True Crime Campfire - One Step Behind: A Stalkers Grab Bag

Starting point is 00:00:00 Looking for better games? SlotsGem has so much more. Your favorite games, live dealers, and the best tournaments await. Do yourself a favor and claim the welcome bonus. Shine bright like a diamond with slots gem.com. Terms and conditions apply. Please gamble responsibly. Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. or roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Obsession can be a good thing. An obsessed athlete can spend hours practicing to be the best they can be. An obsessed collector can find joy and community in the thrill of the hunt. Or obsession can drive an artist to explore the human condition

Starting point is 00:00:52 in a way that moves everyone that sees their art. But obsession can veer into something darker if the object of it is a person. That's how you get a stalker. Someone who is so consumed with the life of another almost always pushes the boundaries of appropriate behavior. If you've seen the show Baby Rainier, you'll know that being the target of a stalker's attention can have serious consequences. Today, we have two stalker stories for you. The first is about how a stalker can project their own feelings of love and affection onto their victim to a violent outcome. And the second will tell you the story of how one of the largest companies in the world harassed a couple for the crime of blogging.

Starting point is 00:01:32 This is one step behind, a stalker's grab bag. So, Campers, for this one, we're in Nottingham, England, September 9th, 2008. 21-year-old Joanna Witten hurried home after work. She was worried about her boyfriend, Matthew. He hadn't been responding to texts and calls all day. She ran up the stairs to their flat, and her heart skipped a beat. Was that blood on the wall? There was more blood inside, and Matthew's dead body on the floor, horrifically injured.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Barely able to breathe, Joanna called the police, but Matthew was long gone. He'd been a sweet guy, and he and Joanna. were very much in love with a quiet, happy life together. Who could have done this? Joanna Witten and Matthew Pike were just starting their life together, but they already had what would be an enviable situation for a lot of couples in their early 20s, a cozy flat above the orange tree, a nice pub popular with students from nearby Nottingham Trent University, where they were both students. Matthew Pike had been the baby of his family and had grown up as a kind of shy kid, but with a sly sense of humor. He loved computers and video games. He loved computers and video

Starting point is 00:02:55 games and even put a few little ones of his own together. Especially in your teens and early 20s, video games can really get a hold to you. I can probably still hum most of the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack. For Matthew, what really grabbed him was Nintendo's Advanced Wars series of online strategy games. Matthew chatted about his favorite game on forums online, and when he was 16, this is how he met a 17-year-old girl up in Yorkshire, Joanna Witten. Somehow putting him light years ahead of many other online gamers I've run into, Matthew managed not to try and gatekeep the nerd stuff

Starting point is 00:03:31 and make a tool out of himself trying to prove she was a fake gamer girl. He and Joanna hit it off, and soon Matthew was on the train up north to meet in person. For a shy 16-year-old in 2004, most things in life were embarrassing to a certain degree, including meeting a girl online. He told his parents he was just visiting a friend to go to a concert up there. You never know how the in-person meeting's going to go, but Sparks flew IRL too, and soon they were officially an item and meeting each other's parents. Matthew's mom adored Joanna and seems to have been relieved that her shy son had snagged himself a catch, a cute redhead who was into the same nerd stuff as he was. It wasn't a surprise to anyone that Matthew and Joanna chose to go to the same university in Nottingham so they could stay together.

Starting point is 00:04:17 After their first year, they moved in together and set up warscentral.com as a gathering place for fans of their favorite game to come together and chat. This was a small website for a modestly popular game. There were soon around 50 regular users. As you can imagine, a war games internet forum in the early 2000s was a little bit of a sausage fest, by which I mean it was mostly dudes. Joanna was one of a precious few women who hung out on the boards. And having been a nerd girl myself in the 90s and early odds, I can tell you a little bit about what that's like. And Katie, I'm sure you can too.

Starting point is 00:04:52 Like, on the one hand, it's kind of fun because you get a lot of male attention. But then on the downside, you get a lot of male attention. Not all of it is welcome or wholesome or appropriate. Joanna sort of became the den mother to this group of gamer geek dudes. Predictably, not every dude on the board saw her in this motherly light. In particular, she caught the attention of one user called Eagle the Lightning. Oh, God. Let's take a moment.

