her dejaspirit LJ on August 15, 2004: Explanation screen caps: 1 2 3 4. Comment screen caps: 1 2 3 4.]
Why do I think that the Detective Mouse is Msscribe, besides the obvious reason of motive? The writing style is a bit different (though the second post sounds more like her than the first one), but the methods are the same. The argument is superficially convincing, but on close examination it is full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Msscribe is inventive and eloquent, but not patient and meticulous. And then there's the biggest similarity: the blatant, ridiculous, bald-faced, unblushing lies. I find it hard to believe that there is another person out there who is willing to go to such lengths and cobble together such a collection of real and imaginary details just to bolster parts of Msscribe's story.
Frankly, I had hoped for better from Msscribe (or whoever this is). I refuse to engage with her or her anonymous defenders again unless they bring a better class of scam to the table. And if anyone mentions a court case or a police report again, I'm not interested unless I see a case number. I have better things to do with my time (all evidence to the contrary!) than to chase down and disprove flimsy lies like these.
(personal message to obakesan: I'm afraid I simply wouldn't have time, but thank you very much for asking me!)
All my attempts to verify the "information" offered have not only discovered lie after lie, they have shown our Mouse Detective's research skills and attention to detail in a very poor light. For instance:
Clarabella's Address
In the comment at Bad_Penny that is now screened (but here is a screencap, with all the information I judge the most sensitive blacked-out), the mouse said the following:
As far as the additional information regarding ‘Clarabella’ it appears that she used msscribe’s address as her permanent residence after late 2002 so having 'met on the internet' is clearly a lie, although prior to that Clarabella resided in Room 24B, Residence Hall #16 Camden, NJ at Rutgers University.
I am perfectly comfortable posting that address for Clarabella because it is not a real address. Even the most basic research on the Rutgers University-Camden campus will show that it only has two residence halls -- Camden Tower and Camden Apartments -- both of which are actually connected as one building (called the Residence Hall) housing 550 on-campus residents:
Moreover, the rooms don't come in numbers like "24" -- as you can see here (scroll down), the ground floor rooms in both the Tower and the Apartments are given numbers like "103", the second floor rooms have numbers like "205" and "217", etc. The individual bedrooms in suites might perhaps be given numbers like A and B, but in that case it would be 204B.
Why did our Mouse Detective think there was a Residence Hall #16? I'll show you. If you Google '"Residence Hall #16" Camden' you will get only two results -- both from a virtual tour of the Rutgers-Camden campus. Here is what it looks like:
Our veteran investigator with twelve years' experience saw the #16 designating the 16th stop on the virtual tour and took it for the building name.
Msscribe's "home health aid" may or may not actually exist and she may or may not have ever attended Rutgers, but she definitely never lived in Room 24B Residence Hall #16 on the Rutgers-Camden campus.
The Physicians
It didn't occur to me until the day before yesterday to verify the identity of the two physicians that the Mouse Detective claimed treated Msscribe in April 2002 and March 2003. I had assumed that s/he would do me the basic courtesy of looking up two actual neurosurgeons practicing at the hospital named. But, alas, apparently that was too much trouble. Here is the expurgated version of what the Mouse Detective wrote in the screened comment:
Dr. T__ M__ was msscribe's Neurologist for her first surgery in April of 2002 - cause was [medical information omitted].
Dr. H__ M__ operated on her on [date] at [time] for what is noted as [diagnosis]. Transportation was via ambulance, [ambulance company] from a location that isn’t her home address, but is a place of business on [address].
Employment records indicate that her medical was covered by a [insurance company] X-group policy listed under [individual]’s office of [city], Delaware and there was extensive billing to N__ A__ [a private neurological practice] in [city] for [medical information omitted].
Dr. T__ M__ seems to be a well-known doctor. In fact, he is the director of a sleep clinic and a noted specialist in sleep disorders. He is not a surgeon, but he actually is a neurologist; he is associated with the hospital named; and he is a member of the N__ A__ neurology practice; so, while it may seem odd to have a sleep specialist treating a traumatic injury case, it's possible.
