Criminology - The Strip Search Caller

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

A series of disturbing & frightening phone calls targeted dozens of businesses and people over an extended period of time. These calls were placed all over the country, and the person on the other end posed as a law enforcement official. What this caller instructed people to do to others was not only wrong and humiliating, it was, in many instances, criminal on the part of both the caller and the person who answered the phone. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the person known as The Strip Search Caller. He often targeted fast-food restaurants and told managers that one of their employees, and sometimes even customers, had stolen. The caller then convinced the managers to strip search the so-called thief and many other degrading acts. The police narrowed in on a prime suspect, but could they put together enough evidence to convince a jury of his guilt? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill, too? All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 245 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mike Morford. How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. Join the weather down here and get out and doing stuff out in the yard and excited. How about you?

Not that excited as you are, but, you know, we just had the Super Bowl. We had Valentine's Day. Hope yours was a good one. Mine was great. And so, you know, springs around the corner. What else? What else is there? Yeah, Valentine's Day was a sore subject,

not because of anything that happened between my wife and I, but I ordered the flowers and the flowers by 8 p.m. hadn't got here. So I'm like, oh, this is not good. So I race out to get flowers, get home with the flowers. So my wife doesn't think that I didn't get her flowers. and then five minutes later, here comes the flower delivery guy. So a little bit of a fiasca. I wasn't too happy with the flower delivery company,

but that's besides the point. Yeah, that's always rough when you're waiting on a delivery. And, you know, I feel like years ago, deliveries happened by, I don't know, let's say five. Delivery times really are much later nowadays, eight, nine o'clock, even sometimes, which if you don't have anything going on, okay, not that big a deal,

but if it's Valentine's Day, you know, and you're sitting around waiting, I could see how that could be a little nerve wracking. Yeah, that one, you have a little bit of a time limit

with the Valentine's Day deliveries, but it is what it is. My wife was happy in the end, and here we are recording a new episode. All right. Let's get into our Patreon shoutouts. We had Lindsay showers, Jay,

and Lacey Ann. So we really appreciate that new support. Thank you so much for that support. It goes a long way to helping us get these episodes out. And for anyone out there that would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right. Let's jump right in.

Today, we're covering a case that's a little bit different than some of the other cases that we cover. Some of our listeners have recently suggested that we cover this one and with good reason. Number one, it's very bizarre. And number two, it's a case that a lot of people have been. talking about lately. You know, we've covered a lot of cases on criminology in which there were sinister or mysterious phone calls connected to the case. Sometimes the call may be from a killer or in other cases the call is made by a victim, but one way or another, the call is usually connected to a real event. But in the case we're covering today, a series of disturbing and frightening

phone calls targeted dozens of businesses and people over an extended period of time. In the end, this reign of terror seems to have been part of a large scale and elaborate hoax. But even with that, that doesn't mean it was any less frightening for the people that received these calls. And as a result of that hoax, there were real victims in this case that had to endure some pretty humiliating circumstances. Many prank calls are considered harmless or fun, something kids do before they know what caller ID is, or maybe a joke to play on a friend. And this was especially popular back in the 1970s and 1980s, before caller ID and other technology

came along that made making those prank calls and getting away with them harder to do. I think many of us have heard of scam calls where someone tries to convince you to pay the IRS with Apple gift cards or send money through Western Union because someone has been hurt. or there's some other emergency. It's apparently common for managers at businesses to receive calls, trying to order them to move money from the safe or get them to leave a door unlocked after closing, supposedly for a corporate inspection.

Most people know just to hang up on the scam caller, but sometimes people can't tell they're dealing with a hoax caller, and not all prank calls are victimless, even when there's no money involved. In the 1990s and 2000s, there was a string of phone calls just like this, where the hoax caller didn't request any money. He tested the limits of the employee's behavior and tolerance for the caller's cruel and twisted requests.

For years, this twisted collar talked managers in his strip-searching employees at fast food businesses across the U.S. We don't have a complete list of all the hoax calls, and many people just hung up on the caller as they immediately knew the call was a hoax. So there may be hundreds of calls that were not documented. It seems that it was 1994, that was the year in which the sinister phone calls began.

On August 4th of that year, the manager at a McDonald's in Saybrook Township, Ohio, was persuaded by a caller who claimed to be a sheriff's deputy to strip search two female minors who worked there, one at a time, claiming that they were under suspicion for stealing a customer's purse. One of them did take off her clothing, but the other girl refused.

and only consented to the manager feeling inside her pockets. They later sued McDonald's and their supervisor, James Turcott, who denied that he touched either of the girls. At this point, fingers were pointed at James Turcott with accusations that he had enlisted a male friend to help him molest his two young employees. But Turcott was adamant that he believed he was helping the police department who were investigating a theft. In 1995, two similar calls were made at fast food restaurants in Devils Lake North Dakota and Fallon, Nevada.

In 1996, the manager of a Pizza Hut in Starkville, Mississippi, spoke to a caller on the phone who claimed to be a deputy sheriff. Investigating the theft of money from a customer there, he was persuaded to strip search a female employee that the caller, claiming to be a deputy sheriff, said was responsible for the theft. On January 20th, 1999, a 17-year-old female working at Burger King in Fargo, North Dakota, was stripped naked and spanked by her manager at the direction of someone claiming to be a police officer on the phone. So, Morph, we've only talked about a few so far. We're going to be talking about more of these calls, but already, I mean, this is, you know, outrageous type stuff. If you just sit back and think about someone getting a call on the phone, let's say a manager at a fast food restaurant.