Starting point is 00:05:21 Is it the lightning named Eagle? Is that what? Yeah. Who the hell? Eagle the Lightning. People who'd been on the boards for a while communicated about a lot more than just video games. They really started to get to know each other well. But all most people knew about Eagle the Lightning was that he was German and his name was David. David Heiss's childhood is interesting. His family was apparently pretty well off, but his parents had a really toxic relationship. And in 1993, when David was six, they divorced. His mom got remarried pretty fast, and for some reason, the family decided to ship David off to live with his grandparents. I'm not sure why, but I can

Starting point is 00:06:04 imagine it felt like a profound rejection, cast out of his own family, while his mom goes on to have a new family, more kids with her new husband. David was close with his grandma and grandpa, but his mom and dad had pretty much tossed him out of their lives. And the mom still lived in the same town. So he'd run into her sometimes, like at the grocery store. Oh. She'd be there with her new kids. She barely ever reached out to David and his dad reached out even less.

Starting point is 00:06:30 Parents of the century here. Wow. Good God. That is just horrific. Like, if you, okay. If you have a child, it is your responsibility. Six years old. Six years old.

Starting point is 00:06:41 Unreal. It's unbelievable. It is, oh, it makes me so mad. That's one of the things that pisses me off so much. It's like, and especially because she went on to have other kids, it wasn't that she didn't want kids. I know. I don't understand it in any way, shape, performance, bizarre.

Starting point is 00:06:57 Take fucking responsibility. Jesus. So, surprise, surprise, David had some insecurity around relationships, some pretty deep-rooted abandonment issues. He was a smart kid, but he had trouble making friends at school. By the time he was a teenager, though, the internet, online chat rooms. and multiplayer online role-playing games were a thing. And David grabbed onto the online world like a life raft.

Starting point is 00:07:21 He started spending almost all of his free time online, playing computer games. He liked war games especially. The games were the only place he'd ever felt somewhat comfortable socializing with other people. For the first time in his life, he was making friends. Sort of. Now, don't jump all over me for saying sort of. I've made some of the best friends in my life online. I met Whitney online.

Starting point is 00:07:42 I'm at my husband online. But as important and real as internet friends and internet husbands can be, there's also a barrier in online relationships. You can only see as much of the other person as they let you see, even more than in face-to-face relationships. You can't see body language, you can't hear verbal inflection and tone. You don't get to see how this person is in real-world settings and situations. At least you didn't at the time David was gaming online in the early 2000s.

Starting point is 00:08:09 It's a little better now with video chatting and everything. Anyway, David retreated more and more into his online games. His IRL life wasn't going so well. His grandparents couldn't afford to send him to university, so he'd joined the military at 19, but they kicked him to the curb two weeks in for not being mentally suitable. He started working at a factory, definitely not what he really wanted to do. He was still living with his grandparents,

Starting point is 00:08:35 sleeping in a bunk bed with kids' wallpaper on the walls. It was right around this time in 2005 that David discovered a new obsession. WarsCentral.com Joanna knew David better than anyone else on the board. He was obviously damaged, and she was a naturally compassionate person. She lent a sympathetic ear to his problems. Of course, she didn't really know David, so she couldn't know that he was a particular type of lonely obsessive

Starting point is 00:09:01 who would read her kindness as something way more than it was. David was already starting to obsess over Joanna, but when he found her on Facebook and saw what she looked like, that turned up to 11. He'd say later that when he saw her pictures, he fell in love with her. One day, she was going to be his girlfriend. This wasn't like, I'm going to try and win her over. It was more like, fate has brought us together.

Starting point is 00:09:25 Oh, God. The sun will come up tomorrow, and one day, Joanna will be my girlfriend. David really had a thing for redheads. He thought they were superior, more intelligent than other people. Yeah, which I got to say it, that's not the kind of thing we want to be. to hear from anybody, really, but kind of extra creepy if the speaker happens to be German. The world had a whole war about this, dude. Y'all lost. It's like, yeah, we really want to start talking again about who's genetically superior. That always works out great. Yikes. So David

Starting point is 00:10:01 confessed his feelings to Joanna. She did her best to shut him down. She was completely in love with Matthew. She had zero interest in David or anybody else romantically. Let's just talk about the games, okay? But David wouldn't be shut down. In May 2008, he made a post on WarsCentral.com. It was a love letter to Joanna for everyone to see, and I can't decide if that's more creepy or cringe. No, it's more creepy.