However, I hope very much that H__ M__ did not operate on Msscribe. Admittedly, she sounds like a wonderful woman who is good at her job. From an online article about her:
Like many doctor's offices, N__ A__ -- with 14 physicians and about 50 employees -- is a busy place.
"We have patients coming in every half-hour and there's a lot of activity," said H__ M__, practice administrator. "As a medical practice, there's a high level of stress also."
In that atmosphere of high demand and high stakes, N__ A__ is another office that has chosen to hire employees like [individual], a 19-year-old [subdivision name] woman who has Down syndrome.
H__ M__ definitely works at N__ A__. In fact, she is its administrator. But there is one small problem. Not only is H__ M__ not a neurosurgeon, she's not even a neurologist. And not only is she not a neurologist, she is not even a doctor.
Mouse Detective, I am not impressed.
The "Incident Report"
I am sorry to tell you that I believe I have the solution to the mysterious online "incident report," and it is sadly anticlimactic. Here is what the Detective Mouse said on Heidi's LJ:
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.
In the screened comment on Bad_Penny, the Mouse said:
I won’t comment any more about the Incident report except to say that the key to finding it is almost too easy. The police department has a public online record and all you need to do is play match the date, although with public reports that are dropped, names and personal information might be omitted.
Indeed, it is laughably easy, and laughably irrelevant. Here is a "public online record" kept by a "police department" where all you need to do is "match the date" and it indeed has a record of "telephone harrassment" for March 26, 2003. It is the online Crime Log of the University of Dayton campus police, and here, I suspect, we can find the "incident report" referred to in the Mouse's second post:
The idea that some student in a dorm room receiving a harrassing phone call is a good match for two months of cyber-stalking, hacking into thirteen computers, mailing unwanted religious books, sending nasty emails, and slander, leading to arrest, expulsion, being taken to court, and probation might perhaps be convincing to someone desperately trying to believe that Msscribe was telling the truth (or something sort of distantly related to the truth). It is certainly not convincing to me!
As for the first post, with its talk of Msscribe's maiden name, "Louis" being a nickname, and an "incident record" as opposed to a "police record," I never believed that and I still don't. The Detective Mouse has given us no reason to take his or her word over that of angua9, oulangi, ishie, and my other informant. I'd like a case number, please.
For completeness, I will mention something called the "NIBRS" ("National Incident Based Reporting System"), which the City of Dayton uses. According to their website:
Unlike the UCR method, the NIBRS system records all criminal offenses that occurs during a particular incident. So for the example given above, Dayton would record the kidnapping, the robbery, and the assault as three separate offenses, not one. Naturally, to compare cities that use the UCR method with cities that use the NIBRS system results in inaccurate and misleading conclusions. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison that ultimately penalizes cities who provide more detailed crime reports to the FBI.
Initially, before I had my heart broken by the Mouse Detective's sloppy lies, I wondered if he or she might have somehow gained access to this FBI-gathered database. I see now how foolish I was.
If anyone can lead me to a way to access this database, I would welcome it. Perhaps we can confirm yet one more time, as sort of a nostalgia thing, that there was no Fermatojam.
The State Senator
This section is tricky to write because I am dealing with a public figure, but I thought it only fair to include it because it is the only case where I have attempted to verify the Mouse Detective's claims and found any merit at all. I will repeat what I quoted above, replacing two words I had blocked out:
Employment records indicate that her medical was covered by a [insurance company] X-group policy listed under State Senator __’s office of [city], Delaware
In Delaware, many of the 21 state senators have day jobs to supplement their legislative pay. The one named by the Mouse Detective heads a public vocational and technical school in the county of __. You may recall from my earlier reports that Msscribe had an employee account for the same vocational and technical school district (thus the eduproxy.k12.de.us IPs used by Clarabella, Fermatojam, Kellie, and Melodyannsings). It appears that Msscribe possibly did work for a state senator -- she worked for the school he ran.
