Endless Thread - Tim From Texas

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

Tim Rose was driving home in February 2015 when he got into a car accident. He was mostly fine, though he went to the hospital just to be safe. That's where things took a turn. He turned to Reddit for help and his life hasn't been the same since.

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Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. This is recorded, right? Oh, thank God. Oh, it's a podcast. That's right. Oh, okay. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, very clearly now.

All right, you're on with two million people live. Just kidding. That's what it seems like here. I thought this would be a little operational. This thing is huge down here. It's pretty official. There are satellite dishes out front. I know.

This is crazy. I know. Well, thank you so much for being willing to come and have this conversation again with me. Yeah, no problem. I am still a little surprised that, you know, people find this exciting. So do me a favor. Give us what we call a self-ID, full name. Where are you from, what you do for a living?

My name's Timothy Donald Rose. I live in the Woodlands, Texas. Do you prefer Tim or Timothy? I do like Tim. Tim Rose has a weird story. A weird story he swears is true. And you, like me, are going to second-guest him, which is fine. It's fine.

Because you wouldn't be the first. And if Tim's post to the tech support subreddit continues to be crazy popular from time to time, Tim is again going to get accused of making all of this up. And he will, if you press him, get a little. little bit prickly about it. If we had talked while this was all going on, I could have given you all sorts of information. It's just, you know, it's gone now. I guess I could send you my medical records, but that seems a little invasive.

Sure thing. I mean, if you wanted it, I guess I could. We're going to get to this Redditor's full story, and we're going to get proof, such as it is, proof of this thing that happened to this guy one night, which changed the course of his life and still drives him a little bit nuts. Sometimes. Today's episode, Tim from Texas. I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you are listening to Endless Thread,

the show featuring stories from the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. One does not simply walk into our show without saying how it is made. We are coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Sometimes when people post their stories about issues or problems on Reddit, that don't get resolved immediately or their post is really popular, they edit the post with updates. Some subreddits actually say you have to post updates. In this case, it's the tech support subreddit. So they treat it like a tech support ticket, like your long-suffering IT person would get and then complete and mark as closed.

Tim's story is unique in part because the post he made about it had no fewer than 18 edits. In this case, updates. And the tech support ticket on Tim Rose's case with over a thousand comments on it is still open. Three years later, because he never got a certain video undeleted from his phone. The incident that started this whole thing happened about three years ago. It was a day of the Super Bowl three years ago. So that would have been the Super Bowl 2015, so February, I guess that time. Okay.

Do you remember who was playing? I don't know who was in that one. I'm sure it was the Patriots and somebody. You know, you guys haven't missed one in a few years. But I don't remember exactly who was. For the record, it was the game where the Pats beat the Seahawks, 2824, with a last second interception. Wilson, quick throw. Let's go it.

Interceptive! I was hanging out with a buddy. We went out to a restaurant, and we were watching it there. Kind of left a little early. And I was heading home. I had a new job that I had scheduled to start the next day. You know, Super Bowl's on Sunday. This was the Monday following.

And I got in an accident. I got in a car accident, and my car went across one of those grassy medians that they normally put trees down. You know, so it's two lanes each way, and then there's a median, and it's got some trees in it. I missed the trees, but my car, you know, it pretty much cleaned off the bottom of my car and knocked one of my tires off. And I bounced my head around pretty good, and airbags didn't deploy, but somebody saw it, called the ambulance, cop showed up. Do you remember what happened in the actual accident? Was it like rainy? Did you...

It was a little wet out and there was another car involved and I don't really know any of the details. It happened so, so quick. And it's just by the time it's over, you're like, what was that? And you kind of hope somebody saw what it was and, you know, it was a couple minutes before somebody got over to my car. Was it a no-fault accident or... I think another car had hit me because that's what it looked like from the side of my car at the time, but they took off. They took off. Right.

That's what I think it was. Because it looked like I had damage on my car that came from another car, but, you know, who knows? Okay. So the police show up to this accident. Take a look at the scene. Take a look at Tim. Write up a report. And then one of the officers comes back over to Tim.

He asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I was like, you know, I don't know. My head hurt. Like I said, it got bounced around a little bit. And he said, just hop in here, go get checked out. And I was like, okay. So Tim's car gets towed. Tim gets taken in an ambulance to the hospital.

