Madison
Appearances
Darknet Diaries
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Yes. And then at some point, he kind of upped the ante and was giving out my... address to my home my parents social media handles my sister's social media handles um and like extra information um that was probably actually around the same time that the keys situation happened um probably like that same week or two he had put together a collage
Darknet Diaries
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of like photos and information that was like some nude photos of me, some like Facebook, LinkedIn profile pictures of me, my family, all their information below a picture of me and my family. My home address and different information. So around that time, I think he was definitely like kind of upping his ante and was probably getting bored with like what he had been doing prior to that. So yeah.
Darknet Diaries
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Having my personal address out there was definitely very scary. Knowing how many, you know, people go on those websites to try to harass and hurt innocent women and children. That kind of was an added scare factor, you know.
Darknet Diaries
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So, I think at some point... And we really don't know. Like, I never got the full grasp at, like, what he was doing. But at some point, him going, allegedly going and trying to help on the IT aspect of it to hunt down IP addresses or whatnot, I think he somehow got caught up in, like, the middle of, like, communicating with the perpetrator in back. And then...
Darknet Diaries
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was going back and forth with him through emails, which I do know for a fact they were emailing back and forth. I think that at some point, when him and I were breaking up for multiple reasons, not just this situation, I think that he might have...
Darknet Diaries
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just been like screw it I'm just gonna send him some additional photos of Madison and he also sent a couple photos of my sister from a photo shoot as well so during that time he had made the situation like added fuel to the fire essentially and made the situation a thousand times worse and
Darknet Diaries
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It was very graphic stuff. Like there were, him and I were in a long distance relationship. So he had an arsenal of stuff. from video chats with him and I. Just very explicit, full vagina, full body, everything. Videos and photographs. So it wasn't even just photographs.
Darknet Diaries
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So, we were hiding it from our parents. And not that our parents aren't... Like, they wouldn't... They're supportive parents. It's not like we're from like a strict, you know, Catholic family that's gonna shun us and send us away to boarding school, you know, but it was still just that embarrassment factor of like...
Darknet Diaries
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we're or we'd like to think we're you know educated smart women and we somehow got ourselves in this situation like i can't imagine wanting to show my dad this is what's going on out there like it would just be the most awful experience exactly like no matter how cool your parents are it's just not that's conversation you want to have with them so how did they become aware
Darknet Diaries
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So, I mean, they kind of became aware when they were getting unsolicited images of myself. I don't think ever my sister, but definitely of me. But they were in the same situation. It was like, we'll just delete this. Not knowing the seriousness of it because we didn't tell them the seriousness of it.
Darknet Diaries
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So, like, my dad's like, yeah, I just deleted the couple things he sent me because it was, like, awkward, you know? So he kind of didn't even tell us that in the beginning.
Darknet Diaries
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Yeah, it was. And it was just because I don't think that... Am I allowed to say that it was fucked up? Yeah, go for it. I'll be able to talk more smoothly if I can say what's on my mind.
Darknet Diaries
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Yeah, so at that point, Christine, Dana, and I were getting very good at creeping the dark web and finding information on ourselves to do takedowns. and just kind of clean stuff up. So we had successfully figured out how to take down images from these websites. So we were doing it pretty quickly.
Darknet Diaries
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Like during this time, I had like multiple employers because it literally has spanned over like an eight or nine year period at this point. Managers had been called and harassed on my behalf. So they had seen LinkedIn or Facebook where I worked and they would like call and like harass and ask for like my current boss at the time.
Darknet Diaries
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We eventually had gotten and told my parents because Christina and I had a mental breakdown one day and just started bawling, crying, and talking to our parents about it.
Darknet Diaries
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Yeah, I think it was just nonstop, and we were trying our hardest, and emotions were high, stress was high. Yeah.
Darknet Diaries
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No, and they knew to an extent, but they had no idea like how bad it had been because like they only saw what they had gotten, you know, so they didn't know how bad it actually was.
Darknet Diaries
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Yeah, so it was just a huge break. So it was me... Christine, my sister, Dana, and then my friend John, all four of us were working on this at this time. So once that kind of happened and we got the Kik usernames kind of sorted and figured out that we could cross-reference it, I was like, oh my gosh, back to the Snapchat from... At this point, I think that was probably four or five years prior.
Darknet Diaries
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It was a long time ago. And I went back to it and the... when I took the snap of it, which was right after I got the message of, oh, what a beautiful sunset, it was the last person that had viewed my snap.