And the person on the other end of the line says that they're someone with law enforcement. They're investigating something. And they want the manager to strip search one of their or multiple female employees. Now, I think it's easy to think or question, why in the world would these people do that? I think that's going to be natural for people listening to the episode. But there's no doubt that I think the majority of these individuals thought they were talking to police, thought they were being directed to do something. The question that really jumps out at me is at what point do you question it or want to verify it? get a second person to corroborate it.

I don't know. I mean, I want to walk a fine line here between placing too much blame on these individuals and not placing any blame because there's somewhere, and I want to get your take on it morph, where you have to believe that these individuals thought, what am I doing? Well, you know, it's like that old saying

that you don't know how you're going to rack to something unless you're in the position, unless that happens to you. But I don't know. I just cannot see any circumstance where I take a phone call as a manager of a store and somebody says you have to strip search your employees. Or in this case, put them over your knee and spank them. I just, I would think it's a prank call immediately, you know,

someone joking around or is a worst case scenario of someone that's up to no good. I wouldn't give the person two seconds. but apparently this worked over and over for this caller. Well, it did because we're going to be talking about a lot more of them. The other thing that really jumped out at me was that in a lot of these cases, the individuals were minors. So, I mean, that even adds another level to it for me. Bad enough to do some of this stuff that we're talking about to an adult,

but to a minor. Something's got to go. through your head at some point. Yeah, it's crystal clear that this series of calls was not just a joke. There were real victims along the way here. On December 16th in 1999, a manager at a pizza parlor in Blackfoot, Idaho, received a call from someone identifying themselves as Officer Davis from the Blackfoot Police Department, notifying him that an employee had stolen a customer's purse, which had $50 in it at the time of the theft, this officer Davis said that a female server about five foot tall with blonde hair was the suspect. Though she was not blonde and she was not five feet

tall, a 16 year old female server named Elizabeth was called into the office. At the direction of Officer Davis, Elizabeth was strip searched. And the manager described not only her body to the office but the tags on each item of clothing that she removed, a 22-year-old employee. Derek came in for his shift and he noticed that there wasn't really anything getting done in the restaurant. So he went into the office and couldn't believe what he saw. He got on the phone and briefly spoke to Officer Davis, who he could tell was not a real police officer when he threatened to call the actual police.

The call ended. This would much later be revealed to be the 26th hoax call. On November 30, 2000, a female manager working at the Litchfield, Kentucky McDonald's, received a call from someone claiming to be a police officer, informing her there was someone in the restaurant suspected of sexual crimes. The so-called officer told her to undress in front of a male customer, basically telling her that she was being used as bait in their investigation, and the undercover officers were nearby, waiting for the customer to try and touch her.

The manager was assured that as soon as the man did, the customer would be arrested. Unfortunately, this wasn't true. The caller was not a police officer, and no one swooped in. The manager had been tricked into undressing in front of a customer, just for the caller's thrill. Litchfield Police Detective Lieutenant Gary Troutman recalled asking the manager why she hadn't called the police when she received the call. he told the courier journal. She said she thought it was local police who had called her. The sinister calls continued.

In early 2001, two Hooters employees in Charleston, West Virginia, one after the other, were threatened by a police officer to either consent to a strip search by their manager or be arrested for the theft of a stolen purse. In December 2001, a Burger King supervisor in Indianapolis, strip searched a 15-year-old female employee after receiving a phone call from a police officer who asked the supervisor to describe the girl's tan lines. Now, obviously, when I'm saying police officer, the person on the phone said they were a police officer. This is not assumed to be real police officers.

On May 29th, 2002, an 18-year-old female McDonald's employee in rural. in Roosevelt, Utah, was forced to undress for a strip search and also made to jog while naked because a police officer called the restaurant and told the manager there that she was under investigation. It was the girl's 18th birthday, and she hadn't even worked one full hour on her first day at the McDonald's when this happened. In November 2002, a Statesboro Georgia Taco Bell manager stripped searched a 19-year-old female employee after someone claiming to be a local police detective called and informed them that a purse had been stolen in the restaurant's lobby. The manager, as instructed by the caller, also read the tags on the employee's clothing as she took each item off and handed it to him,

which the manager then locked in the restaurant safe. The employee was also made to do exercises, supposedly so that anything stolen and hidden on a her body would fall. And the manager touched her in various places on her body to search for areas that sweat had reacted with ink on stolen money. On January 26, 2003, an assistant manager at Applebee's in Davenport, Iowa, received a call from someone claiming to be the regional manager, ordering him to search a waitress who was suspected of stealing from the company. The assistant manager took the call seriously and search the waitress for 90 full minutes. What's so frustrating about this call is that the caller placed a collect call to the

Applebee's. So, you know, again, more if I said, there's kind of a fine line. Some of these really stand out as kind of wow moments. How did a person not think about the circumstances? what kind of regional manager calls one of their stores collect. And if that wasn't bad enough, Applebee's had recently sent out a company-wide memo warning managers and employees to be on the lookout for these kinds of calls. Well, apparently, this manager didn't get the memo.