It's called North Cyprus Medical Center. It's in a suburb of Houston called Cyprus. It's pretty routine for, you know, about half hour. I know these things take time. Half hour, 45 minutes. They check me out. They got me laying there. They're just kind of observing me.

And I tell them what happened. And, you know, I start after a couple hours of it, I start to feel better. And I'm like, hey, guys, I want to go. Just in case you are now using your powers of deduction and saying Super Bowl plus car accident, maybe Tim was driving drunk, well, we looked around for record of the incident as a DUI, didn't find it. Also, Tim swears up and down this wasn't the case. He wasn't drunk that night. What he was was tired and ready to go home after a long night under fluorescent lights. He wants out of this hospital room. Do you have health insurance when this happens? No, I don't have health insurance when this happens because I am starting my new job the next day.

And so I was concerned about the costs of the tests that they wanted to run. They wanted to give me a CAT scan. And you'd already taken an ambulance ride, which that's got to be pricey. Right. It turned out to be, I think it was $6,000, $7,000 alone, just that. And I said I want to go. So I'm in there, and I get frustrated about it, because I'm, because they're not letting me leave. They said I can't go anywhere.

A cop shows up outside of my room. And I said, what are you doing here? And he doesn't say anything to me. And I'm starting to realize, you know, this is getting a little bit serious because I wasn't arrested to see an accident. Nobody checked me out or anything, like, or was investigating anything criminal by any means.

Tim starts freaking out a little bit. He doesn't understand why all of a sudden there's an officer posted at his room. He wants to go home. They're not letting him. He's tired, so he's getting more and more agitated. This is when Tim takes out his phone and starts recording video. He's at the nurses station, arguing with the staff.

Maybe it's not the most logical thing to do in the moment, but it feels a little bit like the only thing he can do. Because I feel like at this point, it's becoming more adversarial than anything else. They're not let me know why I'm being held there. Yeah, they don't give you any reason. They're not, because usually they'll sort of say, well, listen, we want to monitor you? Or, you know, like, what's the conversation there?

Even if they want to monitor me, at some point I am, you know, refusing their service. And if they were concerned about me having a ride home, I was taking Uber. And now that real incident starts, all of a sudden, it was seemingly without warning while I was videotaping these guys telling them. And I was mad. And I was like, I want to go. You know, I'm ready to go. I'm refusing all treatment. I'm not under arrest.

Get me out of here. Why do you get mad? Tell me why you're mad just because you're tired and you want to go home and you feel like they're being jerks? I have a new job the next morning. I feel like I'm being held against my will at this point. I'm not being told anything. Are you like a conspiracy theorist by nature? Because this sounds like a, sounds like an X-Files episode or something.

I think if they would have justified why I was staying there and not been, Like, you know, you have to go and you have to get this scan. I'm almost positive. It's up to me. Yeah. You know, whether I do that or not. So while I was recording them and I'm saying I want to go, the nurse comes towards me.

And by this time, there's another cop outside my door. And so this is escalating. And nurse grabs my phone. The cops, you know, grab me and throw me onto the bed onto my back. One of the police officers, you know, gets his knee up onto the side of my face, holding me down there. But I mean, I'm not really trying to push. I'm stunned at this point, so I'm probably tensed up, but I mean, I'm resigned to the fact that something is happening right now. And I thought they were going to strap me down, but what they ended up doing, they held my arm down and

forcibly took my blood. By the way, Tim is not a small person. He is a burly dude. Also, taking someone's blood, sticking a needle in their arm, finding a vein, that is not always the easiest thing to do when someone is lying still. So five people, including cops, forcibly holding him down to stick a needle in him and take his blood. This is no small feat. And to anyone who already doesn't like needles, it's terrifying. But the weird thing is, as soon as this crazy thing happens, the cops, the nurses, everyone just disperse. Like, nothing happened.

So when I got back up, then they left. They didn't strap me down or anything. They left, and I went on my phone. I was like, I got this. Like, what, this is crazy? And the video's gone that I had just taken. One of the nurses who held Tim down deleted the video from his phone. He thinks.

More in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast.

There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. your organization's story with a custom podcast from CitySpace Productions, the Creative Studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. So Tim Rose has been in a car accident, hit his head, gone to the hospital where nurses and doctors won't let him leave but won't tell him why. Things get contentious.

