And now to an unbelievable hoax
that police say many people fell victim to.
A caller pretending to be a police officer was convincing enough
to talk some managers into sexually abusing fast food employees.
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.
Who is this?
The caller, of course, has committed the perfect crime
because he's completely anonymous.
We have a sexual predator on the loose
-and the phone's still ringing every day.
It was about a ten-hour drive from Florida back to Kentucky.
I'm thinking I've got a guy in the back seat
that has pulled this off for ten years
and, hell, he got away with causing some pretty awful crimes to be committed.
We felt like all the evidence pointed to him being the hoax caller. Nobody else.
It was tense at first.
We were just talking about stuff in general.
He'd been working as a corrections officer for quite some time in Panama City.
Before that, he delivered propane for this propane company.
He seemed to be the average guy that you would see.
An average Joe on the street.
Even his co-workers at work probably thought he was a nice guy.
We talked about his family some, and asked him how many kids he had,
and some of that kind of chitchat.
David Stewart was not what I was expecting.
I was surprised to find out he was married and had kids.
I figured he was a lone wolf, you know?
Sitting in his apartment somewhere, practicing his art.
And you know what?
Maybe he just told the wife he's working overtime.
Maybe told her he's working that night.
Is he, like, two different people
and the family don't know the other side of him?
I think David Stewart probably wanted to be a police officer
more than anything in life.
He went to the academy.
He was obsessed with having the power over people, of the authoritative figure.
I got the feeling like he thought he was one of us.
I think it started getting real for him as we were getting closer to Kentucky.
We put him in jail and now I'm thinking, "What are you thinking, sucker?"
"Thought you're going to get away with it. But now your ass is sitting in a place
650 miles from home, and you don't know nobody."
"How's it feel?"
David Stewart was charged with solicitation of sodomy.
He might not have been in the room when Louise was assaulted,
but if he bought the calling card and made the call,
that alone is solicitation.
He was also charged with impersonating a peace officer.
These are very serious felony charges that he's looking at.
I felt satisfaction. He's behind bars.
No other victim is going to fall prey to him.
That was a huge relief that we have the individual
we believed made these phone calls in jail and awaiting trial.
After we put him in jail, some time goes by
and then I found out that he's got a big-dog defense attorney.
It was a bizarre case
that I've never seen anything like it in 30 years.
David's brother called me and asked me to take the case.
I thought it was… Somebody was playing a practical joke or something on me
because these things were alleged to have occurred over the phone.
And if you think about it, it would be very difficult
to sexually assault someone over the phone.
My initial reaction was, "Well, you can't do that over the phone."
"It's not possible under the statute."
David's bail was a half million dollars initially.
This is a guy who's never charged with a crime in his life.
Never had a speeding ticket.
And so, a half-million-dollar bond
was an extraordinarily high bond, in the first place.
The judge set the bond on a warrant.
And I think the reason he set it at a half a million dollars
is because if this guy was to get out,
and he's 600 and some miles from home,
he might go on the run, he might do whatever.
He'd be a flight risk.
And it was important that we get a bail that the family could post.
Ultimately, I think it was reduced to a $100,000.
Next thing I know, he got out on bail.
He's out of jail and he's gone.
I was upset with the fact that he was walking around free,
but I'm thinking, "Okay, take your last walk."
"Enjoy, buddy, because we'll meet again."
Today, we're gonna talk about prank calls that take it way too far.
In fact, these calls are plain sadistic and cruel.
I'm Javier Leiva, and this is Pretend.
Stories about real people pretending to be someone else.
When I started looking into this,
it was shocking that there was even one hoax call like this.
But then, come to find out that there were over 100 calls just like this
in 32 states, and it went on for more than ten years.
It was the Mount Washington case with Louise Ogborn
that caught worldwide attention.
It was shocking to know that a hoax call could be so sadistic and go this far.
It is incredible how long this guy got away with it.
God knows how many other calls happened that just weren't reported.
So many victims went through these horrible ordeals.
It shows people weren't warned about the dangers of the hoax caller.
And I'll tell you, from my research…
I traveled the United States,
and I stopped at different fast food restaurants.
And I very casually asked the managers,
"Hey, have you heard of these prank calls that have been happening?"
And they're like, "No, never heard of it." It was news to them.
Even today, people aren't aware of it,
which just shows how it kept happening and happening.
Somebody had to be held accountable
for what happened to all these different people.
So, at the time,
I had no idea this had happened to anyone else anywhere, at all.