By 2003, the caller was still very active. In February of that year, the manager at a Hinesville, Georgia McDonald's, received the call from someone claiming to be a police officer who told, her that the restaurant's director of operations was also with him, and they were investigating something secretly. The female manager stripped searched a female employee and then had the restaurant's 55-year-old janitor perform a cavity search for drugs. McDonald's and their parent company, GWD Management Corporation, were eventually sued over this incident. And you said it early on in the episode, right? Hoax calls, but there were real victims.

And we're not giving out names or anything like that. But I think as you go through this episode, you can really put yourself in the position of different individuals involved. Number one, the managers or the supervisors. And you're going to question why they did what they did. But for me, it's really these young individuals who were forced to do extremely humiliated. and really sometimes criminal things. Now, this one jumped out at me because, you know, not only do you have a female manager strip searching a female employee,

but then you have a male janitor come in and perform a cavity search on this female employee. I mean, you talk about humiliating, man, I just, you really feel. for some of these individuals. Yeah, it would be bad enough if it was just one person putting this poor girl through that, but here you have a second person

coming over and getting involved. And it still shocks me that between the two of them, they didn't say, this is wrong, we can't be doing this. So here you have an instance where there's two separate people involved in this,

and this still happens. Yeah, that's a good point, right? One person can get duped. But now you have a second. second person. So, you know, that that adds to it a little bit. You know, one of the things that I want to talk about, and we'll probably talk about it more, is that what is the caller getting out of these hoax phone calls? And, you know, just from the descriptions that we've given, strip searches, having the other person on the line describe, let's say, a female's body, tan,

hand lines, making them do exercises, you would have to think that it's some sort of sexual gratification for this person making the phone calls. Yeah, there's no doubt this person's some kind of pervert. And, you know, on one hand, you might say, okay, this maybe this person's outside the window watching this and getting his jollies in person. But then again, these events are happening all over the country. So it's hard to believe that that one person's traveling around witnessing these. So it sounds from everything that is being reported here that he's just getting his rocks off over the phone and not actually there in person seeing this stuff. On June 3, 2003, a manager at the Taco Bell in Juneau, Alaska received the call from

someone identifying themselves as an investigator, claiming to be looking into drug abuse that was happening at the store. This time, it was not an employee that was targeted. The manager was told to interrogate a 14-year-old customer, not only subjecting her to a strip search, but also, according to the Courier Journal, forcing her to perform lewd acts. Just two days later, on June 5, 2003, a manager at a Hardee's in Rapid City, South Dakota, strip searched a female employee who he had detained in his office for three hours. First, the caller claiming to be an officer from the Rapid City Police Department told him that he was investigating theft. Then as the call went on, he told the manager to search this female employee's body for drugs.

And the manager did, including touching her naked body. Eventually, this incident would be referred to as the 89th hoax call. In July 2003, a Panama City, Florida, Wind Dixie manager answered the phone and got the similar spiel as all the rest of the incidents that we've detailed. The male manager brought a female employee to the office and strip searched her, also forcing her to stand in different poses. Another store manager came into the office and was shocked to see what was happening. The creepy calls continued into the fall. On October 16, 2003, a shift supervisor at Salt Lake City, Utah, Applebee's, took a 42-year-old waitress into the office and conducted a strip search because someone claiming to be a police officer was on the phone and instructed the manager that if he didn't conduct the strip search, multiple employees would be arrested. On December 18, 2003, the manager and another male employee at a blockbuster video in Bismarck, North Dakota,

Strip searched a female employee after a caller claiming to be a police officer told them that he was investigating theft by an employee. In February 2004, four different Wendy's locations in Plymouth County, Massachusetts were called on the same day by a caller trying to have a manager searched their employees. On March 22nd of that year, the 39-year-old manager of a Taco Bell in Fountain Hills, Arizona, strip searched a 17-year-old female customer in the back office after he received a call from someone claiming to be a police officer. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators

to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. One of the most disgusting and humiliating incidents happened just after 5 p.m. on April 9, 2004, when someone identifying themselves as an officer Scott called the Mount Washington, Kentucky, McDonald's. Assistant manager Donna Summers answered the phone. This officer Scott told Donna that one of her employees had been accused of stealing money from a customer. He described the employee as a young woman with brown hair who was very skinny. He even mentioned that she was wearing a tie.

Based on the description, this could only be one employee, a girl named Louise. Barely 18 years old, Louise had been working at that McDonald's for four months to help her family after her mother who was experiencing health issues was laid off. She'd made just $6.35 an hour, but it would help keep a roof over their heads. Louise was a hard worker and didn't mind covering shifts or staying after her shifts ended. So on April 9th, a very busy evening, Louise grabbed the quick bite to eat before getting back to work. She planned to stay until someone else arrived to relieve her. It would be hours before Louise would be able to go home, though, not because she was working extra hours, but rather that she was being subjected to a

humiliating search. The manager Donna Summers ordered Louise into the manager's office. According to ABC News, as she entered, Donna said into the phone, here she is. This is the girl you described. Donna told Louise to shut the office door. Officer Scott still on the phone told Donna that he had McDonald's corporate representatives as well as the store's manager. Lisa Siddens also on the line listening.