Starting point is 00:10:32 Joanna was the first thing he thought about when he woke up, the last thing he thought about before he went to sleep. He loved her more than anything else in his life. Yikes. From his time on the boards, David knew Matthew and Joanna lived over a pub in Nottingham, and he knew it was both near the university and close to a park. Nottingham isn't a big city. David virtually crawled through its streets on Google Earth until he was sure he'd found the right location.

Starting point is 00:11:00 Just deal with the creepiness of that. From checking Facebook, he knew Joanna and Matthew had gone on vacation with her parents down to Devon. When they got back, a lanky figure. they didn't recognize walked up to them outside their flat and introduced himself. It's me, E.T.L. Off the internet. Yikes. This was intensely awkward for everybody. For you true crime nerds out there, it probably reads more terrifying than awkward, but initially David seemed shy and uncomfortable and not really threatening at all. Matthew, a good person through and through and thoroughly British, did the hospitable thing

Starting point is 00:11:40 and invited him in, which I'm sure he deeply regretted, as it quickly became apparent that Eagle the Lightning expected to stay with them. Oh my God. For a month. A month. Hey, you might have I just stay with you for a month. No big deal. Yeah, I didn't tell you I was coming, but that'd be like, okay, imagine if I did that for you. Even like, we're close. We talk every day. That would be crazy. You'd be like, okay, we're going to get you to the hospital. Yeah, I would think, like, something seriously had gone a skew in your brain. Absolutely. That is a weird-ass thing to do.

Starting point is 00:12:15 So, bless her heart, Joanna called around hostels and hotels but couldn't find him a room. So the choices were let him stay the night or kick his ass out onto the street. Now, I would have chosen door number two. This wasn't a baby. This wasn't somebody with no resources. He'd chosen to come here, completely uninvited. If he couldn't find a place to sleep, let him sit his ass at the station all night and catch the first train back to sunny Deutschland. but Matthew, again, a sweetheart, felt sorry for him.

Starting point is 00:12:43 So for one night and one night only, he could stay in their flat. They had a tiny little studio flat, okay? So David would be sleeping on the floor right next to their bed. Just, oh, my God. Joanna barely slept. Whenever she opened her eyes, David Heiss was staring at her. Just, I cannot even imagine. I would be so creeped out.

Starting point is 00:13:05 He watched her all night, not sleeping at all. he's just laying there staring up at her. The next day, they found him a hotel room, but he stayed in Nottingham. All he wanted to do there was spend as much time as he could around Joanna. He would even ask to spend time alone with her right in front of Matthew. She, of course, said no. David was coming off weirder the more they got to know him, which he obviously picked up on. He started leaving letters for Joanna at her flat to try and convince her he wasn't a weirdo,

Starting point is 00:13:36 which, you know, that's really the best way to convince somebody that you're not weird, is to just say, I'm not weird, I promise. And if he was weird, he said it was because of his awful childhood, which I do have sympathy for him for. But for God's sake, it's not her fault. Joanna's discomfort was edging into fear, which I'm sure would have been more acute if she'd known that David was following her every move around the city and learning every tiny moment of her daily routine.

Starting point is 00:14:05 But after a week, with some help from other people on the gaming forum, they convinced David to travel around the country visiting other members, which was very generous of those other members, because Matthew basically asked them, like, this guy's freaking us out. Can he come stay with you? And that tells you a lot about how real internet friends can be, you know, that they would do that for them. That's amazing. Everyone from warscentral.com who actually met David thought there was something seriously wrong with him and his attitude towards Joanna. They started talking about him on the boards. This small community was slowly shutting him out, which made him furious. What do you mean my creepy actions might have consequences? Nobody told me that. David Heist came back to Nottingham in July, but Matthew Pike's generous nature had its limits. He told Heist to fuck off and leave both him and Joanna alone.