The manager, he lost his job,
but they never officially charged him with anything that I'm aware of.
The Taco Bell was a franchise,
so I decided to sue the franchise owner as well as my manager.
It was pretty clear that they were just worried about
a lawsuit pretty much right out of the gate.
They didn't care about her well-being.
They were basically gonna make it out that she was complicit in what happened.
My attorney told me that it very well could happen
that they would try to attack my character.
From what I understand, they were trying to get the notes
from Deborah's therapy sessions to bring those into court.
I think it was a ploy to ensure that Deborah wasn't going to testify.
And if Deborah didn't testify, there was no case.
The judge and the other attorney,
they just sort of blamed me, in a way.
The case was thrown out, in part,
because either Deborah wouldn't testify or wouldn't answer
the questions that they were asking her.
She didn't want to recount all of this stuff
in front of a room full of strangers.
I was embarrassed, I didn't want to go through it.
It was all too much and I was not willing or able, probably, to do it.
The judge said… And I actually have it on my phone.
He said "courts should not be used to propagate
a culture of victimology/entitlement
that degrades the sense of individual responsibility and hard work
on which this great nation was founded."
"The best lessons learned are usually the most expensive."
"At tremendous expense,
plaintiff will hopefully have learned to think for herself."
Basically, "Shame on you, hope you learn a lesson."
Months later, they kinda just were like,
"Oh, by the way, we found out the caller was a prison guard in Florida."
And that was all I knew.
When there's no justice, when the police don't do anything,
the DA doesn't do anything,
it doesn't feel or doesn't seem at all like there's gonna be any effort
to do anything to dissuade this from happening again.
And that's exactly what happened.
It's a very flawed system
that a very healthy percentage of people never get any sort of justice
and never any attempt at real justice.
The criminal trial of David Stewart
was what everybody was talking about,
but the real villain here is not just the prank caller.
I mean, what they did is horrible,
but McDonald's, in a way, are just as complicit for allowing this to continue.
Louise decides she's gonna go after the Goliath.
She's going to go after McDonald's and she's gonna get some kind of justice.
Her name, Louise Ogborn.
The company, McDonald's.
The two, once employee and employer, now defendant and plaintiff.
All Louise Ogborn wanted
was McDonald's to acknowledge they were culpable in this whole thing.
She just wanted an apology for ruining her life.
This could be the first time
anyone involved in one of these hoaxes has managed to get to trial.
I think Louise was a brave person.
Now she's got to go on the witness stand to seal the deal on this thing.
So Louise Ogborn hires an attorney named Ann Oldfather
and they'd sue McDonald's for $200 million and that's a lot of money.
McDonald's has this searchlight of blame
and it's going on everybody else except the Golden Arches.
Ann Oldfather is known for being a fierce litigator.
Your verdict can measure the harm
that's been done to Louise, in this community.
This was, without a doubt, the biggest civil case
ever tried in Bullitt County.
$200 million?
I think the fact that they even asked for that much
tells you what this case is all about.
All rise, please.
My name's Tom McDonald.
I served as a judge for 25 years in Louisville, Kentucky.
Please be seated.
I never thought this case would get to trial
because the facts are so bizarre.
There was an awful lot at stake.
Here you have an 18-year-old woman,
from a small town,
who's going up against one of the biggest companies in the world.
My thought is that
they were gonna do everything in their power to make her go away.
Now, Fox News at 10:00. Your first choice for news.
There's a new development
in the legal fallout from a strip search hoax
at a McDonald's restaurant in Mount Washington.
One of the private detectives hired by McDonald's
was arrested for impersonating an officer
when he was serving a subpoena on one of Louise's friends.
There are charges that McDonald's is intimidating witnesses,
and at least one bailiff,
hired by the restaurant chain's attorneys, has been arrested.
You gotta wonder if McDonald's strategy
was to victim shame Louise Ogborn.
They went after her therapy notes, they went after her Myspace account.
And I think they wanted to pin this on everyone but themselves.
McDonald's claimed it only had a few documents about the prior hoaxes,
but Ann Oldfather did not believe that.
And she started researching this and showed how many cases
there had been previously
and how McDonald's obviously knew of this danger, years earlier.
Louise's case is basically that,
you know, McDonald's had several of these hoax callers
and how did they tell their restaurants about it?
Did they do enough to warn their employees?
And their case was that, "No, they did not."