And then while Tim's taking video footage of this argument from his phone, he gets tackled, held down, and they take his blood. So it was my assumption that the nurse who grabbed my phone while they were doing this to me, you know, just deleted whatever video I had on the phone. So you didn't actually see anyone pick up your phone necessarily, but you were pretty certain that you had taken a video and you're, assumption is that somehow the video got deleted. I was absolutely taking a video and the nurse grabbed the phone out of my hand.

I didn't see what she did after that because I was, you know, there was, four or five people in this room that were getting this blood out of my arm. Not long after Tim realizes this video is gone, he finally gets discharged. He's tired and frustrated without a car, so he takes an Uber home. But he is still pissed. So when he gets home, he posts to. Reddit. I was attacked by hospital staff last night in front of two sheriff deputies. A nurse grabbed my phone and deleted the video. It's a Galaxy Note 4. I have been at it six hours trying to do it

myself. My lawyer has a guy that does it for $2,500, but that is way out of my wheelhouse. I'd pay for help if the video was recovered, but I'm not the kind of guy with more than $500 to play with. I know your time is valuable, so let me know what you need to do it. I will answer any questions you have up front and with pure honesty. Actually, we should probably read a few of these 18 post edits too. Anybody in the Houston area, I will come to personally. All good advice, got gold. I left a comment asking for PayPal info.

Two things. One, I'm working through all of your suggestions, making a list now, setting up in the morning. Tuesday. No rooting programs are working. I copied every folder from my phone to my computer. It turns out to take a piss at 2.30 a.m. and holy shit. Let me clarify a few things. One, I was not belligerent, not until I had the knee in my face. Then it was mostly, what the fuck? Okay. So clearly Tim is being tried in the court of public opinion via the Reddit comments, which, not surprising. But he's also getting tons of helpful suggestions of what to do with his phone to get the video evidence. People tell him to turn it off. They tell them to root the device. They tell them a bunch of different things to do. There's even debate happening in the comments over what exactly here.

should be doing with the device in what order? And here and there, Tim's starting to defend his story with further evidence. Take Edit 13, for instance. I screenshoted my Uber receipt from that night because as this original thread devolved into, you know, I must have been at jail or in jail and I was drunk and this is why they did this, I posted that, you know, screenshot of my Uber receipt with the date and the map showing, you know, where I started, which is the address of the hospital. The people who are trying to help, what were their suggestions?

What would they tell you to do with the phone? The biggest piece of advice that came from basically everybody was turned off. Stop using it. Because apparently, you know, even though it's deleted, it's not really deleted until it's road over again. He's trying everything, but getting nowhere. Then Tim gets an offer he can't turn down. There's a company in Oklahoma called Alias Forensics that says, hey, send us the phone and we'll try to get the video back.

Back in 2015, there was something called a bug bounty for getting into the phone in the way that might bring the video back. Bug bounties are basically rewards put out by companies or websites for cracking their device or their software. Good hackers get recognition and money for breaking in. The companies that put up the bounties get more secure devices or systems by getting helped finding vulnerabilities to patch or fix. Samsung had a bug bounty for getting ultimate access to this phone. It was $15,000. So, Ailius Forensics had a good reason to spend a little time and effort trying to get in. A little effort could net them a nice little chunk of change.

And maybe because of the potential for getting the bounty, Aalias tells Tim, eh, we'll do it for free. I could afford free. I could even afford the FedEx that I sent up there. So I sent it up there. I put the tracking number on the thread, too. I put a copy of the receipt so that everybody could see that this was happening. We wanted more than a receipt. So we called up alias forensics.

Thank you for calling alias forensics to speak to an agent immediately. Thank you for calling alias forensics. This is Dylan. How can I help you? Dylan. It's Ben Johnson calling from Public Radio in Boston. How are you? Dylan told us that alias forensics has expanded in the last three years. And that the person who dealt with Tim's case, the chief technology officer named Matthew, now works for a spinoff company all the way. on the other side of the building. So, he transferred my call. Thank you for calling 8-bit Business Solutions. If you are a current 8-bit customer or need general information, please press 1.

