[dial pad beeping]
[line ringing]
[reporter 1] And now to an unbelievable hoax
that police say many people fell victim to.
[reporter 2] A caller pretending to be a police officer was convincing enough
to talk some managers into sexually abusing fast food employees.
[woman 1] If I didn't submit to this search,
then I'd be either arrested or lose my job or both.
Couple police officers telling me
there's a video of what happened here.
I'd never seen anything like it and I still haven't in 30 years.
[man 1] I'm on the phone and he starts telling me the process.
"Take off her blouse."
[man 2] Here comes one article of clothing off and then another.
[woman 2] I don't think there was anywhere he didn't touch.
[man 1] Check her crevices for drugs?
[woman 3] He wanted him to describe my breasts,
what my genitalia looked like,
and even my bra size.
I was mind-blown.
[man 3 on phone] Who is this?
The psychology employed by the caller was amazing.
[man 2] I didn't know what this guy was capable of.
I just know that this is a bad guy.
[indistinct speech over phone]
[man 4] The caller committed the perfect crime
because he's completely anonymous.
[man 2] Burger Kings and Taco Bells…
Every restaurant you could think of was a victim of this caller.
We have a sexual predator on the loose and the phone's still ringing every day.
[phone ringing]
[man 2] Life out here, it's pretty good.
Good place to raise your family, good schools.
Not a lot of crime.
The night that I got the phone call about the McDonald's case, uh,
I was at home, minding my own business.
[Buddy] And it was, uh, the assistant chief at the time
and he said, uh, "Buddy, what are you doing?" I said,
"I'm sitting on the couch, chilled out, watching old TV."
And, uh, he said, "Well, I need you to come out."
"I'm out here at the McDonald's and I don't know how to explain it."
"There's just some bad things happening out here
and I need you."
It was, uh, April the 9th, 2004.
I had only been promoted approximately three weeks.
I guess you would say I was a rookie detective.
I roll into McDonald's,
I really don't have any idea what's going on.
[siren wailing]
Police cars everywhere, people coming and going…
I walked into the restaurant…
And, uh, McDonald's is still doing business.
We went through the kitchen area and back hallway.
It was just crazy.
People running around like chickens with their heads off.
You could tell that it was an atmosphere where everybody was just upset
and like they'd seen something or done something
they couldn't believe was happening.
I saw the victim in the back office.
She appeared to be upset, head hanging down.
We had a manager that was upset. I had an assistant manager that was upset.
It was like a whirlwind going on.
And I'm thinking, "Oh, what in the hell have they got me into?"
They were trying to explain to me what had happened,
but what they were saying didn't make a lot of sense.
And all I could understand
was that it had something to do with this phone call.
And then one of the officers there told me. He said, uh,
"There's a video of what happened here."
And I said, "What?"
There was a CCTV camera in here, recording everything.
I said, "All right, stop. Right here."
"Enough talking about it. We've done beat that horse to death."
"Now let's see exactly what happened."
Started watching the video. There's no sound.
So you can only go by what you see, like watching silent movies.
Donna Summers, who was the assistant manager,
she's on the phone with somebody.
[woman] On this particular day,
a call came in to the restaurant.
[phone ringing]
And the assistant manager at the restaurant,
Donna Summers, 51 years old, takes the call.
And, uh, it's a gentleman on the other line,
saying that he is a police officer.
He's working for the Mount Washington Police,
which is not even a mile up the road from the restaurant.
And that he has the manager of the McDonald's
on the line with him,
along with a corporate representative.
And he's got some very serious business to talk about.
One of her employees has been accused
of stealing a wallet from a customer, who'd been there.
He describes her as petite, uh, brunette hair.
And Donna Summers says, "Yes, we have that employee."
"I know exactly who that is."
[Buddy] As I'm, uh, watching the video,
a young woman comes into the room.
You could see them talking back and forth.
Louise Ogborn, 18 years old,
was working at McDonald's
because her mom had recently lost her job,
and had some health issues,
and she wanted to help the family earn some money.
And on this particular day, they were very busy
and she offered to stay and help with the dinner rush.
So, at that point, uh, Donna Summers takes Louise Ogborn to the back office.
[Louise] She told me
that I had been accused of stealing money from my customer's purse.
I just remember being distraught.
I was so upset
that somebody would blame me for something so horrible.