Darknet Diaries
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And I didn't even think that like, oh, I was so quick at snapping it the second that he messaged me that it makes sense that it was the last person that saw it because he went on there, saw it, messaged me, hey, beautiful sunset. I immediately went on snapped the screenshot of who saw it. And that all probably happened within like a minute.
Darknet Diaries
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So it makes sense that I'm like, at that point, I'm like, duh, this is the person. Like it has to be.
Darknet Diaries
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We knew him from college. He was my brother-in-law Dana's fraternity brother at the college that Christine, Dana, and I went to.
Darknet Diaries
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We found this random post that had nothing to do with any of the girls or women. but it was a photo that was what we assumed to be his house. We actually reached out to his fiancee at the time and was like, hey, do you know, like, are you still with this person? Like, is this your house kind of thing? And she's like, yeah, that's my house.
Darknet Diaries
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And she kind of confirmed for us that that was like where she had lived with him. So we had that as a clue as well.
Darknet Diaries
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I think, like, the nature of online... like cyber harassment is that like you don't have anywhere to run to. So like if you're getting like bullied or like physically harassed, you're like, okay, I can at least run home and like retreat to my room and, you know, be depressed in bed, but you're constantly being harassed and you can't forget like,
Darknet Diaries
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Yes. One of the victims, she actually tried to kill herself as well. So one of the girls, she had a really rough time and tried committing suicide as well.
Darknet Diaries
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I don't want to say, oh, I was definitely suicidal, but there were definitely times when I was like, is this worth it? And then, I don't know, I was just very down and... It was just really rough. And then getting my twin sister involved, like there were actual days where I was like, her life would be better without me in it.
Darknet Diaries
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Like I could definitely see how it's so easy to get so depressed in a situation like this.
Darknet Diaries
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Two of the girls had previously caught him as well. And this was before we had gotten in communication with the six victims. And so one of the girls was one of his ex-girlfriends from college. So she obviously knew where the photos came from. She was fairly certain it was him. And she felt close enough to the father. His name's John.
Darknet Diaries
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She felt close enough to reach out to him and be like, hey, Chris is doing some really bad things. He's posting my pictures. There's thousands of posts online. Like, he needs to stop. Like, I'm getting the police involved, but, like, can you please help me? And he promised her that he would talk to him, would get him into counseling, would help him.
Darknet Diaries
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Like, just please don't, you know, press charges. Same thing happened to another victim that was a family friend up there. She actually narrowed down that it was him after just how he uses, like, punctuation. He would use, like, three dots and a space, which I was like, wow, you like thought of that? That's like actually like so good.
Darknet Diaries
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And she literally narrowed it down by that and then called him out on Facebook Messenger and... They, as in Chris and his dad and brother, both named John, they convinced her not to press charges if he promised to stop. And she says, you have to get help. I've been a family friend for a very long time. I feel for you. I love you and your family. I want you to get help.
Darknet Diaries
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At this point, she didn't know what the extent of it was to other people. She thought she was the only one. So she felt
Darknet Diaries
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horrible when we all got a hold of her and was telling her what was going on um but and obviously wanted to like be in our group and help um so we actually had all of uh the confessions of him confessing it and his brother confessing that he's known that he's does this and we'll get him help and fast forward they've never got him help he continued to
Darknet Diaries
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you know, harass innocent women and children for years and years to come after that.
Darknet Diaries
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My name is Madison. And gosh, the first question you asked me is already very hard because I kind of don't remember what my life was like before this.
Darknet Diaries
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Yeah. Yes. So my twin sister and I actually went to school at the same college.
Darknet Diaries
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Yes. So they basically had to recreate all of our subpoenas that my sister and I had done. So on the civil side, we were sending out subpoenas on our behalf on the civil side. So that's how we had all of the to bring to the police stations. So we obviously gave them that information, but from an investigative standpoint, they still have to recreate them.
Darknet Diaries
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But it had pretty much already been done, so it was like a good start for them. They don't tell victims much, so I don't know if they found more in their search, but they definitely recreated our subpoenas of the different IPs and IP addresses, and then eventually got to make an arrest.
Darknet Diaries
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It was just a weird feeling. It's terrifying in a sense because you're seeing this person in real life. His family is there in real life.
Darknet Diaries
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um you know you're gonna have to go up and talk to the judge and give your case in real life not knowing what the judge might think of the situation or even if he understands the situation in total you know it's a very new crime so there's not a lot of like examples of these kind of cases to to kind of go forward um It's just scary all around.
Darknet Diaries
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You have random other people you don't even know having to listen to your victim impact speech. It's just terrifying. It's like the only word I can think of.