Thank you for calling 8-bit. This is Aaron. Hey, Aaron. It's Ben Johnson calling from public radio. I'm looking for Matthew. Yes. One second. He might be on the other line. He was on the other line last time I tried to walk into his office. One moment. Okay, cool. Spoiler alert, Matthew was on the other line. But I did find out from Aaron that his reputation preceded him. I actually read that thread before I started working here and then just found out like two days ago that my boss was the guy.

No way. That's crazy. Finally. Finally. I got the man himself on the phone. Here we go. My name is Matthew Mahorny and I am the chief technical officer for alias forensics in Oklahoma City. How did you become aware of Timothy Rose and what he was trying to do with getting the video off of his phone? Basically, I saw my wife and I happened to be on a cruise. We were literally on a cruise ship and read a book kind of things. And so I had flopped over to Reddit and just kind of killing time. And I reached out and just said, hey, man, we'll do it. And we won't charge you anything.

Let us give it a shot. The real reason why I reached out initially was because we were kind of in the middle of several cases where, you know, there were officials who were doing wrong or at least doing things not to the letter of the law. And, you know, we just wanted to be a part of as much of that as possible because there are in so many instances, people just kind of roll over because they don't have the money to go to court and they don't have, you know, the money for forensic experts and things like that. And so we just wanted to throw our services out to see if we could help this guy. And honestly, typically, you know, we can recover just about anything. But this particular phone at that particular time in history was locked with Samsung Knox. And so that is an impenetrable fortress for your data, which sounds great, except when you're trying to access that data in case something been deleted or, you know, whatever. Matthew, let me ask you this.

Do you believe his story? He absolutely, in every interaction that we had with him, he absolutely seemed genuine. We've talked, obviously, with hundreds of people that have hundreds of stories. And you can typically tell when somebody is making something up or, you know, if they're just trying to create some elaborate cover story for some reason. It didn't seem that way from him. Meanwhile, Tim's hospital bills start showing up. I think the medical bills ended up being around $9,000.

I never ended up really paying for anything else. How'd you pay for it? I just, I ended up negotiating with them later on when they were threatening to send me to collections. Tim says he ended up negotiating the hospital's collection agency down to half the price of the bill. So that was good. And then, not long after he sent his phone to the security firm,

Matthew sent an email back. Hello again, Reddit, friend. Long story short, you are boned. Our forensic devices were able to semi-dump this phone, but the video you were looking for was not in the dumps. So here's the long story. The company couldn't crack the phone, try as they might. In effect, you are out of luck on recovering the video

until an exploit is found for this phone, which it may or may not ever be. Your options are to keep the phone safe and unused somewhere until the phone security is broken or to move on. Tim did move on. Kind of. was mad. And I was trying to go to a bunch of attorneys anyway and say, hey, look, this is what happened to me that night. You know, they must have video at this hospital. It was no fewer

than five or six that I talked to or emailed. And they all said no. Every one of them. And it really bugged me. Basically, the legal case against the hospital was super tricky. And Tim didn't have the video proof he so badly wanted. He was out of luck. But he was still mad. So, he did something about it. And then after this incident, I said, you know what, I'm going to law school. And I'm going to, you know, I'm going to defend the oppressed against, you know, these overreaching horrible people.

And that was my rallying cry. You know, I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and full of hope and unicorns. And I got accepted to the law school I went to, and I started that August. Almost three years ago. And the reason Tim's Reddit post just recently blew up, yet again, was his most recent update to the thread.

This pissed me off so much. I went to law school and became an attorney and now due defense work in Texas. Yep. Tim became a lawyer because of this. Are you still full of hope in unicorns? I like to think I am about a lot of things, but certainly not my incident. Because now I understand in Texas why they turned me down. There's tort reform down here.

So there was only a certain amount of money that they could get from a doctor for any kind of malpractice. And if they can't prove it pretty easily, not a lot of people are going to waste their time and effort with it. So I think that's why this happened. But what about the forced blood donation? Why did that happen? Was Tim's car hit by aliens? Was it a cover-up? Was he getting cloned?

I thought at the time it was because they must have thought I was drunk. and, you know, they were investigating me for drunk driving. I come to find out later that in Texas where this all happened, you have to be legally arrested before they draw your blood. And if you refuse to have your blood drawn, and I know all this now because I deal with it on a daily basis, but, you know, if you refuse to have your blood drawn, they can go get a warrant, and then they can hold you down in a very controlled manner. It's in a room.