The person on the phone, the police officer,
then tells Ms. Summers, "Now, here's what we can do."
"We can either arrest her at the restaurant
or, if you want to help us out,
we need you to conduct a strip search and see if she has the money on her."
[Louise] She started asking me to empty my pockets
and I just started taking stuff out,
laying it on the desk…
And I turn my pockets inside out.
[Buddy] Next thing you know,
another assistant manager walks in, as well,
and they've got a garbage bag and they've put that over the door
so you couldn't look in from the hallway
and see what was going on inside that office.
I thought it was strange,
but I guess they were trying to make the victim more comfortable
with what was, uh, going to happen.
[Connie] It's hard to imagine what Donna Summers is thinking.
Most people say they would never believe
someone on the phone is asking them to conduct a strip search.
However, this caller sounds very legitimate.
He's very calm,
he's giving the orders very authoritatively,
and Donna Summers is obeying all of these commands from the officer.
Even Louise complies,
even though she doesn't really want to.
She keeps protesting, saying she didn't do this.
So she's probably thinking, "Well, they're gonna realize this isn't me
and I'll just obey right now
and hopefully they'll let me out of this situation."
But that's when it becomes more bizarre.
All of a sudden, here comes one article of clothing off
and then another article of clothing off.
Then I'm going, "Wow."
"What the hell do we got going on here?" I mean, I was mind-blown.
And the next thing you know,
the victim has nothing on but her underwear and her bra.
And all of a sudden,
they're removed, too.
She's just standing there, just naked.
There's not a stitch of clothes on at all and I'm thinking,
"We're in a McDonald's office with a naked woman?"
"I mean, what's gonna happen next?"
We're probably an hour into the phone call.
I was just standing there with my mouth hung open.
Couldn't believe what I was seeing.
After they remove her clothing,
they give her an apron and she's trying to conceal herself
as best as she can.
[Louise] I was completely undressed. I was embarrassed.
[Buddy] Next thing you know, they're bagging her personal belongings up
and they take them out of the room.
[Connie] The police officer on the line asked her
to take all of Louise's clothing,
get her car keys,
and take it out to the car and put it in the car.
So here's Louise Ogborn,
sitting there naked with a little apron over her,
realizing that even if she wants to get out of that situation,
there is a restaurant full of customers
that she's gonna have to run through, naked.
And then what's she gonna do?
So she's stuck back there.
[Louise] I didn't know what was behind the door.
I didn't know if somebody was waiting for me or…
And I didn't want to run out naked and I was just really scared.
What choice did Louise have at this point
but to obey?
[Buddy] This young lady's not being strip-searched.
She's a prisoner in her own place of employment.
She's upset. You can see it in her face
that she was traumatized at the situation she was in.
[Connie] I can only imagine, an 18-year-old,
what's going through your mind.
This is someone who has always followed orders
probably in her life.
Her life has been about order.
Going to church, going to Girl Scouts, going to school.
[Louise] Grew up in a typical military home,
highly disciplined.
I was taught when my dad or my mom told me to do something,
that I absolutely did it.
Uh, if any other adult told me to do something
I absolutely did it, no arguments.
[Buddy] And then the next thing you know,
this man… They come into the office and…
He's a middle-aged man.
He doesn't have an employee uniform, or an apron, or anything on.
I go, "He's not a McDonald's employee,
what's he doing in McDonald's main office?"
We also don't know what type of person this is.
Could he even be in on it with the caller?
[Connie] This whole thing has been going on for hours
and Donna Summers…
She's trying to run a restaurant that's very busy at that time of day.
But every time she starts wondering, "Why's this taking so long?"
He seems to have an answer.
"We're on our way. We just don't have many people working today."
"Just bear with us."
So, that sounds like a legitimate answer to Summers.
However, she needs to get back to work.
And the officer says, "Well, look,
do you have a man in your life who you trust?"
"Do you have a husband, a boyfriend?"
"Someone you could maybe bring in who could watch her until we get there?"
And so Donna Summers says, "Yes, actually. I have a fiancé, Walter."
"He could come down."
I'm thinking,
"What part of 'being the right thing to do'
did you think this was?"
Uh, the manager leaves and he takes the phone.
[Connie] And now Walter Nix is listening to the caller
and following his directions.
He says to Louise, "All right,
he wants you to go ahead and drop the apron."
