Criminal - Homewrecker

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

It's one thing to get into an argument with a stranger on Facebook. It's another thing to try to ruin that stranger's life. In 2015, Re/Max realtor Monika Glennon discovered how far a stranger would go, when she found herself on a website called “She’s a Homewrecker.” Special thanks to Kashmir Hill, at Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-your-life-1827546385 For a transcript of this episode, send an email to [e-mail] with the episode name and number. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Please review us on Apple Podcasts! It’s an important way to help new listeners discover the show: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. To be honest with you, I just looked at the phone. I said, nothing is that important at six o'clock in the morning, and I turned it off. Monica Glennon grew up in Poland, but today she lives in Huntsville, Alabama, where she works as a real estate agent with Remax. At six o'clock in the morning in September of 2015, she got repeated phone calls and texts from a colleague. And I thought, oh, maybe a better review. I mean, so many years in real estate, 16 years in real estate, it eventually was going to happen. I'm not perfect here. And I called her up and she says, you don't understand.

So she sent me screenshots of what was posted on the Remix Facebook page and also was sent to the Remix corporate office. And I have to tell you, I think honestly I went into shock. Everything seemed to kind of close in and I started reading it and it was so awful. It was a link to an anonymous post.

It had also been sent to Monica's friends and members of her family, and directly to her husband, Scott Glennon, with the message, sorry to be the one to let you in on this. This lady claimed that her and her husband have hired me as a realtor. And, you know, she wanted to see a home and she couldn't make it. So she went ahead, told her husband to go with me and go take a look at the house. So she said all of a sudden she was able to make it. So she drove over to the house and she ended up walking in.

She saw both of our cars. She walked in, and she found me and her husband having sex on the floor, and that she has pictures of all of that, and nobody should ever hire me as a realtor because I'm an enemy of all decent women out there. The anonymous poster began by saying she and her husband had been happy working with Monica, that she'd shown them eight to ten houses. On the day of the alleged incident, the anonymous poster had admired the granite countertops and gas stove in the house, before walking in on her husband and Monica on the, quote, plush white carpet.

From there, it becomes graphic. And I live in Bible Belt, and I did think that she definitely used that kind of story that could be very believable to people. At the end, the anonymous poster writes, she knew he was married, and in all caps, do not use this person as a realtor. Then, they included a large photo of Monica,

along with all of her contact information. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. I was still sleeping, and then she came in and woke me up and said, you need to see this. And so I walked outside, she already had her computer fired up, and had the story pulled up on the website. Monica's husband, Scott Glennon.

So I read the story and then, you know, I, yeah, I definitely wanted to find out who did it and, you know, let's just call it have words with him. Did you for a second when you first read the post think, what has she done? No, not for a minute. Not for a minute. There's just no way. The link had been shared all over Facebook by someone named Ryan Baxter. Scott and Monica had no idea who Ryan Baxter was. It was a link to a website called shesahomerecker.com. The site's tagline is, Did you think it would stay a secret? Everything on shesahomerecker.com is posted anonymously.

Anyone can submit an entry accusing anyone else of being a so-called homewrecker. The entries have photos of the accused women's faces, their full names, where they live, some say where they work. In most cases, the posts are short. Things like, this girl is 27 years old and sleeping with my 54-year-old husband, and she'll go to the ends of the earth to ruin a marriage. Ladies, watch out. The post about Monica was much longer. It was full of details. The damage, you know, was immediate and it was severe. Before the story came out, I think she

had like 22, 23 active listings. A week later, it was down to four. The phone calls were coming in every day of people just pulling their listings away. And it wasn't just the business side of that. It was the self-confidence hit. So she'd be talking to them on the phone and I'm watching her talk to them on the phone. I can't hear the other end, but I can see her. And she's nodding her head a lot and she's using her cheerful real estate voice going, I'm so happy for you. And you can just watch the confidence just draining from her. Scott says he and Monica had hoped this would become old news and they could move on. But it didn't go away.

The damage kept coming. The phone calls kept coming. Creepy men of somewhere in the country that would just breathe heavy or that would ask for a hookup and things like that. So we couldn't ignore it. It was just too big a thing. Did you suspect people in your life? I did. I did. And you just start looking around and going, could it be this friend? Maybe she was mad about something. Maybe a rival realtor. That was actually my biggest guess. You know, I had to look at everybody around me and kind of say, could it be the person?

You know, it's really funny, but we even talked saying, what if one of my children did it because they got mad at me? But, you know, your mind just starts wandering in every direction and that's an awful way to live. We found ourselves questioning, you know, all of my friends and business contacts, all of her friends and business contacts, all of our mutual friends, all of our family members. We didn't know who did it. So we found ourselves questioning every human relationship in our lives. When you stop trusting every human in your life, you know, that's a big problem. So we couldn't ignore it. We had to find out who did it just for the sake of sanity.