Donna explained that Louise had been accused of stealing from a customer and she was speaking to police on the phone. As she denied stealing anything, Donna said to her, they said it was the little girl that looked like you in a McDonald's uniform. So it had to be you. She emptied her pockets and even turned them inside out so Donna could see that she hadn't stolen anything. Next, Officer Scott then told Donna that she could either search Louise there where if not, both her and Louise would be arrested and searched the police station. Neither Louise nor Donna wanted to be arrested, so they both agreed to do as instructed. The would-be officer told Donna to have Louise undress, one piece of clothing at a time, so that she could search them.

To give Louise some privacy, Donna covered the glass window in the office door with a trash bag. Donna was also told to put the clothes and everything Louise had taken out of her pockets, including her cell phone, into a bag, and take the bag out to her car so that the police could come pick them up. And she did as instructed. 27-year-old Jason Bradley, a cook at the McDonald's, was called in the office to watch over Louise while Donna ran the clothes outside to her car. While Jason watched over Louise, the officer told him to take away the apron Louise was using to cover herself up with and described to him what her body looked like, but Jason refused to do it. So here's the second incident,

morph where we had the 22 year old, the 27 year old, not a manager, realized that something very wrong was going on. And I think a lot of people will point to those incidents and say, well, you know, if these young people,

you know, this guy was a cook, if he can figure it out, why couldn't the manager figure it out? Right? That's an obvious. question that you have to ask. Yeah, to his credit, he felt something was off.

He didn't want to do it. But at the same time, he didn't step up and say, hey, you can't be doing this. This isn't right. You know, so it's another opportunity that this could have been stopped. Well, and the other thing that jumped out of me is we said, the officer said that not only were McDonald's corporate representatives on the phone, but also the store's manager was on the phone. okay don't you think you would want to hear from that manager but obviously that manager never spoke up because the manager was not really on the phone call by this point louise was beyond humiliated and very upset kim dockery a second assistant manager at the macdonalds tried to

comfort her and calm her down because she was crying donna hadn't told kim what was happening or who was on the phone all she knew when she walked in according to the Courier Journal was that there was a little young girl standing there naked and it wasn't a pretty sight. That's what she said. At some point during this interrogation, Donna took away Louise's car keys, leaving her helpless and unable to leave the restaurant. Prior to having her keys taken, she technically could have left if she wanted to run

through a busy McDonald's naked with no shoes and flee in her car. but now she couldn't even escape that way, even if she wanted to. Incredibly, this call lasted for hours. After an hour, Donna told the officer on the other end of the phone that she had to get back to work. She volunteered that her fiancé would come and watch Louise while she got back to her duties, and the officer agreed. Around 6 p.m., Donna called her fiancé, Walter Nix Jr., who was at home. She told him that she had a situation at work and asked for his help.

When Walter arrived, Donna gave him the rundown. Louise was a thief who had been caught by police. Donna and Walter were also informed that Louise had been dealing drugs, and her Talersville home was being raided. Donna gave Walter the phone and went back to work, popping back into the locked office every now and then to make sure everything was okay. This caller, the so-called Officer Scott, told Walter to take the apron away from Louise and describe what her body looked like,

just as he had instructed Jason to do shortly before, Jason had refused. But 42-year-old Walter did as he was told. Officer Scott then told Walter to make Louise dance and to make sure her arms were up so that if she had anything stolen on her, it would shake out. She was forced to do different exercises like jumping jacks and to stand in odd places, like on a chair and on the desk. supposedly to see if she had any stolen items hidden on her body. Walter at the direction of Officer Scott made Louise sit on his lap.

In order to see if she had been drinking, he was told to kiss her, which Officer Scott had claimed would help him smell her breath. The officer also spoke to Louise telling her that if she didn't want to lose her job, she would listen to him. So Morph, I mean, some of this stuff is so absurd that it's really hard to fathom. Some people went along with some of the things that they did. I think this one takes it to an entirely different level. This manager calls in her 42 year old fiance and says, hey, I got to get back to work.

I need you to take care of this for me. And this guy takes over. the directions from Officer Scott. Yeah, it almost seems too bizarre to believe that it's real that this really happened. And up to this point, I don't know how you feel, but, you know, initially I thought, okay, this is a sexual pervert and he's just getting his thrills off. Who knows what he's doing while he's talking to these people. But this call, I was starting to wonder if he is somehow enjoying the challenge of how

far he can push these people and see what he can make them do. And maybe it's not even a sexual thing that he's just enjoying controlling people and getting them to do these crazy things and seeing how far they'll actually go. Yeah, I got a real sense of that during this one, almost like it was a challenge. How many people can I fool? How far can I push them, you know, to what limits can I get them to go? I mean, how does this 42-year-old man who doesn't even work at the place, not know that this is something he should not be doing?