Then the police officer says,
"Can she do some jumping jacks?"
"Maybe she could run in place."
"She needs to shake. We need to see if anything falls out."
"You never know where she may have hid something."
[Buddy] She's now been in the room nearly two hours.
I see these acts going on.
Jumping jacks, naked. Jogging in place.
Uh, standing in the chair.
It just kept going on and on.
In the meantime, from time to time,
Donna Summers comes back into the office.
And each time she comes back in, you can see Louise Ogborn,
covering herself with that apron.
She doesn't think anything's going on.
She thinks he's just sitting there, listening to the police officer
and watching her until the police get there.
You have to think that Louise is getting worn down mentally
and she's not getting any help at all from Donna Summers.
There is one point…
You can see Donna Summers coming back into the room.
And Louise Ogborn does not have her apron covering her.
And Walter Nix is right next to her.
Whether she saw it or not…
She came back in the room very quickly and didn't see it.
Still nothing is done.
So, at that point, Louise has to think,
"I'm all alone here."
"Nobody's gonna help me."
[Louise] Just doing what I had to do to survive.
The caller was telling me to say, "Yes, sir. No, sir."
If I didn't, I would get punished.
And, um, I was petrified.
[voice breaking] I didn't know if this was my last day on Earth. [sniffling]
I didn't know if I'd make it through.
[Buddy] Far as I knew,
Walter Nix was an upstanding person in the community. Churchgoer, family man.
He was a little league, uh, coach, uh, around children all the time, uh…
People trusted him
and Donna was gonna marry him.
But, evidently, when he was so far out of his normal element,
with this guy talking to him on the phone
that every moral fiber that he had in him…
He just lost it.
And it just kept getting worse, the further the video went.
Even had the young lady turned over his lap
and he would… Was spanking her, uh, naked buttocks.
And I mean to the point that, uh… You could even see the red marks.
And, uh…
[inhales deeply]
Uh, the spanking continues on and off for about 20 minutes.
Louise Ogborn is humiliated, scared.
She's probably afraid for her life at this point.
[Louise] I was crying the whole time.
He had already hit me, beat me, and…
There's no telling what he could have done
if I hadn't stood up for myself and tried to get help.
As the video progressed, uh,
it went to a dark hour. [sighs]
Um…
Walter Nix is then instructed
to have Louise Ogborn sit on his lap.
"We can check her breath."
"You might be able to tell if she has any drugs or alcohol on her breath."
And the police officer tells him to have Louise Ogborn give him a kiss.
[Buddy] Over the next hour, he's persuaded to run through all of these things.
[Connie] And if that was not enough,
the police officer tells Walter Nix,
"I need her to perform a sexual act."
And he instructed her to do so.
[clicks tongue] Uh, Walter Nix actually had the victim perform oral sex on him.
No one understands how this went forward.
But it did go forward.
[Louise] I was numb.
I don't remember feeling anything.
[voice breaking] I just wiped my mind.
[sniffling]
I just made it to where I wasn't really there mentally.
[Buddy] It was very hard to watch and, uh…
I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
And, uh… I got pretty upset about it.
I was upset
because I didn't see how anything could happen to somebody… like that.
If you can't feel safe working at McDonald's,
we're getting in a sorry world.
A young lady has been sexually assaulted, physically assaulted…
And I'm thinking, "What the hell am I gonna do?"
So, Walter Nix has to be thinking to himself,
"What did I just do?"
And he realizes he's done wrong.
He knew he had to be doing wrong because he takes off.
At this point, I saw enough
that I knew we had a felony that had occurred.
I instructed a police officer to go to his address,
bring him to the police department.
He was as much at fault as… As the caller.
In fact, probably he was more at fault.
Just 'cause somebody tells you something don't mean you do it.
So then, at that point,
Donna Summers is like, "What am I gonna do?"
[Buddy] So then here comes an older gentleman in
who's a custodian that was off-duty.
[Connie] He gets on the phone.
He hears a few words of it and says,
[scoffs] This… No way. This is not happening. This isn't right.
He had enough common sense to realize, "Wait a minute."
"Is this a real police officer?"
[Connie] He tells Donna Summers that this was not a real call.
Then she finally seems to realize,
"Wait a minute. Is this all not real?"
And everything stops.
This whole thing is a hoax.
And, uh, that's when they realize they've been scammed.