Before this case got to trial,
Oldfather kept demanding documents from McDonald's about these other hoaxes.
McDonald's acknowledged they had settled six cases
concerning hoaxes similar to these.
They said that's all they knew.
But Ann Oldfather ultimately got an order from the trial judge
threatening McDonald's with sanctions unless it produced what it had.
We had an emergency hearing
and I ordered McDonald's to turn over all of their files.
Forty-eight hours before the trial started,
McDonald's delivered her boxes and boxes full of information,
with no time to review it.
Louise Ogborn's lawyer has pages, folders,
and boxes of paperwork
that show McDonald's office knew of more than two dozen strip searches
at its restaurants across the country.
Sixteen boxes of material
from McDonald's attorneys,
that we haven't even had time to go through.
At one point, McDonald's was implying
that Louise was in on the hoax
and that she was just trying to get money from the company.
Come right on over there, sir.
McDonald's got the maintenance guy,
the guy who ended the call, the hero who saved the day.
They put him up on the stand in court.
Now, Tom, were you at the store the following date?
Yes.
McDonald's made a pretty interesting, compelling case
that maybe Louise Ogborn was going after the money from day one.
She said she was gonna get a big check or some money and…
-Louise said that? -Yeah.
Ann Oldfather was able to poke holes in that testimony,
but at the end of the day,
you really don't know what the jury's thinking.
When Louise came out publicly,
it really showed, you know, it's not a victimless crime anymore.
This could be my daughter.
-Would you like to call your next witness? -Yes, Your Honor.
We call Louise Ogborn.
There was a pre-trial motion
to allow the jury to view the actual videotape of the assault
in its entirety.
It was a brutal three hours.
It was hard for me to watch.
There was absolute silence in the courtroom.
The only thing you could hear was some of the jurors crying.
You could have heard a pin drop other than for that.
So what happened when you got back to the office?
She kind of motioned me in.
-And you went inside? -Yes.
And then what happened?
She told me I had been accused of stealing
some money from a customers' purse.
I said it couldn't be me, I wouldn't do anything like that.
And you should know that.
So how did that make you feel?
One word I can think of is "devastated."
Tell us, Louise, whether you have any fears that come back to you.
I'd have dreams somebody was attacking me and I couldn't tell you who it was.
I would avoid going to sleep at night.
I can't breathe. I feel like I'm hyperventilating.
My chest starts to hurt. My arm goes numb.
Let's not forget that Louise is a victim of sexual assault.
How could you not sympathize with her? I mean, it was humiliating.
Four employees saw her at her most vulnerable moment,
where she was sitting there, naked.
I was doing what I had to do to survive.
I didn't know if this was my last day on Earth.
I didn't know if I'd make it through.
She has been through so much trauma,
she will never get part of her life back.
That will always be out there.
Did you think to tell Donna what her fiancé was doing to you?
He was still in the room.
I was scared what he might do to me and her if I did.
He'd already hit me, beat me.
There's no telling what he could've done
if I stood up for myself and tried to get help.
Louise Ogborn and her attorney are claiming false imprisonment,
but McDonald's says, "That's not true."
"Nobody physically restrained her. She could've left any time."
The tape shows that you were left alone
there in the office, for almost ten minutes.
Did you ever go over and try the door?
-No. Because I thought I couldn't get out. -I'm sorry?
I thought I couldn't get out.
I think McDonald's suggestion that she should've walked out of the room
was perhaps a strategic error,
to say that a young woman who had been deprived of her clothes and her car keys
could have and should have put a stop to it
when their own adult employee supervisors didn't.
How could McDonald's ever have anticipated
that on April 9, of '04, this guy was going to call Mount Washington?
If McDonald's really knew what was going on,
then they should've prepared their employees better.
There was a problem here and they clearly did not get the word out
because it kept happening and happening.
McDonald's has taken no responsibility for the strip search
that led to Louise Ogborn's monster lawsuit against them.
And the blaming of everyone else continued throughout their closing arguments.
It's not too much to expect an employee
to distinguish between right and wrong and use their common sense.
McDonald's tried to pin this thing on Louise Ogborn, on Donna Summers,
when, in reality, it was them who did not warn their employees.
In this case, you see how many restaurants
where this had happened and how many of them were McDonald's.
And that really kind of hits home.
Armed with their opinions and a list of instructions,
jurors are deciding if they should take a financial bite
out of the largest fast-food chain in the world
and give it to former Mount Washington restaurant crew member, Louise Ogborn.