He shouldn't even be seeing this young woman naked. He shouldn't be kissing her. He shouldn't be doing any of this stuff. I don't know. It just, it kind of blows me away. Though she needed the job and didn't want to get in trouble, Louise didn't want to follow the directions of this officer anymore. But Walter began to spank her as the officer.

had ordered him to do. Off and on, the spanking lasted for 20 minutes. Louise's skin was so red you could see the marks on the grainy surveillance footage from the office. Donna came back to the office and began to unlock the door, so Walter gave Louise the apron back so she was covered up. When Donna left and locked the office once again, Walter took the apron back, leaving Louise naked. There was one time that Donna entered quickly, and Louise wasn't covered by the apron, but she didn't say or do anything. She just walked past to get what she needed from the office. Two and a half hours into the phone call,

Officer Scott told Louise to get on her knees in front of Walter and undo his pants. Louise cried and protested. She later recalled the harrowing experience to the Courier Journal saying, I said no, I didn't do anything wrong. This is ridiculous. It was written that Walter threatened to hit her if she did not perform oral sex on him.

Louise said, I was scared for my life, and she did what Walter told her to do. Donna came back to the office door and began to unlock it. She needed to get a gift card from the office. Walter gave Louise the apron back again covering her up. Officer Scott then told Donna that she needed to find another man to watch Louise so that Walter could leave. She asked 58-year-old Thomas Sims, the maintenance man, to watch her.

Sims wasn't a regular employee at that McDonald's. He only did repair work at various restaurants as needed. He just happened to be there that night. When Donna gave Thomas the phone, Officer Scott told him to take the apron from Louise and describe her body to him. Sims was surprised at the entire situation and refused to do anything the caller said. He later told the courier journal that at the time, he thought, to himself, something is not right about this. Okay, finally, we have someone in this entire saga,

I'm talking about this one particular incident, who gets it. Something is not right about what's going on. After the hours of torment, Louis experienced, Donna decided to call Lisa Siddens, the manager of the McDonald's, directly. Officer Scott had claimed that Lisa was also in the line with him. But when Donna reached Lisa, the store manager was clueless about what Donna was telling her. She had actually been asleep when Donna called her. Donna later told the Courage Journal, I knew that I had been had. I lost it.

Donna hung up with the fake officer and manager Lisa Siddins raced to the store, calling the real police when she arrived. Kim Dockery wrapped Louise in a blanket. She was shivering. She was allowed to get dressed and perhaps in shock over the entire traumatic experience, asked only whether she was supposed to come in for her shift the next day. One of the employees picked up the phone and dialed Star 69, which called back the last number to call the restaurant.

They could only get the number if no one else called between that call ending and someone else calling the restaurant. So thankfully, they acted quickly. Donna watched the surveillance footage from the office and was shocked to see what Walter had done to Louise. she immediately called off their engagement and refused to speak to him. Donna was suspended and then fired for allowing Walter a non-employee into the office, which was against company policy.

Soon after, criminal charges came. Louise didn't return to the McDonald's and Kim Dockery was transferred to a different location. Therapist Jean Campbell later described in court how Louise suffered from nightmares, panic attacks and insomnia after the incident, it took multiple medications to help ease her subsequent depression and anxiety. According to the Courier Journal, she was dealing with a lot of issues of shame, feeling contaminated, feeling dirty, questioning herself. Louise was unable to attend the University of Louisville as she had planned to do before the assault. So I don't think more if that it's hyperbole to say that this incident completely changed this girl's life. I mean, it changed her

state of mind, nightmares, panic attacks, depression, anxiety. She wasn't able to go on to do some of the things that she had planned to do. So when we talk about victims in this case and that there were real victims. I mean, this is just one example. It's one of the most harrowing examples, but it's extremely sad. Yeah, and you have to think this has some long-reaching effects that, you know, she was taking medications and getting counseling and things like that to try and get through this. And, you know, I can't even imagine if this was my daughter or someone working a part-time job, trying to make extra money, trying to help her family in Louisa's situation, then this happens, just very, very terrible.

Well, you say that and, and I've kind of been thinking about that as we go through the episode. What if this had happened to my daughter? And it's tough for me because my blood starts to boil. I start to get upset, thinking about the victim, but also thinking about, you know, what if this happened to one of my daughters? Man, I would be fired up. Yeah, and not just upset with the caller that was making all the stuff happen,

but just the adults, the people in position of authority, managers, things like that that you think could have had some common sense and just put a stop to this. And many of these instances we've talked about in this case, in particular, that went so far, you think there were ample opportunities to put a halt to this, and it just kept going and going. Donna was indicted on one count of unlawful imprisonment for locking Louise in the office, while Walter was indicted on one charge of sodomy and one charge of assault. Donna later said to ABC News of the charges,

I honestly thought he was a police officer, and what I was doing was the right thing. Everyone that fell for the hoax and listened to the caller felt this way. Roosevelt Police Chief Steve Huli explained to Deseret.com that the managers were victims in a way too, stating, they did what they were directed to do without understanding what they were doing. Really, only the caller knew what was going on in most of these calls. I could see they had no criminal intent. They were legitimately duped into this con game.

You know, and that's where I struggled the most with this case and these series of events, right? You have this police chief saying, in a way, these managers were victims too. And I get that, but, you know, especially in this last one. And I think in some of the others, too, these people should have known that what they were doing was not right. And obviously in this one, you have charges, indictments for both Donna and Walter. I don't know. I think this is a case that may divide people with some people saying they could understand. and how they were duped.

And I see that part of it. But I also see the part where they should have known better. They should have seen through it. But it's not always the case. And I think it's safe to say that most of these people probably didn't have any kind of criminal record. They had never done anything like this. So for this to happen, for them to do these horrible things, it's shocking. Well, it is a good point.