Through my mind, I'm thinking, "Who's this caller?"
"Surely to God, he's not a cop."
My only thought was,
"How in the hell can a guy get enjoyment out of doing this over the phone, but…"
Obviously, he got gratification strictly by hearing what's going on.
I also think that he got his jollies off of knowing that he had the strength
to get in most people's heads
and have them comply with what his instructions were.
While all kinds of thoughts ran through my mind,
I knew we needed to take the victim's statement.
That's when I sat down
across from her,
and, uh…
looked her in the eye…
I realized I knew her.
Yes. She was my neighbor.
[inhales] Uh…
[sniffles]
And I said, "Louise?"
She said, "Yeah, Buddy, it's me."
[sniffles]
And, uh…
Hell, her dad was a friend of mine.
Grew up together.
[inhales deeply]
And, uh…
[sighs]
That hit me right between the eyes.
[clicks tongue] And, uh…
The case became very personal.
[clicks tongue] Uh…
Gave me more drive… [sighs]
Uh…
[clicks tongue] Made me more determined… [sniffles]
that I'm gonna find out who the hell did this,
and I'm gonna put their ass in jail.
[sniffles]
Three weeks before when I took that job,
I never thought I'd have a case like this.
We needed to determine where the phone call was placed from
before we could figure out how to solve this case.
The caller appeared,
based on statements and things they told me,
that he knew
what was actually going on inside that office.
My instinct was that this guy was nearby.
After we took statements that night,
I actually drove back over here to the, uh, parking lot.
Back then, cell phones were just coming on the scene.
Payphones were used very much every day
by a lot of the general public.
I knew that there was a couple payphones on the front wall of the Winn-Dixie store.
I had a hunch that there is a payphone.
And that payphone is in a visual, direct line of sight to the McDonald's.
It's the only way that I felt like why somebody would want to do this.
'Cause they would want to look at the McDonald's
and watch for the police to roll up
and see how successful they were, pulling off their prank.
I thought it could be a disgruntled employee.
It possibly could also be somebody that knew Louise,
whether they were playing a prank on her for fun
or whether they had something against her, I didn't know, but that was a possibility.
Your mind runs in a hundred different directions
trying to figure out which way to go.
The next shift I worked,
I went through the statements
to collect more information possibly that would help me solve this.
I felt our case was like a needle in a haystack, right off the bat.
And then…
All of a sudden, I was sitting there. And I thought,
"I'm gonna search the Internet."
Punch in "McDonald's strip search".
And… Boom!
There came up a lot of information
from restaurants and retail establishments where this had happened across the nation.
Every case was almost the exact same MO.
Some cases even used the same, uh, police officer's name,
Detective Scott.
We had a McDonald's in Hinesville, Georgia,
where a older custodian
did a body cavity search on a female employee.
At a Taco Bell in Phoenix, Arizona,
the manager picked out a customer that fit the description on the phone
and searched her.
In '95, we're at a McDonald's in Raleigh, North Carolina.
In '98, we're in Oak Brook, Illinois and…
So… And he just bounced all over the place and…
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Taco Bells and Burger Kings and Hardee's and Applebee's
and every restaurant you could think of was a victim of this caller.
I realize I have information on 73 cases in 32 states.
The first call that we were able to determine
was in 1994.
Here I am in 2004.
And I went…
"Oh, crap."
"This ain't gonna be the local Winn-Dixie payphone."
I knew everybody was looking at me.
This was gonna be a defining moment in my career.
…dangerous, almost unbelievable hoax repeated across the nation many times.
And now to an unbelievable hoax
that police say many people fell victim to.
We know that it was at 70 different locations
all over the country, as you can see.
[reporter 1] It's a nationwide investigation.
This same hoax played out at 69 other businesses in 32 states
over ten years.
Detective Stump is considered a hero to the young girl
for tracking down hundreds of calls.
The subject had a way of getting inside of people's minds.
I didn't realize at first, but I was handed a case that, uh,
ended up being a monster
and there's nobody to solve this but me.
We were afraid that, uh,
constantly, every week, more people were gonna be hurt.
We knew we had a bad guy
that thought he could do any damn thing he wanted.
'Cause he'd been doing it for ten years
and he didn't think he could get caught and he was gonna keep on going and going.
I'm very concerned
that we have a sexual predator on the loose.
My thought is, what's gonna happen tonight?