This school has a staff page and Msscribe's real name is not currently listed on it. However, using the Wayback Machine, I found the following:
June 29, 2003: Her real name was listed as a "Consultant" with a school email address and telephone extension number.
August 15, 2003: Her job listing was changed to "Public Relations Consultant."
Feb. 7, 2004: Her listing was unchanged.
Feb. 1, 2005: She no longer appeared on the list.
Judging from her phone number, she seems to have had an office at the school, but judging from the word "consultant" we can speculate that she probably did not work full-time. It is possible that she might have been doing political public relations for the state senator as she claimed in her post, though they would have had to be extremely careful to avoid ethical improprieties having a public employee doing political work for her boss and using publicly-funded resources. I really don't want to get into that, but I will be revising my Chapter Six to take into account this new information. For now, I'd like to return to our Detective Mouse.
The Mouse's claim that Msscribe's medical bills were paid by the state senator's "X-group policy" makes no sense to me. For one thing, her medical complications supposedly resulted from her original accident and should have been paid by her settlement, as noted by an anonymous commenter here. For another, state senator's offices aren't businesses with employees and insurance plans! Normally, politicians have employees (such as secretaries) who are government employees, paid by the state and covered by government employee benefits, who do NOT do campaign work, and employees (such as campaign managers) who are campaign employees, paid by campaign funds and generally with very poor insurance coverage (if any) because campaigns are run on a shoe-string. They don't have "X-group policies" (as far as I can determine from Googling, there's no such thing as an "X-group policy" for the named insurance company or any other US insurance company). Certainly a political campaign would not be likely to be paying what appear to have been hugely expensive medical expenses for a consultant whose condition was -1- preexisting and -2- covered by a lawsuit settlement, anyway.
Or was it?
The Lawsuit
The one element that took the most work to investigate is the one that should be public knowledge, the lawsuit filing. I apologize for the length of this section. Though it is quick and easy to show that something exists (by giving a case number, for instance), it is time-consuming and difficult to show that something does not exist. Here's what I've got:
Our detective mouse claimed, in Heidi's LJ:
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.
Note that for the investigator mousie to find a record of the suit it would have to have been filed before it was settled. If Msscribe had merely retained a lawyer who negotiated a settlement without filing suit, there would have been no record for the mouse to find. S/he implied that perhaps it was found on Lexis:
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 was perfectly willing to believe in Msscribe's accident and lawsuit. But when I tried to confirm it, all I found was evidence against it. First, salacious tried and failed to find the suit on findlaw.com. However, that doesn't necessarily prove that the case did not exist.
I looked for an online database that includes information on lawsuits filed, and found KnowX.com. They claim to have the relevant information:
The Lawsuits database provides filing information on civil suits from various courts, including circuit, district, small claims, chancery, and municipal courts throughout various jurisdictions in the United States. Not all jurisdictions across the U.S. are included in this database, nor are all courts included in each of the available jurisdictions. Check the section entitled Coverage to determine which jurisdictions are included in the Lawsuits database.
I checked the coverage and found that all three counties in Delaware are covered. I also verified that the database has coverage for every county in the neighboring states New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. However, Mr. Freibott has bar admissions only in Delaware. Here are the search results:
Plaintiff = "Lastname" Defendant = "J & P Trucking" State = "All states": 0 results.
Plaintiff = "Maidenname" Defendant = "J & P Trucking" State = "All states": 0 results.
Plaintiff = "Lastname" State = "All states": 259 results, of which one, "Louis Lastname," was in Delaware. In Pennsylvania, there was a case filed by "Deanna R. Lastname" and nothing else was even close. I have found the details on both cases and they are against altogether different companies (a gas station and a pharmaceutical company).
Plaintiff = "Maidenname" State = "All states": 127 results, of which three were in Delaware -- "William G. Maidenname," "Maidenname's Used Cars," and "Betty Maidenname." In New Jersey, five cases were filed by "Dawn J. Maidenname," and nothing else is at all close (most of the results are first names).