The jury comes back into the courtroom.
The foreperson of the jury hands their verdict
to the sheriff, and hands it to me.
This was going to be the largest verdict
in the history of Bullitt County, Kentucky.
"We the jury find for Louise Ogborn under instruction number nine,
and award her punitive damages against McDonald's Corporation."
Some serious cash is on the way in another high profile civil suit.
Louise Ogborn was the McDonald's employee who was forced to strip
after someone called the Mount Washington restaurant, posing as a police officer.
Louise Ogborn was awarded
more than $6 million in a lawsuit against McDonald's
and others involved in the case.
Louise has stood up for what happened to her
and what McDonald's failed to do for three and a half years
and this jury just vindicated her completely.
And we are so proud.
I don't really know what to say. I can't talk about it right now.
It wasn't the super-sized award Ogborn's legal team was after,
but they're happy with the money and the message it sends McDonald's.
The jury, I think they got it right.
She deserved that and I felt like that…
Okay, McDonald's knew this was going on for ten years and didn't seem to stop it
and get the word out to stop it.
They get slapped with a $6 million bill,
maybe they'll think about changing training.
McDonald's is responsible for not protecting their employees.
That's the number one thing.
If they did it to protect their bottom line and not their employees
they're absolutely the villain in this.
It was astounding,
the fact that McDonald's had been aware of this occurring
at many of its restaurants
and the remedy would have been very simple
and I believe this was Miss Oldfather's… One of her major arguments to the jury.
It would have been simple for McDonald's to simply notify each of the stores.
Put up a thing by the telephone.
Put up a sign that said "There's a hoax caller."
"If this occurs, don't do anything, it's a hoax."
But they did not warn their employees.
Do you think McDonald's tried to cover this up?
I'm not gonna comment on that.
I think what was shocking about the civil trial
was the details of how many fast food joints were involved.
And how many settlements had happened that people didn't know about.
You know, it's not just McDonald's.
It almost seemed like there was an effort to keep it quiet.
Whether that happened or not, we don't know,
but there was a feeling that's what was happening.
We probably all individually had the feeling
that this was only us and felt stupid and dumb about it.
So you could probably interview 99 of those 100 women
and they would feel singularly responsible and foolish.
Just knowing that there are more people than just myself, that helps a lot.
It wasn't just that they weren't stepping up and informing people
or providing better training or even some kind of a warning or acknowledgement.
And the question is whether they were actively hiding it.
It wasn't just about them.
At the end of the day, the hoax caller needs to pay for his actions.
People were humiliated everywhere.
They believed that David Stewart was connected
to all these cases, these fast food cases.
Whether he was or not, his name was linked to them all.
David Stewart went back to Florida on a lowered bond
and that's where he remained until they had a trial date set.
While Stewart's out and enjoying being back with his family,
I'm trying make sure I got the i's dotted, the t's crossed.
I'm thinking, "Okay. You will take your last walk into the courthouse,
and right on over to corrections, that'll be the end of it."
The criminal trial starts in October of 2006
and it's a huge deal in Bullitt County.
You've got news crews from all over the country
following this story of a young woman
who was sexually assaulted inside a McDonald's because of a hoax caller.
Prosecutors said they traced prepaid phone cards,
allegedly used in the hoax, to David Stewart,
a former Florida prison guard.
Everybody wanted to know about David Stewart.
Where did he live? Was he married? Did he have children?
He was a husband and a father of five.
And they couldn't find anybody to say
anything bad about him around his community.
People liked him.
He made the call, or calls.
I absolutely feel that he needs to be made to pay for this.
I was all stirred up and like, "Give 'em hell" kind of attitude
because to me, I was so personally wronged and it was awful.
This was the biggest case that I'd had.
The night before the trial, I'm thinking, "All right, the day is finally here,
and hopefully, everything goes right."
I think I've got an airtight, air-sealed case.
At this point, I did my job, we have a great case.
We have now submitted it to the lawyers in the trial courts of Mount Washington,
and it's now up to them to prosecute this case.
Romines walked in, putting on the show that attorneys do.
I'm thinking, "Romines can blow all the smoke he wants."
"He can't blow this up," because every police officer that I talked to said,
"You got the best case in the nation."
There are so many things that just seemed very inconsistent
with the portrayal the police and prosecution was trying to make.
It was very important to me to make sure we followed all the way through
and that he was found guilty.
The police think every case is a slam dunk
which is why the police's version is what's put out to the media.