I mean, you can make the argument that very easily, these people didn't set out, you know, during the course of their day to do this. It happened as a result of a con man and these hoax phone calls. So I do agree with the police chiefs there saying there was no criminal intent. It didn't set out to do it. but what they ended up doing was criminal. Mount Washington police detective Buddy Stump. The department's sole detective was new to the job,

but he was determined to get justice for Louise. Watching the surveillance video angered him. He told the Courier Journal, It burned me up that this had happened to an 18-year-old girl. He told the deserate.com. At first, he thought that it was probably a local prank caller thinking this has got to be somebody on a pay phone, maybe over at the Wind Dixie, and they're getting their jollies off at watching all the action and the police roll in.

Using the phone number obtained by dialing Star 69 at the Mount Washington McDonald's, Stump was able to determine that the call had been made using a prepaid AT&T calling card. But the number listed didn't seem to work. It just went to a busy signal. He was discouraged, but he didn't give up. More information came to light about the caller and where the call originated. The call had been made from Panama City, Florida. Most phone cards in Panama City were sold by Walmart.

This narrowed it down a bit, but not a lot. There were three Walmarts in Panama City, and some other stores did have phone cards as well. So it wasn't for certain that the card had been purchased at Walmart, or that the card had even been purchased in that area. Panama City of Police Detective Sergeant Vic Flarety was able to track one of the calling cards used in a series of host calls

that he was investigating to one specific Walmart location in Panama City. The card had been purchased on February 19th. Unfortunately, the only cameras there were at the doors, so investigators could only track people coming and going from the store, not who made the purchases and went. Flaherty and Stump teamed up and shared their knowledge with each other, and it was clear they were obviously dealing with the same guy. Flaherty was able to trace a different calling card to a specific Walmart in Panama City and see that it had been purchased on April 9, 2004, at 302 p.m.

Two hours later, it was used to call the McDonald's in Mount Washington, Kentucky. Unlike the other Walmart location, this one. had cameras focused on the registers, a six-foot-tall white male between 30 and 40 wearing glasses with black slicked back hair had bought the calling card. Looking for the same man at the other Walmart location, investigators saw him wearing a distinct jacket with white letters. Local officers in Panama City recognized the jacket. It was worn by Corrections Corporation of a officers. The corporation is a private prison company with one location, Bay Correctional facility in Panama City. The warden there identified the man in the Walmart surveillance photo

as 38-year-old David Stewart, who worked swing shifts as a prison guard. Police questioned Stewart, who denied that he had purchased any calling cards. Flaherty told the Courier Journal that despite Stewart's protest of innocence, He began to sweat profusely and shake uncontrollably. A search of Stewart's home revealed yet another calling card. It had also been used for hoax calls, nine in one year. Also inside his home, investigators found multiple applications to police departments, as well as magazines for or about police officers, multiple guns, and police-style uniforms.

Stewart was arrested in Panama City on June 30, 2004, by Mount Washington. Washington Police, he was charged with solicitation to commit sodomy, impersonating a police officer, soliciting sex abuse, and unlawful imprisonment. He was released on a $100,000 bail, which was posted by his brother, retired New York police officer C.W. Stewart. The bail had been reduced from the original half a million due to Stewart's lack of criminal history, it's not often you see such a high bond for crimes besides murder when the person is not a celebrity. Stuart obtained defense attorney Steve Romance, who argued that Stewart could not have been the caller, saying, as detailed by the Courier Journal, based on numerous conversations

with my client. I don't believe he is persuasive or eloquent enough to convince somebody to do these preposterous things. After Stewart was arrested, the calls completely stopped, according to investigators. But Steve Romine said there were at least two more calls. So Stewart went to trial and jurors deliberated for just about two hours before finding David Stewart not guilty. He always maintained that he was not the hoax caller. But investigators felt certain he was.

And since then, there have been. no more reported strip search hoax attempts. Many people believe that a guilty man walked free. And more if we don't have, you know, all the details of the trial and the evidence and all of that. But I don't think there's any doubt when you look at forums and what people have to say about this case online, there are a lot of people who believe that David Stewart made these calls, beat the system, and walked free.

As you mentioned, we don't have all the details about what the jury examined and every bit of evidence they went through, but it seems clear that you have a person on surveillance camera being identified as buying these cards. The cards are used to make these calls, yet somehow he's found innocent. It's just a, you know, a little bit of a head scratcher to me. And it could have been something along the lines of, you know, the jury maybe believing that he made the calls, but not believing that what he did rose to the level of the charges against him. Again, I'm just kind of speculating. I really don't know how they came to that decision.

Well, now with double jeopardy laws, he could come forward today and say, yep, it was me. I did it. I did hundreds of calls. And he can't be tried again. And then I'm sure the statute of limitations on some of the things have passed. So, you know, he could come out and say, I did this and there's nothing that could be done. Unless they could somehow come up with some new different charges to bring against him and put him on trial for that. But again, so much time has passed, I don't know that there would even be an effort to do that. It seems like a mistake in hindsight that investigators spoke to Stewart immediately. instead of using the identification from the video surveillance from the call-in card purchase as a reason to follow Stewart and stop him in the middle of one of these calls and catch him red-handed. It seems that he used public pay phones, at least one that was literally steps away from the door of a gas station. He's thought to have made so many calls. There are even calls to four Wendy's in one county and one night. You know, we mentioned it at the beginning.