What business is gonna get hit? What young victim's gonna be victimized?
Somebody had to stop this monster from what he was doing.
I knew that to catch this guy,
I needed to understand his particular MO.
And to do that,
I needed to understand more about his past cases.
[woman] Blackfoot's a nice, close-knit community.
It's a small farming town…
Conservative and fairly religious.
I always felt safe.
The caller targeted certain audiences.
He targeted small towns
where people were more willing to believe in authority.
Especially if somebody says that they're police.
I was raised to respect the authority of people in charge of me.
Teachers, people at church, uh, those that are older than me.
That person was smart enough to know
that smaller cities might have
young, impressionable people working at their fast food restaurants
that really need to keep their day jobs.
I was 16 years old when I took this job.
And I was thrilled when I got the position.
Because I'm gonna be earning my own money.
I was a loyal, dutiful, like, always early employee.
It was December 16th, 1999.
Just an ordinary, cold, December weeknight.
Suddenly, I was called back to the office by name.
The manager told me that he was on the phone
with someone named Officer Davis, from the Blackfoot Police Department.
A woman had been at our establishment earlier that evening.
Her purse was stolen
and it had a $50 bill in it.
And she knows that one of the servers
took it.
$50 is a lot of money
when you're making $2.80 an hour plus tips.
But I wouldn't dream of touching a customer's personal belongings at all.
And then they stated that it was, um…
The person she thinks had her purse
was a female server,
little over 5-foot, and blonde hair.
What the hoax caller is doing on the phone
is giving a very basic description
and he knows that there would be a young employee
that fits the description of a petite, meek, young woman.
[Elizabeth] I was protesting that I'm not 5-foot.
I'm not blonde. It was not me. You know…
I was adamant. It wasn't me.
No matter what I said,
the officer had a believable, plausible, reasonable answer for everything.
Officer wanted the clothes removed piece by piece.
And it began with removing shoes.
And then it was my pants.
And then it was my uniform shirt.
So just a progression of one item at a time.
With lots of talk between.
[Connie] The caller seems to love the slow pace of this.
Starts off easy,
to see if he can kind of reel the people in.
And then, it gets bigger and bigger. It escalates.
[Elizabeth] As it goes on, I'm just getting more hysterical
'cause I'm just pleading
and I just kept saying, "This isn't right."
It didn't matter. It even seemed to anger the officer even more.
He was asking that my manager describe my body.
He wanted him to describe my breasts, what my genitalia looked like…
And even my bra size.
That's when I snatched the phone away and was screaming,
"How in the world could my bra cup size and all this stuff
have anything at all to do with this allegedly stolen $50 bill?"
Even though I was extremely violated and traumatized,
I didn't feel personally empowered enough to just get the hell out of there.
And right about that time,
my coworker, Derek, came in.
And could tell something was wrong.
It's 1999 in Blackfoot, Idaho.
Uh, jobs are kinda limited for our area,
so I ended up getting a job at a pizza parlor.
I was 22 at the time.
Most of our waiting staff were under the age of 18.
I went through the employee entrance.
Immediately, I noticed that something was really wrong
and asked the cook what was going on because I could see no wait staff.
It was just the cook, a pile of pizzas, breadsticks for days,
carry-outs waiting to be boxed up.
It was chaos for a pizza parlor.
And I said, "What is going on?" She's like, "Something in the office."
When I turn the corner and I see the manager,
he looks up at me.
I'll never forget the sweat pouring off his body.
Never seen anything like it since.
I see
a young lady getting strip-searched.
I said,
"What the fuck are you doing?"
And he said, "There's a cop on the phone."
"And I'm doing a strip search for the police."
And I grabbed the phone and I said, "Who is this?"
And the guy says…
"This is an officer with the Blackfoot Police Department."
He sounded cool, calm, collected, like this is something he does every day.
And I said, "Then you, of all people, should know
this manager should not be strip-searching a minor."
"Especially a female."
I was like, "We need to get the real cops here."
And he hung up.
[disconnected tone]
It took an outsider coming in
and being alarmed at the information enough
to act and do something and stop the situation.
I was very grateful for his intervention.
[Derek] I wish I would've been there sooner.
I did what I was supposed to do when I got there.
It pisses me off that somebody's gonna take advantage of people like that.
When I realized it was a hoax
and that this was just a person impersonating a real police officer,
I was outraged.