Starting point is 00:14:58 Good for him. David went back to Germany and immediately started bombarding Joanna with increasingly angry messages. He threatened to cut his own throat in front of her. Everyone on WarsCentral.com agreed to ban him. In September, David Heiss was busy. On the 17th, he messaged his sister and asked her to log on to a website in his name in two days' time, thus creating an alibi. Gosh, they'll never see through that. He'd also booked a flight to England for the 18th.

Starting point is 00:15:29 This is not the brightest bulb we're dealing with here. like they'll never they'll never you logged on from home then how were you on the plane like on the plane the next day oh my god i'm going to scream anyway he wrote two documents one was called confession and was a fake suicide note from matthew pike in which he told joanna he didn't love her the other was called i made a decision which was an actual suicide note for himself on September 18th and caught the train to Nottingham, where he walked to Matthew and Joanna's flat. He had on multiple layers of clothing,

Starting point is 00:16:10 so he'd have a clean set to change in two and carried a knife that had been in his check-in baggage. Unknown to him, almost every step of his journey was captured on CCTV camera. Lots of visitors to the UK don't realize they're going into one of the most observed and recorded countries on Earth. It was late when he got to Matthew and Joanna's building.

Starting point is 00:16:29 He climbed up onto its flat roof and slept there. He knew Joanna left for her part-time job just before seven. He never knew that before she left, she woke Matthew up to kiss him and tell him she loved him. David watched her walk away down the street from the roof where he'd slept. At 7.40, he went down and knocked on the door of the flat. A sleepy Matthew answered in his robe. David immediately attacked him with the knife, forcing Matthew back into the flat and stabbing him as he fled, until Matthew fell down and David straddled him, stabbing him again,

Starting point is 00:17:01 again and again, 87 times altogether. Jesus. Then David cleaned himself off in the bathroom and changed his clothes. He'd forgotten clean shoes, so he stole a pair of Matthews. Matthew wore a size 6, David, size 11, so I had to cram his feet painfully in, which I hope he broke his toes. I don't know. I hope it hurt, I was just going to say. The fake suicide angle was obviously no longer an option, so David ransacked the living room and stole a few things to try and make the scene look like a burglary had happened.

Starting point is 00:17:31 Then he left and dumped his stolen goods in the trash and headed back to Birmingham Airport, limping in his two tight shoes. He was soon back in Germany, having been in England for less than 16 hours. Joanna and Matthew had always texted throughout the day, and she was worried that he hadn't responded. After work, she ran home and up the stairs of the building. In the hallways outside their flat, she saw a small smear of blood on the wall and started hyperventilating. She burst into the flat. More blood. On the walls, on the carpet, their possessions strewed chaotically all over the place. And there was Matthew, deathly pale and bloody, covered in knife wounds.

Starting point is 00:18:11 Joanna called the police, but he had been dead for hours. But he hadn't died while he was being stabbed by David Heiss. Beside him on the floor was an old computer monitor. After David had left, with the last of his strength and with his own blood, Matthew had managed to write two letters on the monitor, a D and an A. Oh, my God. When police asked Joanna if she knew anyone who'd wished Matthew or her any harm, she told them right away. David Heiss, he's been stalking us. This obviously wasn't a coincidence. Matthew had been trying to write out the name of his killer. This wasn't a hard case to solve.

Starting point is 00:18:47 Within days, a search of David Heiss's room found bloody clothes and the fake suicide note he'd created, also bloody. It looked like he'd taken it out to read right after he'd stabbed Matthew, decided it was a no-go, and put it back in his pocket. and a forensic analysis of his computer tied everything together neatly. After extradition to the UK, David Heiss was tried for murder in 2009. He made some half-hearted arguments for self-defense, which is hard to pull off when you've flown to a country done absolutely nothing except kill someone, then flown right back. He was found guilty and sentenced to life with a recommendation that he serve at least 18 years.