We can't even know how many victims, there actually were of these calls or how many calls there were in total. But there was a lot of fallout from these hoax calls. At least 13 of the people who fell for the scam were criminally charged. And of those seven were convicted. One of those charged, 35-year-old Scott Windsor was acquitted for the unlawful restraint of two of his female employees at an Ohio McDonald's. The judge in that case wrote that Windsor, like others,

fell under the spell of a voice on the telephone and had not intended to commit a crime. But there are some others that argue against that. And that intent or who they believed was on the phone doesn't matter. Attorney Roger Hall, who successfully sued McDonald's for $250,000 on behalf of a female employee who had been strip searched at a Kentucky location, told the courier-jurgeon, told the courier journal, you don't have to be a Phi Beta Kappa to know not to strip search a girl who is accused of stealing change. And a federal judge in Georgia wrote that the managers and assistant managers who had been duped had a responsibility to use common sense and avoid falling prey to such a scam. So I

mentioned morph that there are probably going to be listeners divided. Well, you know, here you see judges divided on intent and whether or not that played into whether some of these individuals were guilty of crimes. Yeah. Again, we talked about it earlier. I'm sure these people didn't set out to commit these crimes, but at the end of the day, the things they did, you know, were things that they should have known were not right and no or unlawful.

On March 15, 2006, Walter Nix Jr. was sentenced to serve five years in prison for the sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, and an unlawful imprisonment of Louise at the McDonald's in Kentucky. Attorney Kathleen Schmidt, who legally represented Nix, didn't think the sentence was fair, saying to ABC News, he's been remorse from day one. He feels terrible about it. Schmidt also noted that Nix had been duped, calling a combination of his psychological making. and IQ, coupled with the fact that his girlfriend asked him to come to help, part of a perfect storm, not something that Nix would normally do. The sentence was part of a plea deal that required Nick's to plead guilty and to testify against David Stewart. Without it, Nix faced up to 16 years in prison. Judge Thomas Waller, who formally sentenced Nix, believe that despite the so-called perfect storm, and despite Stewart's persuasiveness, Nick should have known that what he was being

told to do was wrong. Judge Waller said, it's absolutely amazing to me that anyone could commit these kind of acts based on a telephone call. And we have to remember that other people at McDonald's, Bradley the Cook, and Thomas Sims, the maintenance worker, both knew immediately that something was wrong with the call and refused to go along with the caller's demands. But despite that, they didn't do anything to try and stop Louise's ordeal. Donna Summers pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of false imprisonment. by entering an Alford plea, she was sentenced to serve one year of probation. Louise, the victim in the Mount Washington McDonald's hoax,

filed a lawsuit against McDonald's, Donna Summers, and Kim Dockery for $200 million. She was not alleging that they had caused the situation, but that they were aware of similar hoax calls and had failed to adequately inform their employees, leading to Donna and the other employees at the Mount Washington location falling for the trick. On October 5, 2006, she was awarded $5 million in punitive damages and an additional $1.1 million for compensatory damages and legal expenses. At the time, she was still undergoing therapy related to the incident. Donna Summers also sued McDonald's separately.

asking for $50 million in damages for leaving her vulnerable to such a hoax by not warning her and other employees. Donna Summers also won her lawsuit and was awarded $1 million for punitive damages and an additional $100,000 for compensatory damages. McDonald's appealed the judgments. Punitive damages awarded to Donna Summers were reduced to $400,000 In 2010, Louise settled with McDonald's for $1.1 million and dropped her claim to any compensatory damages. Louise has since married and started a family. So more if that last sentence is great news.

You know, we talked about the ordeal that this young woman went through, right? What was she 18 at the time? It was horrible. And I'm not a fan of. of people seeking money, filing lawsuits. But I feel as though in this situation, her lawsuit is entirely justified. Now, you can make an argument about Donna Summers's lawsuit

because of the part that she played in the entire situation. But a jury found that the company was guilty of not adequately informing, the employees, including Donna, about what was going on. Well, hopefully some of the result of all of these calls to all these different places were that maybe the corporate offices, the restaurants individually put plans in motion to, A, never strip search an employee that you think may be involved in stealing something. If that's the case, you call the police and let them handle it, I don't think there's ever an instance where managers, staff, fellow employees should single out a person and force them

to disrobe, you know, do the other terrible things that were done to these people. And I think there needs to be a plan in place and hopefully as a result of this there is so that this kind of thing never happens on this kind of scale again has happened in this case. Yeah, one of the things that keeps running through my mind is I've had a lot of jobs. over, you know, my adult life. I've managed a lot of people in, in a lot of different capacities. There is nothing. And I mean nothing that anyone could say to me on the phone that would make me think

that forcing a female employee to strip search is something that I should do. I know that for a fact. I can make that claim. I know people say, well, I would never fall for this. I would never fall for that. I can make that claim unequivocably. I just know that that's something I would never do, especially based on a phone call, but I would never do it, period.