But, you know, the whole time I was thinking it must be somebody I've had contact with, maybe somebody I did a deal with, somebody that I crossed paths with. It did not make any sense. That story was so mean and so personal, we figured it had to be somebody we knew. There's no way a stranger would go to that length. Remax deleted the post from their Facebook page right away, but it was still up on shesahomerecker.com. Monica emailed the website and sent a message to their Facebook page asking them to take the entry down. I was very naive.

I thought if you tell people this is not true, then they're going to go ahead and take it down. And I just got one answer from the Facebook, whoever's in charge of their Facebook, that said that they will look into my case. And that was the last I've ever heard from them. And I thought, all it's going to take is cease and desist letter. So I had an attorney generate that letter,

and I right away signed it, and I sent it over to She's a Homewrecker. And I got no response. I just could feel that this is not going to end well when I was starting to get no responses from those websites. I'm like, this is going to, what am I going to do? Not only could she not get anyone to remove it from She's a Homewrecker, but the post, along

with Monica's name and picture, was picked up by similar websites designed to shame people. One, called Bad Biz Report, says, There's no way in hell to get off of Bad Biz Report, and American lawyers make us laugh. As the post about Monica was picked up by other sites, it moved higher up search engine algorithms. So when people in Huntsville, Alabama, saw a for sale sign in a yard and Googled Monica Glennon, that's what they saw.

And they ended up becoming number one search result of my name and basically destroying my reputation. I don't think I stopped crying for weeks. I walked around and I felt like I walked around with a scarlet letter on my chest. And a lot of people were making really awful comments saying, hey, you know, if there is a smoke, there is a fire for sure. She did it. I thought, oh my goodness, what's going to happen is some crazy men out there are going to make appointment with me just thinking that's what's going to

happen when we, when we end up, you know, when I show a house. So we decided we're going to go ahead and priority number one, find out who it is. I don't want to walk for the rest of my life wondering who did that to me. They found a lawyer in Huntsville named George Kobler. He was literally the lawyer that would take the case. Nobody else would take it. Maybe he was just the only guy crazy enough to take it. But everybody we talked to said,

no, I'm not touching it. The problem with Monica's case was that it's extremely difficult to compel a website to remove something one of its users posted. She's a homewrecker.com along with websites like Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter

are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields them from liability. It's been called the most important law protecting Internet speech. For example, if someone posts a death threat against someone else on Facebook, Facebook isn't responsible. As of very recently, Section 230 no longer protects sites responsible for and that profit from content related to sex trafficking. She's a homewrecker says in their terms of service that false defamatory

material is prohibited. We contacted them for this story, but haven't heard back. Monica and Scott knew that George Kobler wasn't going to be able to sue the website to get the post removed. But what he could do was file a lawsuit against the person who wrote the post about Monica, even without knowing who it was. George took the case. His idea was to use the fact that her professional photo was taken as a way to get it into the federal courts because he felt that this would get more traction

in federal court than in state court. So we sued for both libel and for copyright infringement. And it worked. It got into the federal courts. Whoever wrote the entry uploaded the same photo Monica used on her business cards and real estate signs. Monica owns the copyright, and anyone posting the photo without her permission is breaking the law. Attorney George Copler. And then we had to find the identity of John Doe by issuing, having the court issue a subpoena to the website to find out where the post came from or which Internet service provider allowed that post to go through. And then we had to issue a subpoena to the internet service provider to find out who the individual was. In other words, the internet service provider customer

that put up that post. So a judge can compel someone to reveal IP addresses and then names? Yes, yes. This isn't that easy to do. Courts have to balance a user's right to say what they want against the damage their comments may cause. It's usually pretty difficult to prove that the damage of a critical comment outweighs a person's right to free speech. But not always. So whatever we think we're saying anonymously online could be traced back to us. That's what happened in Monica's case. And we found out that this person who wrote it was a woman who lives in Athens just about 45 minutes from here.

Did you know her? No. I have never met her in my life. A total stranger. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series

about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. It took a long, long time to finally figure out who done it. And then when it turned out to be a complete stranger, we were both flabbergasted. It just did not make any sense.

The stranger's name was Molly Rosenblum, and while she and Monica had never been in the same room, they had interacted before, kind of. Years earlier, in 2014, an Alabama teenager posted a photo of herself at Auschwitz. In the photo, the teenager is smiling. The caption says, Selfie in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

And then she posted a smiling emoji. The photo went viral, and the teenager was harshly criticized. She responded, saying she'd always wanted to visit with her late father and that they'd studied World War II together. That made things worse. A local television station in Alabama posted a story about the teenager on Facebook and asked readers to share their thoughts. Some people commented on the post sticking up for the teenager.