Defendant = "J & P Trucking" State = "All states": 45 results, of which none are in Delaware. Since Msscribe's name is not involved in this search, I can show you the results and you can see that most of them are for different company names like "PJ's Trucking" anyway. There are only sixteen results for "J & P Trucking" or "JP Trucking" - in Texas, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Just to remind you, Fred Freibott is not qualified to practice in any of those states.
If we can believe the KnowX.com database, Msscribe has never sued anyone in any state for anything.
Next, two friends who have access to Lexis searched it for me. Here is what one of them said (quoted with permission):
I can search Delaware's civil filings on the Lexis Public Records database (they haven't, unfortunately, put settlements on-line, but there should still be a record of a civil case even if it was settled and there was no written decision). This doesn't give much information about the case (and doesn't list the attorney), but should give the party names
All I got for [Lastname] was a Louis and Wanda [Lastname] suing [gas station]. I got nothing for J&P Trucking.
[After looking for Maidenname...] Yep, nothing there!
My other friend got the exact same results. The second friend and I also compared the two sets of results. KnowX.com actually shows more cases than Lexis does (which surprised me), though Lexis shows at least one case that Knowx.com does not.
No database is perfect, apparently. The only way to know for sure if a lawsuit was filed is to ask at the court where it would have been filed. So, finally, another friend called the courthouse in Msscribe's county. In that court, no one of Msscribe's name (either her married name or maiden name) has ever filed a lawsuit -- in April 2002 or at any other time, against J & P Trucking or any other defendant.
I'm beginning to think that our Mouse Detective might have lied to us.
Conclusion
I must admit that I was sadly mistaken and all the commenters who thought our Mouse Detective was Msscribe were, I believe, correct. I suspect that she took advantage of some errors being found in michaelaeck's recent history to try to reestablish her reputation as much as she could. The posts were almost certainly not targeted at me and my readers, except insofar as my inability to disprove them can be taken as a confirmation of them. I'm hypothesizing that the parts of Msscribe's story that the Mouse Detective admitted were lies are parts that she has already admitted to her friends, while the parts that the Mouse Detective insisted are true and provided "evidence" for are the parts she needs for her latest cover story. As to what that latest cover story is, we can see hints from her friend's comment here, in anonymous comments on this post, and this thread on the anonymous lol_meme. I strongly suspect that this comment on the lol_meme is Msscribe herself:
*looks at police report as attachment in inbox*
*looks up number on database*
OMG. THOSE LYING CUNTS. ONE WANKY SOCKPUPPET DOES NOT EQUAL CONSPIRACY, BITCHES.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
It's almost like old times to be called a "cunt" once again! :)
[Later edit: The best indication of the story Msscribe was telling her friends about this time can be seen from the explanation she posted on her dejaspirit LJ on August 15, 2004: Explanation screen caps: 1 2 3 4. Comment screen caps: 1 2 3 4.]
Why do I think that the Detective Mouse is Msscribe, besides the obvious reason of motive? The writing style is a bit different (though the second post sounds more like her than the first one), but the methods are the same. The argument is superficially convincing, but on close examination it is full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Msscribe is inventive and eloquent, but not patient and meticulous. And then there's the biggest similarity: the blatant, ridiculous, bald-faced, unblushing lies. I find it hard to believe that there is another person out there who is willing to go to such lengths and cobble together such a collection of real and imaginary details just to bolster parts of Msscribe's story.
Frankly, I had hoped for better from Msscribe (or whoever this is). I refuse to engage with her or her anonymous defenders again unless they bring a better class of scam to the table. And if anyone mentions a court case or a police report again, I'm not interested unless I see a case number. I have better things to do with my time (all evidence to the contrary!) than to chase down and disprove flimsy lies like these.
(personal message to obakesan: I'm afraid I simply wouldn't have time, but thank you very much for asking me!)