As we've learned over the last two years, with social justice protests
and George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and cell phone cameras,
the police's version of what happened is almost never what actually happened.
We have David Stewart in line, purchasing a calling card.
We have David Stewart entering the Walmart on the day
the Massachusetts cards are purchased, wearing CCA security-type uniform.
We have David Stewart identified from these photos
from the warden at his jail where he worked.
If that's not enough evidence to convict somebody, I don't know what is.
The Walmart video was really kind of portrayed as the bombshell
or the irrefutable evidence of his guilt.
Could it be David Stewart? Sure, it could be David Stewart.
But beyond a reasonable doubt is it David Stewart?
That's bullcrap. You can still look at Stewart and tell that's still Stewart.
It's him. There's no question about it. Perfect match.
But even with that, the rest of the evidence was so inconsistent.
That, to me, was not even close to sufficient evidence in the case.
We went through his work schedule.
Every time a call was made that we could track,
we could show that he was not at work, he was available to make this call.
And he was very familiar with the area where some of these calls were made from.
One that was nearby, a payphone where he used to deliver gas.
There were some of those calls that David Stewart had an alibi
that they could not refute.
His wife testified that they had a set schedule
and when she worked, he was to pick up the kids.
Our investigation uncovered that Stewart did not make them.
We had a guy driving all over, he might make a call from this payphone
and later, he might make a call from another payphone.
The caller is using calling cards, he thinks nobody can track him down.
He happened to be in the store when the calling card was purchased.
We had a near confession.
We're this close from him admitting this.
He goes, "Thank God, it's over."
That was it. Didn't say another word.
Plead the fifth. Done.
When the police interrogate you for a period of time
and you never admit to committing a crime
and then finally, they're done questioning you,
and you say, "Thank God, this is over"?
That has more to do with police interrogating you
than it does, you know, a confession to a crime.
All I'm thinking, "If not David Stewart, who is it?"
Because the facts are there, the evidence is there.
Part of the prosecution's case
was that David is this Svengali mastermind conman,
who can convince people to do things over the telephone
that they wouldn't ordinarily do.
It's wholly inconsistent with the person David Stewart had been his entire life.
His lawyer painted that story that he was a family man,
a good hard-working guy, had a police officer as a brother,
and really did a good job in telling the jury
that David Stewart is not the guy.
The jury came back after only two hours of being out.
I didn't really know what to think.
David Stewart was facing ten to 20 years.
The judge asked if they've reached a verdict, and they say yes.
Kinda sucks the air out of the room.
We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty
of solicitation to commit first degree sexual abuse.
There has been an unbelievable end to an unbelievable Florida story
involving what amounted to a long-distance rape.
It was like being hit with a two-by-four. My heart just sank down in my gut.
I just went…
I'm numb! I'm like, "What the fuck?"
This was the only time that I can remember in my career
that I got a not guilty verdict, there's nothing I can do to change it.
People were just stunned. The case was not won.
There wasn't enough proof, there wasn't enough evidence
for a jury to believe that it was David Stewart.
The issue in this case was they didn't have anything
that is indicative or proof of David Stewart making the call.
Maybe I could've done better interviewing him.
Maybe we should have not interviewed him,
hoped he didn't know we were there and put him under surveillance.
In my view, we didn't arrest the wrong guy.
We thought we arrested the right guy.
He was brought to trial, found not guilty. That's the process.
Do I think David Stewart's innocent?
Yeah, I think David Stewart's innocent.
There's obviously a difference under the law
in not guilty and innocent, okay?
I know for a fact, he's not guilty.
We presented the best possible case that could be presented
to bring justice for Louise and the other victims.
Could I have arrested the wrong guy? I don't think so.
I mean, nobody dropped those calling cards in his room.
There are questions that've never been asked that need to be asked.
The only thing I knew was, my client didn't do it, a jury agreed.
To my knowledge, still today,
I've not been made aware of this exact crime still ever happening again.
What's really hard to believe is that only eight people were charged
and they were managers at the restaurants, not the caller.
But there were hundreds of calls and people wonder,
"What happened here? Were all the cases not investigated?"
"Were people afraid to report it?"
Since 2004, these hoax calls have stopped.
Justice wasn't served to the caller.
Whoever made those calls is a disturbed individual.
Who is it?
This individual, this hoax caller is an evil sex predator,
dangerous to society.
The calls stopped for now…
…but have they stopped for good?