In 1999, I would have said 100% the manager is involved with this.
And after learning
that this has happened so many times in so many different states,
I just don't see how it's plausible for him to be involved.
You know? I… I honestly don't think
that anybody at these restaurants were involved.
I think that they were honestly just taken advantage of.
Then went home, but stayed up pretty late and wrote down…
Recounted the whole story.
Just being able to sit down with my legal pad
and even make it through my account. That was really hard.
I was so personally wronged.
And I was discouraged to learn
that there was no way that the police would put significant resources
into checking this out or following up.
It wasn't a priority for them.
[Connie] What's really hard to believe
is that somebody was doing this all over the place
and just getting away with it.
Were all the cases not investigated? Were people afraid to report it?
[Buddy] This case is so bizarre. It's hard to describe.
We had the proof,
the undeniable video evidence that… That this did happen.
The other agencies didn't have that.
They didn't have nothing but a statement
of someone saying, "This is what happened."
As far as I knew,
I was the only person investigating this thing.
I had no idea someone else was onto him, too.
[reporter] An unbelievable phone scam
hit four branches of Wendy's in Boston, late Friday.
The caller claimed to be a police officer
and was able to trick managers
into performing illegal strip searches on employees.
In the most shocking case,
a young female manager was tricked into sexually assaulting a male server.
Some outrageous sexual conduct happened
in which he was asked to spread his arms and his legs.
She had touched him inappropriately. Including his private parts.
[man] It was just really horrific what the victims went through.
If anybody had done this to my child,
I would be outraged.
I always treat people like family
so I get pissed that this happened to these men and women.
And I wanted to make sure it stopped.
It really piqued my interest because of the bizarre nature.
Usually, we get a lot of drug cases.
You know, on a daily basis,
we'd be out buying heroin, buying cocaine…
The fad drugs they call molly and OxyContin.
So yesterday, we're buying heroin.
Today, I'm tracking a hoax caller posing as a police officer.
We had no idea where the call came from.
We had no suspects. Nobody.
Got back to the office and put my hands overhead, going,
"I don't know how I'm going to find this needle in a haystack."
[Buddy] Other than the video, I got one piece of evidence.
That's the caller ID number from the star 69.
An employee at the restaurant
was fast thinking enough to think star 69.
And for those of us who remember the landlines,
you would put in star 69
and it would take you back to the last caller.
If I hadn't had that number, this case would've been dead in the dirt.
I'm sitting there looking at this phone number.
I call it.
[busy tone]
And I get a busy sig.
And I thought, "Wait. No."
I call it again.
And I get a busy signal.
And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking I've got a phone number.
And it's not telling me nothing.
At that time, I didn't have a lot of help.
I didn't have two or three other detectives who would work with me.
I had nothing to go on.
[Victor] I'm doing this investigation basically alone
and it's tough to get going.
Think about it. What evidence is there to this case?
But I knew that I was gonna do everything I could,
and if I did everything I can to catch him, I will.
The first lead in the case
was doing what they call a reverse toll on all four locations.
I'm getting multiple subpoenas from the judge for those records.
And I get a report back saying that the numbers are fake.
They go nowhere.
We don't know anything else.
We don't know if it's a cell number, we don't know hardline. We know nothing.
[Buddy] I call AT&T and I go through a series of people.
They would transfer me to another individual
and I'd do the same thing, go to another individual.
Finally, after… [inhales]
oh, probably an hour and a half on the phone,
I got this lady
and I'll never forget what she said.
[clicks tongue] "You know…
I think this might be one of our prepaid calling card numbers."
And I'm thinking, "All right."
Knew nothing about calling cards. Never had worked a case involving one.
Nobody knew technology that would be involved.
That was our next step. Figure out how to track a prepaid calling card.
[Victor] We knew that it's not a local caller,
so I understand why he bought the prepaid calling cards.
If you remember, back in the day,
calling cards were used on a daily basis.
It was convenient, it was cheaper.
These calls were upwards of 90 minutes.
So, these were very expensive calls.
I called AT&T.
[line ringing]
"You're on hold," and it says,
"The next representative will get to you in 30 minutes."
And you're sitting there, waiting.
-Listen to that terrible music. -[hold music playing]
And then somebody picked up the phone.
[music stops]
Said, "This is Michelle with subpoena clients, AT&T,
how can I help you?"