They got cameras. It's a very controlled blood draw process after they get a warrant. So this, at the time I thought it could have been, but I'd soon found out when I was talking to my attorney that that was not even remotely legal what they were doing. Even if my blood came back that I was wasted, it would have been completely inadmissible. Of course, there is still the case of the phone video. Three years later, the tech support ticket on Reddit, it's still open. And in the interim, the phone security has been sufficiently cracked. so Tim could get the information off of it that he was looking for.

There's just one problem. It's gone. I just, it probably got lost in a move, and I told my wife about it, and I was like, you know, let's go dig around the garage. And sure enough, I cannot find it. And it's gone. And before you accused him of being completely full of BS,

there is another part of his story that might explain this, his family life. In this three-year period, Tim got divorced, he moved, and remarried. So he's had a lot of upheaval in his life in the last several years, upheaval that isn't phone-related. Good upheaval. Tim's new family includes three teenage boys. We call them the terrorist cell.

They're back in school now, though, so that's a good thing. They're good kids. We're very lucky, you know, about as good as you could hope for teenage, slightly pre-teens. boys. Are they all like thoroughly educated in their rights when they get put put into a hospital by dad? Okay. So here is a very interesting part of my three kids. Okay. So my wife has two kids. I have one kid. Two of the kids are half black. And so there is a conversation that has to be had regarded stuff like that in our household, you know, because there are, you know, the national story about concerns about stuff like that. And so that, you know, is a conversation that we have to actually

have. Okay, so maybe this is another weird question, but do you believe that the video ever existed? Oh, I know it. I was recording. I mean, I guess there's a small chance that I hit the wrong button or something, but I am 99% sure I was recording. Because it wasn't the first time that night I was doing it. It wasn't the first time I used my phone for that. It was, you know, I'd recorded myself saying stuff before, you know, minutes before this. Got it. And had the videos. I just, I have no reason to lie.

I just, I'm getting no benefit other than coming down here and doing this cool little thing. This is neat. Don't get me wrong. But, I mean, I even have to sit in traffic to get home. I mean, this would be the biggest waste of my time just to come down here and mess with somebody. Tim followed up after our interview with some more evidence. He sent us his insurance estimate documents, a certified copy of his driver. record, which showed the incident on that fateful night of February 1st, 2015, also a letter from

his former employer showing that he was supposed to start the next day, and one other update. In his email, he wrote, I accepted a position with a personal injury firm here in Houston yesterday. I am now going to be practicing the kind of law that would have helped with my case when this whole thing started. I also attached to a screenshot of that email, leaving out some of the irrelevant personal details. Very lawyerly. Tim Rose's video may never be found, but his new future is secured. By the way, while producing this episode, we reached out to North Cyprus Medical Center for a statement. We told them about our deadline. They did not respond in time for inclusion in this episode. But if they get in touch, we'll let you know. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR,

Boston's NPR station in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, who when we tell her we have some fact-checking to do, she says, No, you're shit. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and she always comes out of our edits saying, Today I Learned. Mix in sound design by Paul Vicus and John Parati. And whenever they're skeptical about the details of one of our stories, they insist. My friend wants to know?

Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who looks at our script every week and says, What is this thing? Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, who is loving season two. of Endless Thread, but he still remembers... The way we were. Even though you don't always hear his voice, it's important to point out that our fellow producer, Josh Swartz, can also say that Endless Thread is...

Something I Made. Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our intern is Candace Lim. Our theme music is by Squelcher. Thanks to Redditor Stan 96 underscore 5 for this week's artwork, which was actually created by his sister. It's called The Hospital Room. We have a link to her Instagram on our website,

WBUR.org. on Reddit, we are endless underscore thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today. Hit us up there. Speaking of which, we are working with the Washington Post on a project to hear from voters in the upcoming midterm elections. Voters on Reddit. We want to know what issues are motivating Redditors to vote and want to know what they're thinking about. So go on to the Washington Post's page or our page and check out the project where we're

working on. And if you missed Endless Threads awesome co-host Amory Severson this week, so did we. But she's been on a much-deserved mini moon and she is back. She'll be right or die again with us next week. Right, Amher? Guess who's back? Back again. I am senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out.