Hillyard On The Internet

With most folks, what you learn doing net searches isn't worth detailing—because they use one identity, although their email addresses may change occasionally when they change ISPs. You might learn about their hobbies and interests, professional lives, maybe their political affiliations or religious beliefs. They may mention things here and there about their families, friends or significant others, pets, etc. Nothing earth-shaking in most cases, but informative, anyway.

In Hillyard's case, though, his activity reveals much more. It reveals his basic character, and the repeated use of the same tactics he's used in harassing us. It shows him switching identities—or trying to, anyway—to pretend someone agrees with him. It shows him launching ad hominem attacks against anyone who doesn't agree with him. It shows repeated use of cowardly anonymous posts, forging of posts in others' names, and a tendency toward net abuses such as mailbombing. It shows greatly improved technical skill in hiding the origin or posts and emails since net activity in early 1996. It shows him denying the existence of his children, blaming his children for his own misdeeds, and pretending to be his wife and several of his children (Christy twice, then Jonathan) to post messages in his own defense.

What his history doesn't shows is any positive contribution to any discussion in any forum—only consistently negative, combative interactions and spam. It shows no sign of the Christian family man he keeps claiming he is. It is, therefore, worth pursuing in more depth than most. It is almost fascinating to see him squirm from name to name—this detective work can be most interesting! I've learned a lot in this investigation, too.

The earliest signs of Hillyard's Internet activity are back in April 1995, when he posted a message referencing his CDC email address and asking about bonsai resources. On July 9, 1995 he also posted ad ad for the Atlanta Area Aquarium Association's (AAAA) web site at his atlcom.net web site. He was fairly quiet after that until he posted messages a few mild messages in January 1996 about his web site and home brewing resources.

He was either very quiet or he managed to hide all traces of any activity in February 1996, but suddenly the Hillyard I've come to know so well over the last year showed up in March 1996 with a vengeance, posting to rec.sport.football.college under several names. I can't imagine that he built up so much venom towards a few particular r.s.f.c. folks just lurking, which is why I think he was pariticipating in the group in February and I just haven't found the messages. After that—well, he just got nastier and nastier. Other r.s.f.c. regulars later mentioned his participation in several mailing lists, and that he was kicked off one. He'd apparently used some of the pseudonyms he started using in March on that mailing list, so another explanation could be that he turned to r.s.f.c. in March to continue a flame war begun on the mailing list.

• Use of anon.penet.fi ID without being anonymous
  I found many posts he'd made from his MindSpring account to r.s.f.c. with an anon.penet.fi address in the reply-to field, beginning in May 1996. Then, forgetting to change the settings in his newsreader, he had popped over to some aquaria newsgroups and posted an ad for the Atlanta Aquarium Association's (AAAA) web site, which he hosted. When he finally started figuring out how to use his anon.penet.fi ID as intended, and made a test post through their anonymous news gateway, he included a .sig file with three of his normal email addresses (including the ones at the CDC and MindSpring) in it. In June he was also testing Private Idaho, a piece of software designed to make it easier to make posts and send email anonymously, by posting to alt.aquaria with the address rmh@mindspring.com in the headers. In July he proclaimed loudly that he didn't know what an anonymous remailer—like anon.penet.fi—was. (Is anyone suprised that he couldn't find alt.test for his posts? No.)
  
  
• Already a net abuser
  In two of the r.s.f.c. posts he demanded that people mailbomb someone who had disagreed with him (twice, even). In another he said he would post information about someone to another newsgroup so they'd get lots of unwanted email.
  
  
• Inability to argue rationally, tendency to use sexual innuendo as attack
  All of his posts were very hostile to everyone, and none of them made any positive contribution to the discussion at hand. When anyone disagreed with him, or wasn't a rabid fan of the UF Gators, he would start tossing obscenities around, progress to graphic sexual remarks, then start tossing the phrase "known faggot and child molester" around at people. He constantly mocked homosexual men and tried to imply that any man who disagreed with him was queer. He would then make remarks about the person performing fellatio on him, or claim that he was sodomizing another participant, etc. He used a .sig line of "Little Dicky Workman's Boyfriend" in many of the posts--in fact, that .sig line showed up in one of his posts advertising the AAAA web site. Workman's offense? He was an FSU fan rather than a UF fan. Oh, and he used AOL—Hillyard also attacks folks on the basis of where they get their Internet access. Over and over and over again.
  
  
• Forged nonsense addresses
  He often made up nonsense addresses while pretending to be more than one person, like booby@bowden.com, madman@hell.com and authority@ncaa.org. Unfortunately he would sometimes to forget to change the settings in his software back to his "normal" names, and therefore he posted some ads for the AAAA web site using such addresses—like "whocares@accsucks.com.".
  