Darknet Diaries
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Oh my gosh. So the judge was asking so many questions and it was so scary because they almost sounded like kind of like victim-shamey kind of at first. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, is he gonna... Like, is this it? Is this the kind of judge that's gonna be like, well, no, like, this is all your fault? Like, I literally had it in my mind. And I remember...
Darknet Diaries
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Like being like a little defensive at some point of his questions because he was like interrupting my victim impact statement, which it was very long, but he was interrupting as he thought of questions. So I was like, he's not even letting me finish. He's just like blurting out questions as I'm, you know, reading this victim impact statement. Like it was...
Darknet Diaries
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so terrifying and then he ended up really just being just so confused at like the whole situation like why he's doing this and like he was actually just really upset about everything that he had done but he he showed it by asking a lot of questions and it was so nerve-wracking And it's like in court, the judge is like, what's a nip slip? And I was like, it's exactly what it sounds like.
Darknet Diaries
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Your nipple like pops out of the shirt or like whatever you're wearing.
Darknet Diaries
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It was, like, we all just were in there, and I literally just, like, breathed heavy and, like, grabbed my fiancé's hand, and I was like, oh, my gosh, like, we did it.
Darknet Diaries
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I was about 19 or 20 then. And I had woken up and I remember having like an acquaintance from high school had DM'd me and was like, hey, you know, someone's like harassing you on the internet and they're like posting photos of you and stuff, right? And I was just like, what? No, like send me links, like what's going on?
Darknet Diaries
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So, luckily, the judge did agree with the original judge's decision that it was... a horrible crime that he did not learn his lesson. The only reason he wanted to show remorse was once he got caught and the judge saw right through him and gave him the same exact amount of time, 15 years.
Darknet Diaries
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He had the 15 years, and then he also owed my sister and I money for our damages. We're probably never going to see a dime of that in our lives, but it was a nice add-on that, like, they understood our struggles, you know?
Darknet Diaries
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Yeah. Happy ending. Yeah, it was really emotional. And the last sentence in my victim impact speech kind of summarized it. And it was, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. And that quote just gets me every time because I don't think I personally could have won or survived without any of the other girls. And we're constantly going to have...
Darknet Diaries
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almost like the sisterhood of like a pack of wolves. And we didn't even know each other. Most of us didn't know each other before this.
Darknet Diaries
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I still to this day don't know exactly where people got those from.
Darknet Diaries
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So there was 4chan, which is the big one that I'm sure you're aware of. Yeah. There was at one point, I think it was like mo.com and 4archive, which is like a 4chan archive site. There's motherless.com. There's a few more, but 4chan and the 4chan archive are like the top big ones that are like the bad news bears kind of websites that people go on.
Darknet Diaries
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I think it was my full name, my Snapchat, my Facebook, and my phone number.
Darknet Diaries
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I think my immediate reaction was just kind of like in shock and not knowing who was trying to hurt me. I think that was like the scariest part is that this was someone that may or may not have known me, but they're trying to hurt me and not knowing who it was. So it's very scary.
Darknet Diaries
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That was horrible because literally my phone was like blowing up nonstop at certain times. And of course, it's, you know, never, you know, noon on a Tuesday. It's like... 3, 4 a.m. on a Monday when you have to work the next day, you know? So it was pretty bad. Just even like little things. It sounds so stupid, but in order to turn my phone off, I had to get an alarm clock.
Darknet Diaries
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Our phones are alarm clocks, you know? So I would, in the middle of the night, have to turn my phone off and then I would sleep in and be late to work or something because I just wanted some sort of sleep to be able to have a normal day the next day. So I think the phone was the worst part at that point. people would reach out to me. So in the beginning, I would be like, oh, who is this?
Darknet Diaries
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Like kind of try to get it out of them who it was. And at that point, I don't think I knew that it was like multiple people, you know? So it just took a really long time to even just grasp like the whole end game of like what people are trying to do and how they're doing it. And it obviously didn't get me very far.
Darknet Diaries
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I got a message saying, oh, that's a beautiful sunset that you just saw. I hope you're having fun in the Keys with Jeff, my boyfriend at the time.
Darknet Diaries
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Snapchat has, you know, you can see who viewed the images, you know. So I immediately went to my Snapchat and screenshot the people that had seen the photograph. So I was like, it has to be like one of those, at that point, I think 30s. 35 people had seen it or it wasn't a lot of people, but it wasn't like one person, you know?
Darknet Diaries
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So I immediately went and like screenshot it really quick and just kind of kept it in my back pocket.
Darknet Diaries
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Like those 35 people were my suspects at that point. And this was probably two years into the harassment. It was a while.