Date |
Incident |
| September 1996 | After Hillyard was fired and before the warrant was actually served I began receiving harassing phone calls. I immediately contacted the phone company, who said they would do nothing without another police report. I filed another police report and the phone company put a trace on my line. For some odd reason, a new detective in a new department, Detective Burch, was assigned to this case, rather than Detective Wynne. |
| Monday, September 2, 1996 | I received email Dick Coward sent through another anonymous remailer (remail.obscura.com) with the subject line "Good Luck" saying "Mr. Hillyard resigned from CDC last Friday to start a new position with an Internet Service Provider. Good luck as he has many more tools at his disposal." Hillyard started posting to various newsgroups as grumpy@bellsouth.net, but I don't believe he was ever employed by Bellsouth.net or any other ISP. dick Coward also sent a similar email message was to the person who received threatening emails sent through interramp.com and in whose name the other sex-wanted ads were forged. The tactics and content were too similarly weaselly to Hillyard's past actions for us to think the messages came from anyone other than him. |
| Wednesday, September 4, 1996 | A friend emailed me telling me to finger Hillyard's inetnow.net account again. I did, and found that Hillyard was offering to share the proceeds of a lawsuit against me with anyone who sent him information about me. He had also swiped, word for word, the copyright notice and disclaimers from my own .plan file (if you're going to steal copyrighted text, I guess you might as well go ahead and steal the wording of the copyright notice too, huh?)
On the same date, someone calling himself "Steppin' Razor" reposted some of the pornographic pictures with my email address in them to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.big-folks. My email volume increased immediately, of course. I finally replied directly to that newsgroup on September 10 asking that anybody circulating the pictures remove my email address from them. |
| Saturday, September 7, 1996 | I made a post to atl.general asking Hillyard just when I'd be getting served with a notice of that lawsuit, since he'd been threatening it since July and I'd yet to receive anything at all from his lawyers. The .plan disappeared overnight. Hillyard posted something to atl.general from interamp.com on September 10, but apparently changed his mind and canceled it almost immediately. |
| Wednesday, September 11, 1996 | I learned from various people that the porn had been reposted to BBSs and web sites--still bearing my email address. I posted a message to the all the fat-related newsgroups I could find requesting help in tracking those pictures down and getting my email address off of them, and catching any additional prostitution or sex-wanted posts. |
| Saturday, September 14, 1996 | Hillyard was finally arrested--apparently the Gwinnett County authorities put little priority on serving a Dekalb Count warrant. Unfortunately, Dekalb County jail employees let him out on bail without making him sign the stay away order or appear in front of a judge as the warrant specified. I continued to receive harassing phone calls that were either not traceable or traced to pay phones around Norcross. |
| Monday, September 16, 1996 | Hillyard claims to have received anonymous email sent through flame.alias.net from someone calling himself "Robert" that gave him my phone number to call for more information on "Ms. Smathers." He says he called me not knowing it was my number, and hung up as soon as he heard a woman's voice. I find that difficult to believe, as it was sent well after I started receiving harassing phone calls and had a trace put on my phone lines. The number that received most of the calls was the number listed in the whois information for my domain, technomom.com. |
| Tuesday, September 17, 1996, 5:15am | Hillyard called my home from his home number--please note the time. The call was successfully traced. Other than family emergencies, there are no legitimate reasons to call anyone at 5:15 in the morning. Hillyard is definitely not family--in fact, I hardly even consider him a member of the same species. |
| Friday, September 20, 1996 | Hillyard called me from his home again at 9:50am. The call was successfully traced by Bell South.
A short while later I received a very strange phone message from someone claiming to be "Scott Logan" from a company called "Air Ground Delivery" which doesn't truly exist. He left a number, 800-561-8239, which I called. The young man who answered the phone did his damnedest to get my current physical address, claiming he had a package to be delivered to me that was insured for $25,000 dollars, but that the delivery address and return address information were unreadable due to water damage. He wasn't a very good con man. He couldn't explain how, then, he got my telephone number. I found it a little difficult to believe that the only things readable on the supposedly damaged label (oh, but no ma'am, the box isn't damaged at all!) were my name, phone number and the insured amount. I told him to send anything he wanted to my Mailboxes Etc. address, which was obviously a big disappointment to him--certainly nothing ever arrived. The 800 number was traced to a residence in Florida--in the area where Hillyard's 23-year-old son (Ricky) lives--the person Hillyard claims sent the original obscene email to me? I still don't believe anyone but Hillyard Sr. sent those messages out, but I believe he may have gotten his family to help him try to get my new street address. One of the MLMs in which Hillyard is involved sells long distance service, including personal 800 numbers. |
| Monday, September 23, 1996 | The CyberAngels contacted me and asked if I would speak to Colleen O'Connor from the Dallas Morning News, who was doing a story about online harassment and cyberstalking. I spoke with the reporter, who agreed not to use my name in the article, on September 24. I'm not sure of the exact date when the story appeared, as the reporter didn't send me a copy--I'm trying to get one from them. |
| Tuesday, September 24, 1996 | I swore out another warrant against Hillyard, this time for harassing phone calls. Detective Burch told me that two calls had been traced to Hillyard's home number, but the others were traced to pay phones in the Norcross area (near Hillyard's home) or were untraceable (probably from a cell phone). Unfortunately, when the case went to trial the prosecutor only had the records verifying one trace, and didn't even realize that two calls had been successfully traced. |
| Friday, September 27, 1996 | An acquaintance who is an Eagle Scout emailed me ask if I would speak to the Boy Scouts of America authorities because Hillyard was repeatedly claiming to be the Cubmaster of Cub Scout Pack 590 in Lilburn, GA--and the Boy Scouts do NOT welcome criminals into their organization. I replied that I would be happy to give any information I have to the BSA. As a parent, I certainly wouldn't want my children exposed to convicted criminals hiding behind a fine organization like the BSA. The Eagle Scout set up a meeting with Tim Cooper, the Northeast Georgia BSA Council Commissioner. |
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