Starting point is 00:19:25 Three lives in pieces because one weirdo on the internet didn't understand. how the other humans worked and seem to have no real interest in finding out. Hi, I'm Darren Marler, host of the Weird Darkness podcast. I want to talk about the most important tool in my podcast belt. Spreaker is the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to record, host, and distribute your show everywhere. From Apple Podcasts, to Spotify. But the real game changer for me was Spreeker's monetization. Spreaker offers dynamic ad insert ads into your episodes. No editing required. And with Spreker's programmatic ads, they'll bring the ads to you, and you get paid for every download. This turned my podcasting

Starting point is 00:20:16 hobby into a full-time career. Spreaker also has a premium subscription model where your most dedicated listeners can pay for bonus content or early access, adding another revenue stream to what you're already doing. And the best part, Spreaker. Spreaker grows with you. Whether you're just starting out or running a full-blown podcast network, Spreaker's powerful tools scale effortlessly as your show grows. So if you're ready to podcast like a pro and get paid while doing it, check out spreeker.com. That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.com. Now, for case two, we're traveling halfway around the world to San Jose, California, but still staying close to the computer monitor for a tale of absolute corporate insanity.

Starting point is 00:21:12 This is they're out to get us, the eBay stalking scandal. The eBay Division Global Security and Resiliency was pretty close-knit. We're a family, director James Baugh, told Newhires. Indicating himself and global intelligence manager Stephanie Pop, he'd say, we're mom and dad. Guys, unless you're handing over that Nintendo I wanted for Christmas, I don't want my bosses to try and be my parents. Okay, I'd rather they be like Guy Pearce and Memento

Starting point is 00:21:40 and just pretty much be incapable of remembering me. I want to fly right under the radar, if possible. And dad was scary. He looked like Tony Sopranos' less charismatic cousin and claimed to have been in the CIA. Fun! One time, he found a knife sitting on a barbecue grill, and ranted about how a crazy person could have used it to kill someone.

Starting point is 00:22:03 Then he stabbed the knife through a chair in the office and left instructions that it wasn't to be removed. A warning to always be vigilant. I don't know about you, but I'm glad my daddy wasn't like this. And just like the bozo in last week's case, Baal liked to show his employees training films. Like the bit in American gangster, where Denzel Washington shoots Idris Elba in the head in front of a crowd, just to make a point? Or the bit from the Wolf of Wall Street, where everybody's getting grilled by the feds and they all say variations on, I do not recall that. You know, just

Starting point is 00:22:39 normal, healthy stuff for the corporate workplace. By 2019, most of the people working under Jim Ball were contract workers who could be easily dismissed. Baugh also apparently preferred a workplace staffed mainly by young, cute women, but being young and cute didn't offer a whole lot of job security. One analyst was fired for not smiling at senior executives. Let the rage wash over you. And another was canned for chewing on her pen. The message was clear. The analyst needed to be in constant fear for their jobs, and they were expected to display absolute obedience. And it sounds like be ornamental as well. Ugh. One time a guard pulled all personal possessions out of the analyst bags and dumped them into

Starting point is 00:23:25 trash bags. The lesson was that they had no right to privacy while at work. All this tension ratcheted up even further when a hedge fund bought into eBay and said things needed to change. Oh my God. I felt my blood pressure go up just from that sentence. Everyone from the chief executive down was worried about their job. In the late 90s, Massachusetts couple Ina and David Steiner turned their respective hobbies of book collecting and visiting yard sales into some modest success on the newly launched auction site eBay. In 1999, they started a website called e-commerce bytes reporting on industry news and trends, which kept chugging along for a couple of decades. Unheard of by almost everybody. It was just a little blog. But the top executives at

Starting point is 00:24:11 eBay read e-commerce bytes obsessively. The hedge fund had made clear that Chief Executive Devin Wenig's neck was potentially on the chopping block, and this apparently made him see any criticism them from e-commerce bites as a serious threat, which is just insane. Dude, you're at the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation and you're peeing your pants over a blog, hardly anybody reads. It's just unreal. If the hedge fund cans your ass, it's not going to be over what Ina and David Steiner wrote about you online. In 2019, Ina Steiner wrote that Wenig's $18 million compensation came at the expense of eBay sellers, which, you know, obviously it did. That's how eBay makes money. In response, eBay Communications Chief Steve Weimer texted Winning, we are going to crush this lady.