Monica was one of them. I just said teenagers do really stupid stuff, and all she is is a teenager. There's no need to go after this girl. So I defended her. Molly interpreted that as so inappropriate that she went online and attacked my wife with that story. I angered her so much that she ended up spending a couple hours figuring out who I was, where I worked, where I lived, and she wrote it, and she forgot I existed. When Monica learned the name Molly Rosenblum,

she searched for her on Facebook. And then, against the advice of her attorney, Monica reached out to Molly directly. I ended up Facebook messaging her saying, look, this story, this has done such a huge damage to me. It's just getting ridiculous. What is it that you want from me? Let's meet. Ask me anything you want to ask me, and I'll answer all your questions, because this is crazy. And she agreed. The two women met at a diner for breakfast.

Monica was nervous. Her husband drove her and waited in the car. When Molly walked in, Monica recognized her from Facebook right away. They sat down. Monica was too uncomfortable to eat. Molly told Monica that she assumed, from their exchange on Facebook, that Monica was a neo-Nazi.

Monica told her that wasn't true. So she started asking me questions, and I explained to her about who I was, what kind of person I was. And she told me about her life. Molly told Monica that she'd been through a lot. She'd lost her husband. She'd had a long-term struggle with drugs. They talked about politics and books and growing up.

So it was a very long meeting and I cried and she cried and she said I was a kind person that she wishes she knew what I was like back then. And she promised right away to take everything down from online. However, I already knew she couldn't. There's no deleting posts on these sites, even if you're the person who wrote them. So she went online and she made apologies on all those sites. Molly Rosenblum wrote the She's a Homewrecker post, but as Monica discovered, she wasn't the person who spread it on Facebook. That person, Ryan Baxter, turned out to be another complete stranger,

unknown to both Molly and Monica. Ryan Baxter was the fake persona of a 20-year-old woman in California who Monica describes as a kind of vigilante. So you can see actually Ryan Baxter taking multiple stories off of She's a Homewrecker and even making comments under the stories that say somebody needs to tell the employer, somebody needs to get this person fired, somebody needs to tell the husband. Kind of, you know, basically taking over as a person who is going to set this right

for the family and shame that person. It's amazing that a stranger can totally ruin your life in the middle of the night with you completely not being aware. And then all of a sudden, I find it outrageous. And I am, I just don't know how this is still allowable. And anybody can do this to anybody. In the end, Monica says she lost about half her income. She's been slowly rebuilding her business. The post is no longer on She'sAHomeWrecker.com. In its place is a legal notice indicating that the claims made about Monica were false and constitute defamation.

But the post wasn't removed because of legal action. It was removed because Monica kept writing to the site's owners, asking them to take it down. And that worked. The post still lives online because other sites reposted it, including Bad Biz Report, the one that says American lawyers make them laugh. Monica is working with attorney George Kobler to see what she can do. If she can't force the site to take the post down, she'd like it to be de-indexed from search engines. That's very difficult.

And Monica says she's already spent more than $130,000 in legal fees. Do you still comment on news articles on Facebook? Yeah, a little bit. It hasn't stopped you. So I do comment once in a while, but I really, really stay away from controversial subjects. I really do. Has it changed how you feel when you hear gossip about other people? Yes.

I get actually very upset. I had a couple comments I've made to my friends before saying it really doesn't matter because it really doesn't. If the story is true, let's just say infidelity. Whether the story is true or it's not true, it is nobody's business. And people just need to stop being those keyboard heroes behind a computer screen and do this to people. It's just not right. This is their lives. This is their businesses, their families. If I had any reason to believe that infidelity could be true, this might have been enough to break up the marriage. I didn't. But, you know, if the marriage were different, if we'd had some infidelity in the past or something, and if I had some reason to believe it, this could have been enough to kill it, right? Has this changed anything about

your marriage, this whole experience? Yeah, it's changed. So let's go good and bad. It's good in the sense that, you know, we know we can, we've persevered things before, but we've persevered this now as well. So it's made us stronger. It's made us closer. And the number of hours that we spent talking about it has put us more in touch with each other's feelings. So that's a very positive thing. On the negative side, you know, the girl I married had this belief that if she just lived her life a certain way and treated people a certain way, that all the good she was putting out would bring good back. This has shattered that belief, and she's never going to believe that again.

So there have been real changes to her, and even though her self-esteem has mostly recovered from this, there are still little moments where I can see that it still hurts. There's still a scar there. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Susanna Roberson and Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo. We have a link to her reporting about Monica in the show notes. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal.

You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter, at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Broadcasting, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia from PRX The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults.

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