I don't know. I'm so torn by this case, man, of trying to understand, you know, where these people's heads were at who did some of the things. things they did who fell for the for the hoaxes not trying to be too hard on some but being tough on others who you know really crossed a serious line you're talking about one incident where what was it a 14 year old customer female customer with strip service that's brutal i mean they're all brutal man i don't know yeah and i i think it maybe at the end of the day it paints a picture of just how convincing this caller was and how he was able to get this many people to cooperate.

Now, who knows how many hundreds of people he called that just told him to get lost and hung up on him, sensing that something was off. But the fact that this many people were duped, it's shocking. Well, and it's kind of hard to believe that a lot of these calls and the way that we described them weren't perpetrated by the same person. And they were so very similar, right? The reading of the tags on the clothing, the wanting to perform exercises, jumping jacks, things like that.

And then, you know, for them to zero in on this guy, but then to not be able to get a conviction, you know, that's, that's part of the, the bizarreness of this case as well. And this case is so bizarre and unbelievable that there have actually been multiple films, a play, and television episodes about the series of calls. Most recently, the Netflix series, Don't Pick Up the Phone, brought the incidents to the attention of many people. Our friend Javier from the Pretend podcast, who knows this case well, took part in that series. And you should definitely check it out.

So many people that have heard this story say they would never fall for something like this. But scam calls are still happening today at high rates. And people lose large amounts of money as a result of these kinds of calls. So while they may not be victims of the physical and sexual abuse we've discussed in this episode, they're still victims. What's interesting is that all of the victims we've mentioned in this episode were people who would genuinely never steal or deal drugs, the kind of things they were accused of doing

by the hoax caller. They were also shocked and certain that this was a mistake. To them at the time, they thought a pat-down. or strip search would clearly end the whole misunderstanding, but it became a frightening ordeal for them. And I think for many, the thought is that the reason that these calls turned into an assault is based on the fear or respect of authority figures, the kind of authority figures they believe they had received the calls from. in many of the articles in media discussing these hoax calls heavily discuss an experiment from

1961 conducted by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, the experiment which found participants in classified ads, was purportedly to study learning and punishment. The subjects in the experiment would be told by someone they thought was a scientist, someone wearing a white lab coat to shock another human being when they answered a question incorrectly. For every wrong answer, the voltage went up. By the end of the experiment, almost two-thirds of the subjects were willing to basically electrocute someone for answering a question incorrectly. According to the Courier Journal, Milgram wrote,

With numbing regularity, good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Dr. Thomas Blas, Milgram's biographer, explained that once you accept another person's authority, you become a different person. And after that, you're concerned with how well you follow out your orders, rather than whether it is right or wrong. Researchers have since done more research on Milgram's experiments and found that this isn't nearly as true as it seems.

According to bps.org, the scientist in the experiment used four prompts. continue. The experiment requires you to continue. It's essential you continue. And you have no other choice. You must go on. The first three prompts are not orders and not a single experiment participant continued after being told you have no other choice. You must go on. So the only actual order given was never followed. Hearing the subject being shocked and actually expressing their pain made people stop listening to the scientists. 40% of participants dropped out when the subject told them it was painful. Subsequent researchers have found that a better conclusion would have been that people aren't programmed to take orders, but rather make choices over which voice to listen to in a given

situation. So I just said it, right? 40% of people stopped listening to authority when the subject expressed pain. Louise and many other victims cried and pleaded with both their managers and the person on the phone. The managers did not blindly follow authority like Milgram concluded humans did. They actively chose to listen to the voice on the phone instead of the voice in front of them. Despite all the experts, all the experiments, all of the data, none of us knows what we would do if we received a sinister phone call like the ones we've described in this episode. And hopefully, we never find ourselves on the receiving end of one. And I agree with that in part, right? In every situation, no one knows for certain how they would act until you're actually put in that situation.

But I got to say, man, I know for a fact that I would never have done any of this based on a phone call that I received. It just would never happen. I feel very confident in saying that. But obviously people did. They fell for it. Now, there were a lot of other calls that we didn't talk about. we may not even have known about where I'm sure people didn't follow the person's orders. They said, no way am I going to do this? And they hung up the phone. But it is surprising to me how many people actually went along with it. Now, the one thing I'm wondering about at the end of this episode,

if all these calls all across the country were made by one person, you know, these started out. For the most part, before the Internet was widespread, how did this person find so many places to call across the country, assuming they didn't have phone books for every town? It just seemed they randomly located and were able to call different places in so many different areas. I wonder how they chose which ones to target. Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe they just, you know, called information in a city. Could you do that back then? I don't even remember, to be honest with you. But going back to your point, these calls were all made by the same person, as I think authorities believe, you know, many of them were. And let's say that these calls were made by David Stewart. I do think it's pretty sad if he was the perpetrator of, you know, let's say the majority of these calls. and especially some of the ones we talked about, that he went unpunished. Because he really wreaked havoc.

He changed people's lives. And not for the better. That's for certain. Well, and if he is somehow truly innocent of these, then that means someone else out there got away with this. So either way, the victims in all these cases, you know, they've never had justice. There's many sad aspects to this case. case, and that's a, that's a sad one for sure. But that's it for our episode on the strip search

collar. If you love the show and you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a rating, a review. Also, keep telling your friends that word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash Podcast. And you can always join our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcasts discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology, but we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all new episode. So for Mike and Morp. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.