Starting point is 00:25:06 Good God. When Ina reported positive news like eBay promising sellers greater protection, Wenig texted, I couldn't care less what she says. Take her down. Listen, as someone who lives on the internet, I'm going to give you some advice. you make more money than I'll ever see in my life, but I'll give you some advice. Don't read the comments. Just don't. Seriously. eBay also had their eyes on a Twitter user called Fido Master who would often complain about eBay and tweets that, on a good day, got maybe 10 likes.

Starting point is 00:25:40 Oh, well, shit. Call in the cavalry, red alert. Whoop, whoop. I know, right? The level of fragility here is just like Faberget egg tear. Dude, your ego is deli. I know. Jim Baugh's security team opened a file on him as a potential threat to eBay. A Twitter user. In fact, who's been with FidoMaster? Fidomaster? In fact, for reasons that go no deeper than completely losing his shit, Baugh became convinced that the Steiner's and Fidomaster were actively conspiring to take down eBay. Maybe the Steiner secretly were Fido Master. I picture him wearing a ten-foyle hat while he's like out. Maybe he got the tinfoil from eBay.

Starting point is 00:26:29 And again, we have to stress just how low stakes this whole thing was. E-commerce bites and especially Fidomaster were teeny tiny. There was absolutely nothing they could do to damage eBay. But nevertheless, eight days after Devin Wenig tested, Take Her Down, one of Jim Boz team flew across the country and crept up to the Steiner's house on their quiet street in the town of Natick. He wrote Fido Master on their fence and left, a very confusing and creepy bit of graffiti. Obviously, this was nuts. The kind of crazy shit that only made sense if you bought into the conspiracy, Jim Baugh, had built inside his own head.

Starting point is 00:27:08 And there was nobody putting the brakes on Jim Baugh, just the opposite. In August, Steve Weimer texted him, I want her done. She is a biased troll who needs to get burned down. Oh my God. To make sure his analysts knew the higher-ups supported what was coming, Baugh showed them a message from Weimer that said, I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and anything we can do to solve it must be explored.

Starting point is 00:27:32 Whatever it takes. I think the kids recommend touching grass when you get this mad at the internet. I think that's the solution recommended. The plot they came up with was called the White Knight Strategy and was, of course, completely insane. They would harass the Steiner's in secret and then, in their real identities as eBay's security team, offered a swoop in and clear everything up. The Grateful Steiner's would then write about eBay in glowing terms forever and ever, and everyone would live happily

Starting point is 00:28:06 ever after. Yeah, you know, I don't see how this could fail, honestly. It's genius. It's like something out of PG Woodhouse. I'm going to push my love interest's younger brother into the lake, and then I'm going to jump in and save him, and she'll fall in love with me immediately. It's that level of strategizing. Oh, my God. Oh, honey. It's like one level up of pulling the pigtail of the girl you like in elementary school. That's like one step above.

Starting point is 00:28:33 Stephanie Pop got the ball rolling by creating a fake Twitter profile of a Samoan eBay seller, Tui Eli, who felt Commerce Bites had hurt his sales, which, uh-huh. He sent Ida Steiner increasingly abusive. messages, which she ignored until tweet Eli wrote, I guess I'm going to have to get your attention another way, bitch. Oh, boy. Three days later, a Halloween mask of a bloody

Starting point is 00:28:57 pig's face was delivered to the Steiner's home. Right after, tweet Eli message to Ida Steiner, do I have your attention now? The pig mask was just the start. Next was a funeral wreath, along with the book titles, Grief Diary, surviving the loss of a spouse, and then came the

Starting point is 00:29:13 bugs. Boxes with fly larva, boxes with live spiders, boxes with live cockroaches, neighbors received copies of Hustler, barely legal, with David Steiner's name on them. Meanwhile, Steve Weimer was on Twitter saying how much he admired Mr. Rogers, especially his quote that, if there's anything that bothers me, it's one person demeaning another. Damn, bro, you are a liar. Wow. Wow. Then he told Jim Baugh about the Steiner's. I want to see ashes as long as it takes, whatever it takes. A week after one of his crew had first scrawled Fido Master on the Steiner's fence,