I said I need to know the originating calling number
for these fake numbers.
And she said, "Well, they can't be traced."
I said, "It makes no sense."
"You're telling me that you cannot trace these prepaid calling cards at all?"
She said, "No, they can't."
I don't know what to say anymore. I don't know what to do.
I guess you could say I was chasing the voice on the phone,
but actually, I was just chasing a phone number.
Because I've never heard the voice.
I wouldn't have known the voice if I had heard it.
Dead end after dead end, frustration after frustration,
I didn't care what I had to do.
How many hours I had to put in, who I had to call.
Because I didn't know what this guy was capable of.
I just know that this is a bad guy.
He needs to go to jail as fast as we can get him there.
[Victor] Everything that I was doing at this point was phone calls,
phone calls to other agencies, phone calls to AT&T.
I talked to Michelle from AT&T more than my wife at that point.
I mean, we talked all the time and we went back and forth, for a while.
And just kept asking questions.
"You're telling me that there's no way these can be traced?"
I said, "I've looked at a calling card. They have different numbers on them."
"What do these numbers mean?" "I don't know."
"Why do they have a barcode on them?" "I don't know."
I said, "I'm not giving up until you give me an answer."
Then she calls me and she was a little upbeat.
She said, "I got some answers."
"Since 9/11, even though we don't want the public to know,
prepaid calling cards are now traceable."
I'm excited. I'm like, "Here we go."
And she says, "Vic, the true originating numbers
are coming from Panama City, Florida."
Touchdown. We have a location.
[Buddy] Finally, I found out that the call originated in Panama City, Florida,
and I'm thinking, "Hell, that's a place where you go to beach to have fun."
I was shocked that crimes like this can be committed there,
but I didn't know what to think,
but I knew that I had just latched on to a very important piece of information.
So I know now these are real locations, not fake locations, real.
The problem is they're payphones.
What good is a payphone? I can't knock on the door,
numerous people use it.
I knew when the call was made. I knew the payphone booth.
I knew exactly where he was, the time he was at…
That's it. We don't have anything else, we don't know anything else.
I'm back to square one.
I call Panama City detectives and talk with them.
They basically told me that Panama City had received multiple, multiple calls
about calls coming from their area as a hoax
posing as a police detective and strip-searching people.
And I was like, "What?"
"I thought this was only us." That just blew my mind.
At this point, I realized that he's practiced it so many times
that he just knew exactly what to say next.
And probably didn't win every time.
He got hung up on numerous times,
but when he did, he got this far, they hung up on him.
Next one, got a little far-er, then they hung up on him.
Some hung up on him immediately,
but he learned to play the role.
He learned to play the game.
That's the sick part about it.
He got better at it, and when he got better at it,
it became more of a… drug.
He just had to have it.
I really didn't believe it was a police officer.
Could have been a wannabe. Power-hungry, liked to have authority.
Maybe he felt he was invincible at that point.
Because he got four-for-four in Massachusetts.
That's 100%.
[Elizabeth] We probably all individually had the feeling that this was only us
and felt stupid and dumb about it.
But the fact that there were so many women that this happened to
makes me feel less foolish and naive.
But even in admitting that, it's just…
Oh, totally demoralizing because I just feel that
that's a pretty bold breakdown of justice?
I absolutely feel that he needs to be apprehended
and made to pay for his actions.
I think he just destroyed their lives, families as well.
There was nobody in the United States that could say 100%
that their daughter or son was safe from this guy.
We need to make sure we found this caller
so that this wasn't happening to any more victims.
Some nights, it's hard to go to sleep thinking about it.
I needed to know he's behind bars,
and no other victim is going to fall prey to him.
[Victor] At this point, I was at a standstill
because we got to the point
where we've identified where the calls were made from was a dead end.
There's nowhere else to go.
But I'm not giving up,
because now it's really getting down to the nitty-gritty.
Really getting into picky, real police investigative
hard work, and I'm okay with that.
So now my next step is to identify
where the calling card was purchased.
When I finally got that information back,
it said that they were bought on February 19th at Walmart,
in Panama City.
Hopefully, this is the big break we're looking for.
It's a big company. Big companies have video.
If he bought this at a little convenience store, they might not have video.
So I call Walmart and I ask for video,
I know it was purchased on this time, on this date.