  
• Identified as a coward who forged posts
  The r.s.f.c. regulars were obviously used to Hillyard showing up using many different names and accounts in an attempt to make it look as though somebody agreed with him, and to make cowardly attacks using anonymous addresses. In June 1996 they caught him forging a post and called him on it publicly. In fact, he'd posted an ad for his web site without changing the settings in his newsreader back to his own name! It obviously wasn't an isolated incident—in fact, they often made jokes about his belief that he was fooling anyone with his various aliases.
  
  
• Truly horrible quoting practices.
  Yes, I know this seems petty. But if you'd seen as many of Hillyard's posts and emails from as many of his personas as I and others have, it would grate on your nerves as well—and it is one of the characteristics that appears no matter what name he's using. I'm not the only person it annoyed:

  BTW, your quoting/editing skills have officially improved to "poor." Keep up the good work!

  (Said after Hillyard finally trimmed the quoted text in one of his posts—unfortunately, he didn't continue the practice.)
  
  
• Characteristic misspellings, phrases, etc.
  Hillyard repeatedly uses the rather unique spellings "rediculous", "discusting", and "beligerant"—then flames others for their spelling. He seems to use "your" and "you're" at random with no regard for context—in fact, he regularly displays his inability to use possessives properly. He frequently accuses people of being "righteous," "vicious," and "beligerant." He seems to think accusations of homosexuality are terribly insulting, and often resorts to sexually explicit remarks when he's angry (meaning most of the time—I don't want to know what this guy's blood pressure stays at). He seems to love the word "bigtime." He prefers to spell "ass" as "a$$." He can't understand that "noone" is not a word—although he has occasionally used "know one" for variety.
  
  
• Uses Same Tired Putdowns Under Different Names
  Whenever Hillyard comes up with something he thinks is clever, he sticks with it, saying it several times using different names. For instance, he made a remark about "Let the Big Dawg READ!" twice as Duck and Hillyard@cris.com. Three different times he made the same joke about the ACC and chickens (as booby@bowden.com, as madman@hell.com and as Hillyard@cris.com—twice the remarks were absolutely verbatim! He's truly hung up on saying all Tennessee fans go to family reuinions to pick up women. He must think that one's really funny, because he uses it while playing The Terminator, madman@hell.com, and not just once but three different times as hillyard@cris.com. (Again, twice he repeated the same thing verbatim using different names.) His repetitive fat jokes are simply too numerous to mention (and coming from a fat man, that's really sad). He frequently refers to FSU as "half-assed U" (or sometimes "1/2ASS U" or "1/2A$$ U").
  
  
• Likes to Alter People's .Sig Lines
  He thinks this is really funny. Hilarious, in fact. So much so that he's done it while wearing several of his hats—as hillyard@cris.com (at least twice); as hillyard@mindspring.com (again, repeatedly, often using the same alteration each time); and in eight of the posts he forged in my name from his interamp.com account (again, using the same alteration most of those times). Another rec.sport.football.college regular pointed out the habit while daring him to do it again.
  
  
• Repetitive Posts
  It isn't just insults and forgeries he likes to repeat—Hillyard also repeats the same thing over and over again in posts, seeming to believe that if he says something frequently enough it will be true, or its truth will support some argument to which it isn't suited. He quoted the same newspaper article eight times in one newsgroup! And while he was playing Centipede in atl.general, the gist of every message (five of them) was that MindSpring's web servers had been down for five hours that morning.
  
  
• Chooses Same People As Targets
  No matter what name he's using, Hillyard really hates another rec.sport.football.college regular named Rick Workman, and he's almost as spiteful about Clark Moore and Trent Woodruff. He also goes after me, MindSpring, and any MindSpring user who's ever refuted any of his lies (Rob Redmond, Richard Turner, and Dennis Gordon to name just a few). In fact, when there was a news story in Atlanta about a man named Rob Redmond being shot, I posted a message to mindspring.local.atlanta trying to find out if anyone had been able to verify that it wasn't the Rob Redmond we knew as a MindSpring user. Dick Coward got a copy of the message and posted a reply in atl.general saying "Too bad it wasn't Cyn." when we learned that "our" Rob was safe. In August 1996 he forged sexually explicit ads in Richard Turner's name, and sent him unwanted email in August and September. In January 1997 he forged email that he claimed was from Dennis Gordon, trying to get Dennis' MindSpring account cancelled.
  
  

I've provided copies of many more of Hillyard's posts linked elsewhere on this site, but these examples show his essential nature, his arsenal of tactics, and the fact that he his activity on the net has been overwhelmingly negative and confrontational.