Starting point is 00:29:52 Jim Baugh and two of his analysts flew East First Class, set themselves up in the Boston Ritz-Carlton and rented a fancy car. Money well spent. And it's a long way from the main point of all this, but I think it's worth pointing out that most of Einof Steiner's mild complaints about eBay were about them wasting money that they ultimately got from sellers. And here was Jim Baugh's posse of putzes flying first class and literally stay in at the risk. Their plan was to hide a GPS tracker on the Steiner's Toyota, but when they drove by the house, they saw the car was in the garage. No problem. They went to the hardware store to get a crowbar and some gloves to break into the garage, but they chickened out of that. Instead, they just followed the Steiner's around and harassed them some more. A 24-hour pizza place took $70 worth

Starting point is 00:30:39 of pizzas to the Steiner's house at 4.30 a.m. Their address was put up on Craigslist and ads for estate sales and nightly swingers parties. Come knock on the door slash ring the doorbell any time of day or night. The Steiner's, of course, were deeply freaked out. And I mean, that's the thing. Like, we're laughing about this because it's so ridiculous. But can you imagine how scary? So, you know, they'd called the local police multiple times. David Steiner had once noticed he was being tailed and managed to snap a picture of the car. The next time the eBay clown crew drove by, they spotted an unmarked police car parked outside. Jim Baugh was delighted. They're seeing ghosts now, L.O.L. he messaged. No, you dipshit. You're not a ghost. You're actually there,

Starting point is 00:31:27 and they're on to you. Props are actually due to the Natick PD, in fact. In no time, they traced the pizza purchases to a gift card purchased in San Jose, close to eBay headquarters. The license plate of the rental car David Steiner had photographed was tracked back to analyst Veronica Zay, and in short order, the Natick PD knew she worked for eBay. They solved this really quick. A detective showed up at the Ritz Carlton to talk to her, but she dodged him, and the whole crew fled for the Boston airport. The next flight back to California wasn't for hours, and Jim Ball loved spending other people's money, so they got a hotel room to kill time in, rather than just hanging out in the terminal with the peasants. Veronica Zay says Jim Ball watched over and over a clip from the

Starting point is 00:32:12 movie Old School, where Luke Wilson answers the door to a guy who casually says, I'm here for the gang bang. Baw was laughing his ass off at this. He told Zay, who was freaking out, to lighten up. Law enforcement wasn't lightning up. Natick PD contacted the FBI and eBay's legal department who started an investigation. Jim Baw's security team started a half-assed cover-up. They combed through their paranoid persons of interest file to try and find a San Jose local they could frame for buying the gift card for the pizzas. If they could find someone Samoan, like the fictional Tui Eli, all the better. Hell, if they couldn't find one, they'd just invent a guy, put together a fake paper trail of a stalker's life. They put together fake dossiers on the Steiner's to make them

Starting point is 00:33:00 look crazy. The security team started sending emails to each other to make it seem like they just found out about these tweets sent by this crazy guy called Tui Eli. One guy, former cop Brian Gilbert, called up the Steiner's and told them eBay had just found out about all this terrible harassment and offered any help they could. Afterwards, he messaged the rest of the team, just made phone contact. They are totally rattled and immediately referred me to Natick PD. The team workshoped cover stories for hours. Really, covering their asses became their entire job. And they seemed confident that all this wheeling and dealing meant they'd get away with the whole thing. That confidence abruptly evaporated after Brian Gilbert met with Natick

Starting point is 00:33:44 Detectives on August 22nd and I assume started to see the size of the case building against the security division. People started to get desperate. Jim Baugh messaged Steve Weimer that his team had done an op on our friend in Boston and now cops and lawyers were sniffing around. If there is any way to get some top cover, that would be great, he begged. He told Weimer he didn't think the police investigation would come to much because what they had done was just the equivalent of T-Ping a house. Wymer told him, stick to your guns. This very much reminds me of the case we did last week.