They repeatedly tell me, "I don't think I can get this, talk to this guy."
So we go from one to the next to the next, till I finally get the guy.
And he says, "Yes, I can give you that."
So I finally get this VHS tape,
put a set up in my office with a TV and a VCR and I put it in.
And as soon as I popped it in, I realized
it wasn't what I was expecting at all.
You could tell it's just one of these tapes that's continually used,
probably six months, the quality was terrible.
It's of seven or eight locations throughout the store.
So, flash a picture of the jewelry section,
flash the entrance.
Then it'd go back, and it'd be a loop.
Flash, this one, this one, this one, then back to the entrance.
And there's no video in the registers.
Surely, if I continue watching this, I wouldn't be able to work.
I'd just be in a rubber room somewhere because it's insane.
Because this video, as much as we slow it down
and take some of these other cameras out of the way,
still, it could have been a thousand men that walked in that hour
and that's assuming that he's coming in the store
and leaving the store shortly before the purchase
and directly after the purchase.
There's no way I can find anything from this tape.
It's impossible.
I don't know where to go with this anymore.
It's been four months.
Four months of hard work!
So at this point, I'm at a dead end again.
Then I get a call from Buddy Stump of the Mount Washington Police Department.
Finally one day, first thing I do, I call Vic Flaherty.
[phone ringing]
I picked up the phone and you can tell he's not from Boston.
I'm the kind of guy there's no sense reinventing the wheel.
I knew that my phone call had came from Panama City.
The detective there advised me
that there was a case in, uh, Massachusetts,
very much like our case.
I needed to contact this Detective Vic Flaherty.
[Victor] He's telling me what he has.
Obviously, he's from a real small department…
We're a small department, but this is a real small one.
He was surprised there was somebody that had got as far as he had gotten.
He's very passionate about it.
I was bouncing off the walls. I was tickled to death.
I didn't feel like I was a lone ranger anymore.
Somebody there had the same drive to try to find this guy that I did.
[Victor] I was excited to hear and talk with Buddy
because it's a brand new case.
Now we have fresh information and…
"I've been told that you can help me
try to figure out how to track this calling card."
[Victor] I said, "Just send that information to me
and I'll get it to you quicker
because I can trace back where the calling card was purchased."
And I went from thinking,
"I don't know if we can solve this case" to "Hell yes, we can solve this case."
So I call my favorite lady at AT&T
and say, "You're never gonna guess. Another incident."
"Even more horrific, and without a doubt, it's the same person."
AT&T is telling me the calling card used in the Mount Washington hoax
was purchased at a different Walmart store than the one from mine.
So I call Walmart. The first question I asked, "Do we have register video?"
And they said, "Yes."
It was like, "You're kidding me?" "Nope, we have it."
I said, "All right. Pull the tapes."
A few days later, I get a VHS tape.
I push play…
I knew that the purchase was at 3:02,
then creeped it forward a little bit.
So then, the suspect walks into the picture.
I see him putting the stuff on the counter.
A white male between 30 and 40,
about 6 feet tall, black hair.
You could see something flat on the belt,
what appeared to be a calling card.
I looked at him, I went "Oh, my God,"
and it was a really good picture. Really good picture.
And I'm like, "Holy cow. We now have him."
We have a picture of the suspect.
He purchased the calling card
that was used to hoax Mount Washington, no doubt.
Right there on TV.
This is a huge break.
Call Buddy, and tell him, "You know, we have a photo of him."
I was excited.
Three hundred million people in the country
and I got it down to one guy in a Walmart.
I'm ready to kick it into overdrive. I'm ready to go.
[Victor] The problem was, those videos are from above.
It's not the greatest picture of his face.
How are we gonna try to identify this person?
We have to get the best view of him.
So we decided that now we have to go back to my tape
because my tape is entrance and exits.
The camera is straight on.
So if we find him there, we're going to get a great picture of him.
So here we go again.
We're back in a 12-by-12 room
with six monitors going, getting a headache,
but we knew who we were looking for, and all of a sudden,
bang.
He walked in.
Same guy.
The minute he came in, I went, "That's him."
Just like that. I knew it.
He walks in with a jacket on, sunglasses,
and he looks like he's just ready to go to work,
or coming back from work, very neat.
I notice a braid on the side of his pants.
I'm like, "What the fuck?"
That braid on the side of pants,
it's police.
He's a cop.