Starting point is 00:34:19 Oh, for sure. Screaming. Abort, abort! Abort! Scrumming down the street. Like, yeah, dipshits. Like, this is exactly what, like, they're just having, they're just boys being boys, having fun. Ruining people's lives. The next day, over speakerphone, eBay lawyers spoke to Veronica Zay. She lied and said she'd been in Boston to go to a conference. Unknown to the lawyers, Veronica's boss, Stephanie Popp, was right there in the office, coaching her, and more

Starting point is 00:34:48 importantly, making sure Veronica stuck to the lie she'd been instructed to say. Starting to panic, Jim Baugh ordered his team to scrub their phones, but it was too late. eBay's lawyers had found enough to start firing people. Jim Baugh and his team plus Steve Weimer. CEO Demmon Wenig resigned a couple weeks later, but not because of the the growing scandal. He was just not on the same page as the eBay board, he said. He walked away with a $57 million exit package. In June 2020, criminal charges started dropping, but not on Devin Wenig. He'd moved from eBay to the board of General Motors. When the insane cockroaches and Borno scheme broke in the news, GM chief executive Mary Barra said it was regrettable, but took pains to

Starting point is 00:35:34 point out that it didn't involve any GM business. Oh, so that's okay then. Mr. Rogers fan, Steve Weimer, meanwhile, got a gig as the president of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley, whose chair said they knew what had happened at eBay, but that Steve Weimer was a, quote, leader with integrity. What we're getting at here is that the things a rich person has to do to have other rich people stop covering their ass are extraordinarily bad. Mailing live spiders to a blogger doesn't even come close. Yeah, they sent them spiders and maggots. in the mail.

Starting point is 00:36:09 Like, yeah. But yeah, if Bundy had had a hedge fund, he'd still have been getting fundraiser invites on death row. He was this close to being a politician too. He missed those sweet, sweet cocktail weanies by an inch. Weneg and Weimer were never charged with a crime. Wenig claims that when he said to, quote, take her down, of course, he just meant normal, lawful actions.

Starting point is 00:36:37 You know, like putting out. a press release. He was shocked and horrified when he found out what was happening. Similarly, Steve Weimer claimed that when he said he wanted the Steiner's burned down, he was just talking about their website. Just like Devin Wenig, he was shocked, shocked and appalled when he learned what Jim Baugh was doing. Man, these high-flying executives seem just completely oblivious to what the people under them are doing in response to their direct instructions, right? Sounds like they're either real bad at their jobs or full of shit, maybe.

Starting point is 00:37:13 Prosecutors said they didn't have enough evidence to charge the senior executives. But if you want to believe that the American justice system goes easier on you, the fat of your bank account is, I am not going to argue with you. Jim Baugh and the six employees who worked with him against the Steiner's all accepted guilty pleas and received sentences ranging from five years in prison for Baugh to one year of home confinement for a couple of

Starting point is 00:37:34 analysts who were terrified to lose their jobs. They've found it kind of hard to find work since getting out a house arrest, which on the one hand is kind of infuriating because the people at the top seem to be skating by just fine without facing any consequences at all. On the other hand, though, I don't know if I'd give any of them a job either. eBay was criminally charged as a company with stalking, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice, and agreed to pay the maximum penalty of $3 million. The Steiner's are still in the process of suing Devin Wenig, Steve Weimer, and everyone else involved in the case, with a trial likely in 2025. In 2021, eBay told prosecutors they were ready to address restitution with the Steiner's, but three years later, they're still just discussing it.

Starting point is 00:38:18 This is, in a lot of ways, a terrifying case about just how quickly things get weird and scary if an organization with real power and wealth decides to turn its attention to you. What I find particularly interesting is how, little questioning there was from anyone involved about what they were doing. Several of the people who've reported on the case have described the eBay security team as having a cult mentality, and that really seems to fit, down to the combination of fear and hand-holding and the continual development of an us versus them attitude. It's a kind of culture that's pretty scary when it's just some weirdos out in a compound

Starting point is 00:38:53 in the middle of nowhere, but when combined with infinite resources, things can spiral out a hand real fast. So company loyalty needs to have hard, hard limits, folks. So those were wild ones, right campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Sarah, Megan, Beth, Stacey, Angela, and Ashley. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes even two, plus tons of extra content,

Starting point is 00:39:35 like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rat enamel pin while supplies last at 10, virtual events with Katie and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. For great TCC merch, visit the True Crime Campfire store at Spreadshirt.com. Check out our website at truecrimecampfirepod.com, and if you like what we're doing, leave us a review.

True Crime Campfire - One Step Behind: A Stalkers Grab Bag

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